Oral Answers to Questions

Graham Allen Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hayes]

The hon. Gentleman will be disappointed that I am going to say that he is right to draw attention to the scale of this problem. I remind him that we were the Government who made the decision to publish these statistics and to designate cybercrime in the way that we have, because until we appreciate the scale of the problem, we will not develop the solutions necessary to deal with it. As he will know, we are using some of the extra resource to set up the national cyber centre to co-ordinate work in this area.

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

8. What steps she is taking to encourage police and crime commissioners to support early intervention programmes; and if she will make a statement.

[The Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice (Mike Penning)]

The Government have supported the first police early innovation leadership academy and provided grant funding for the Early Intervention Foundation. This is really interesting work being done to protect young children. Naturally we will help and encourage chief constables and PCCs up and down the country to help to reduce crime, support victims, and closely engage with their partner agencies, such as the foundation.

[Mr Allen]

The American comedian Eddie Cantor said, “If those currently on the most-wanted list had been the most wanted as children they would no longer be on the most-wanted list.” In that context, will the Minister welcome the work that his Department is doing with the Early Intervention Foundation in creating police leaders’ academies on early intervention, and will he ensure that funding is available so that every police and crime commissioner elected this year can attend such courses, as this is the best crime prevention measure we know?

[Mike Penning]

I praise the work of the Early Intervention Foundation; the work it does is very important. Other agencies also do really important work. We all know that if we can catch them young we can prevent people from turning into the types of criminals that sadly this society sees too often in our prisons.

Sexual Exploitation: Protection of 16 and 17-year-olds

Graham Allen Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

I declare an interest as the founder of the Early Intervention Foundation. It is a great privilege to follow the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst), who made an eloquent speech. Those who see Members of Parliament from the end of 140 characters on Twitter would do well to follow colleagues such as my hon. Friends the Members for Stockport (Ann Coffey) and for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), and the hon. Members for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) and for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood)—unfortunately she is not with us today. They are exemplars of what Members of Parliament can do when they get their teeth into an issue that they care about, and refuse to let go until something is done. I hope that this debate will be another demonstration of how Members of Parliament from across the House can be effective when we work together as parliamentarians, pushing Governments of all colours in the right direction.

I am not going to talk about 16 to 18-year-olds, because we will help those people by intervening much earlier. If we only help a 16 to 18-year-old, we are firefighting. That has to be done and fires have to be fought, but if we are to get a strategic grip on this issue we must eliminate the causes of child exploitation, as well as tackling the consequences. That, in essence, is the definition of early intervention, and it is important to consider this as an intergenerational problem.

This problem is so big and deep rooted that we must have not merely a set of tactics, but a set of strategies to take us forward. One of the best ways to do that is to consider the example of What Works centres in this country, where people collect together best practice and evidence to discover what kinds of programme work most effectively to help victims, and indeed to help perpetrators from re-offending. We have that all in one place, so that instead of reinventing the wheel, whether in the police, the health service or as a Member of Parliament, there is a place to go where we can rely on other people’s experience and practice that has accumulated over many years. Every instinct in a normal human being to the awful sexual abuse of children and 16 to 18-year-olds is an emotional response, but this is about evidence and science.

I first called for a national institute to consider how to reduce the perpetration of sexual abuse 26 years ago, together with the then right hon. Member for Finchley—the Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher. I say that only to bring us up to date and to urge us to ensure that our successors are not sitting here in 26 years’ time demanding exactly the same thing. It is now time for us to help the next generation.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Karen Bradley)]

In the interests of time, let me put on the record that the Department for Education has recently announced a new What Works centre for child protection. That will build an evidence base to show us the best practice available to help social workers, health workers, the police and other practitioners, and give better support to children and families—something I know that the hon. Gentleman has been calling for.

[Mr Allen]

I was just about to make that point and the Minister has made it very eloquently for me. I have served in the House with Governments of all political complexions. Ministers are concerned and empathetic. We are fortunate to have her as a Home Office Minister as well as having her colleagues, the Minister for Children and Families; the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), who has responsibility for public health; and the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara). All of them have been involved in pulling together the idea that there should finally be a national institute or centre of excellence to look at the sexual abuse of children and how to help them and perpetrators.

I raised that with her colleague the Minister for Children and Families in an Adjournment debate in June—I did it as fast as I could after the general election. The Minister has already said as much, but in that debate, the Minister said that there would be a centre of expertise to identify and share high-quality evidence to tackle child sexual abuse. That must include 16 to 18-year-olds.

I am conscious of the announcement, but I will tee this up for the Minister as the willing smasher of volleys over the net that I know she can be: will she tell the House how that is going and when we can expect it to be established? I hope the centre can be productive before the next general election, producing reports on best practice in particular situations and in the field, and producing reports for the agencies—the police and the health service—Members of Parliament and everyone who has an interest. Above all, I hope it can give Justice Goddard a head start by doing an interim report that calls for and supports the institution, so that, before what could be a Chilcotian length of time before he reports, he can influence the necessary political developments and changes.

I hope the Minister will inform the House that, as well as doing valuable work pulling together departmental interests, such an institution will listen to the voluntary sector, which does so much work in the field, and those out in the individual local authorities. There is a great body of work, but it is all over the place and it is never quite there when we need it. I suspect that many colleagues who have been through the awful experience of raising constituency cases are powerless and frustrated for a fair period because they cannot quite lay their hands on what somebody did earlier that would save them a lot of time and victims a lot of grief.

I should highlight the work of the Early Intervention Foundation. It is working closely with the Home Office, as the Minister knows, and has commissioned a review of the evidence on the indicators that suggest that a child under the age of 18 is at heightened risk of becoming a victim, or even a perpetrator, of sexual abuse or exploitation and many other things. The foundation will undoubtedly do a first-class job on that commission but, in the long term, the answer for us all is to get behind what the Government are doing, which I applaud from the rooftops, in putting together a What Works institution. We should ensure that its work is spread far and wide and that there is a connection with local authorities. From the top of my head, I suggest to the Minister that perhaps there should be 30 champion local authorities—they could be health authorities or police services—that can take forward the best measures that are pulled together in that central place.

The House can have an impact, working closely with the Government. The Government have been very receptive to representations made to them and will do something that will resonate and help children—it will also help perpetrators not to offend—in a way that could last several generations. That is an incredibly worth while thing to do. I congratulate all Members of the House who have led us to the conclusions that the Children’s Society has put before us today, and who have led to the Government introducing a national institute for the study and prevention of the sexual abuse of children, including 16 to 18-year-olds.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karen Bradley]

I hope they have been listening to the debate, but we will make sure that even those few people who are not watching the House of Commons on a Thursday afternoon are made aware of that piece of legislation. The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran talked about a young person’s consent after taking drugs or alcohol. Let us be clear: the law is clear that a young person’s consent to take drugs or alcohol can never be viewed as consent to sexual acts.

I am making sure that I deal with the important points, so let me move on to the issue of mental health. Some children who experience the kind of trauma associated with child sexual exploitation will need support from mental health services. The Minister for Community and Social Care has just joined us on the Front Bench. He is a Health Minister, and I am working closely with him on the crisis care concordat to make sure that mental health services are appropriately delivered. It is crucial that we get this right for children, including 16 to 17-year-olds. That is why we have commenced a major transformation programme, backed by additional investment, which will improve the support provided to vulnerable 16 and 17-year-olds who have experienced sexual abuse and are in need of mental health and wellbeing services. The programme will place the emphasis on prevention and early intervention, which I know to be an issue close to the heart of the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), building care around the needs of children, young people and their families, including the most vulnerable.

May I thank the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) for bringing the details of the WISH Centre to the Chamber today? I welcome the invitation she made and I hope that we can arrange time in my diary for me to visit.

[Mr Graham Allen]

We are all grateful for the Minister’s mention of a centre of excellence to look at dealing with sexual exploitation. Will she make it clear that this will deal not only with what people traditionally look at as the sexual abuse of children, but with programmes to help prevent perpetrators from reoffending? Can she confirm that all that best practice will be in one place?

[Karen Bradley]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the work will be done not just in the What Works centre, but in the Home Office and elsewhere, particularly on the perpetrator programme. He is absolutely right in that the academic evidence is patchy in this field and we need to get the right evidence, because we will not be able to deal with this otherwise. We talk about conviction rates, but actually a conviction is a failure, as it means that a crime has occurred. We want to stop those crimes happening. That means dealing with perpetrators, stopping the perpetrators and protecting young people so that they understand and know what abuse looks like and how to avoid being abused. The work he has done in this area for many years is incredibly valuable and has helped us in Government to form our views on this issue.

The Government recognise the terrible scale and impact of these crimes, particularly on vulnerable victims. I am proud of the progress we are making in tackling all aspects of child sexual abuse and exploitation, but there is still much to do. That is why I commend the Children’s Society for its invaluable work in drawing attention to particular vulnerabilities and recommending actions. I acknowledge the helpful contributions that have been made in this debate; hon. Members from all parts of the House have advocated wonderfully on behalf of the vulnerable in society, and I commend them all for doing so.

[Kit Malthouse]

With the leave of the House, I thank all Members who have taken part in this thoughtful and important debate, and I thank the Children’s Society for the support it has offered to a number of us in compiling our contributions. I also thank the Minister for her offer of an open door, which I took to mean a meeting to talk about perhaps putting together some clauses in the criminal justice Bill which might close some of these loopholes. More than that, I hope that this can be the start of an examination, before that Bill appears, of what more we can do to protect children, because it is obvious that the evidence is available to us.

As my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said, the 2012 report of the Children’s Commissioner pointed to things that needed to be done. We now have the Children’s Society report with similar evidence. We also have the appalling cases that we see in the newspapers. Obviously, something needs to change. Much of the legislation around the protection of children is quite old, and has not been looked at since the 1980s, when there was a period of rapid change. I know from my own experience that children have just been through another period of enormously rapid change, and that the legislation has lagged behind. I would welcome working with Members, the Minister, and, hopefully, the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Justice to see what more we can do in the upcoming criminal justice Bill to protect young people.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House notes the findings of The Children’s Society’s report entitled Old enough to know better? which looked at the sexual exploitation of 16 and 17 year olds; further notes the particular vulnerability of that age group as they transition from childhood to adulthood and the role that aggravated offences and harsher sentences have in deterring crimes against 16 and 17 year olds; calls on the Government to clarify for prosecution and sentencing purposes the role drugs and alcohol, mental health problems, being in care and learning disabilities have in adding to the vulnerability of that age group; and further calls on the Government to give police the same tools to intervene when a 16 or 17 year old is being targeted and groomed for exploitation as they have for younger children.

[Mr Graham Allen]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The brilliant way in which you managed the debate meant that every single person who wanted to speak did speak, and they all kept to within 10 minutes. Can you work that magic again?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

I genuinely thank the hon. Gentleman very much indeed for his excellent point of order. I am pleased to have it noted that the debate ended precisely at 3.15, which is what I intended. The next debate will end at 5pm whether or not I intend it. I do hope that by the same courteous behaviour from Members—

[Mr Allen]

Including those on the Front Bench.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Yes, including those on the Front Bench. I hope to accommodate everyone without the need for a formal limit on speeches.

Oral Answers to Questions

Graham Allen Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Lynne Featherstone]

I am having a lot of disagreements with the Labour party today. The ONS is working to incorporate measures of cybercrime in the main crime survey. It looked at this issue specifically and said, when it published the latest crime figures, that it had found that although there may have been some movement by criminals into fraud and cybercrime, it certainly had not been enough to offset the substantial falls in traditional crimes, such as burglary and vehicle theft, over the past 20 years. Action Fraud’s reporting is up. That is a specialist reporting agency. We are acting on fraud.

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

10. What steps she is taking to encourage police and crime commissioners to support early intervention programmes.

[The Minister for Crime Prevention (Lynne Featherstone)]

As part of the work of the Home Office crime prevention panel, the Early Intervention Foundation and the College of Policing recently launched new guidance to help front-line police support early intervention. The police and crime commissioners from Dorset, Lancashire and Staffordshire were involved in the development of the guidance.

[Mr Allen]

May I ask the Minister to do something very practical? We are grateful that she launched the report, but will she ensure that every single police and crime commissioner and every single chief constable gets a copy of it so that they can not only reduce crime by cutting down dysfunction in the population early on in life, but save the taxpayer a lot of money through not having to invest money late on through late intervention?

[Lynne Featherstone]

The early intervention guidance for police will provide invaluable support in stopping potential criminals before they commit crimes, which will save the police a great deal of work in the long term. The guidance is already available online. We encourage all police officers, police community support officers, chief constables and PCCs to read it. I am happy to take up his suggestion if I have time, because the more officers have access to it, the better. I am sure that we can get it done before Thursday.

Police and Crime Commissioners

Graham Allen Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

It is nice to be under your chairmanship for the first time, Ms Dorries. I begin this debate on police commissioners’ role in early intervention by congratulating all the police and crime commissioners elected last month. They have an historic role, and they bring a long-overdue democratic element to policing that will strengthen both policing and democracy over time. I hope that by the next police commissioner elections, they will be an even more important and legitimate part of our society, particularly if those elections are held at a sensible time of year with properly resourced freepost election addresses and without the low-level point-scoring that characterised this year’s campaign.

Central to that mission is the clarity and relevance of the vision for police commissioners, and that is what I will address today. My first specific ask for the Minister is to accept my invitation to deliver the keynote address at a House of Commons conference of all police and crime commissioners, discussing how they can help stop crime through early intervention. The conference follows on from the highly successful early intervention and crime conference opened by the Home Secretary last March.

We need our police commissioners to hammer home the two key principles of modern policing: partnership and prevention. Those two principles come together in early intervention. The police have long since realised that they cannot tackle crime on their own. They need effective partnership, and police commissioners are the perfect people to deliver that. One of the smarter breed of top cops, John Carnochan, former head of homicide in Glasgow, says that 1,000 extra police officers would be great, but 1,000 extra health visitors would be clever. He knows that working with health, education, the third sector and other partners to stop crime before it happens—rather than just picking up the pieces afterwards —is the future of policing.

The new police commissioners could be the midwives of a cultural change in policing from late intervention to early and pre-emptive intervention. The police will always have the task of reacting to crime, but sustained crime prevention and reduction requires a strategy that unites the police with all the other agencies, whether public, private, third sector or business, that can help tackle the behaviours and lifestyles that breed antisocial behaviour and crime.

Talk to any experienced police officer, from the local bobby to the chief constable, and they will tell you the same stories about the families that cause trouble and the newborn baby destined to carry on the tradition who will come their way in 12, 14 or 16 years’ time. Many of us—teachers, health workers, councillors and MPs—have the same experience. We all know that if we were not so busy firefighting, the best time to sort out the problem would be in the first few years of life. That has been common sense for many centuries, but it is now confirmed by a robust scientific evidence base.

Bessel van der Kolk, writing in the US Psychiatric Annals, said that according to his research, people with childhood histories of trauma, abuse and neglect make up almost the entire criminal population. More than one third of the 100,000 most hardened criminals in the UK were in care as children, and half have no school qualifications at all. The Centre for Mental Health tells me that six out of 10 child offenders have speech and communication problems. Tim Bull of the Brook Trust reinforces that tackling the trauma of sexual abuse would greatly affect offending behaviour later in life. I also agree strongly with Chief Superintendent Irene Curtis, president-elect of the Police Superintendents Association of England and Wales, who said:

“I see the new role of police and crime commissioners as an opportunity for someone to have an overview of the increasing demands in relation to community safety in its widest sense that face all public sector organisations at a local level and to look for innovative and creative, sustainable solutions.”

If children acquire a bedrock of basic social and emotional skills in the first three years of life, they have a better chance of being successful in the rest of life, achieving at school, in further education and in work, developing good physical and mental health, making good lifestyle choices and, above all, forming relationships that lead to becoming great parents or carers for the next generation. For all those reasons, police commissioners and police officers know that early intervention programmes giving a good start in the first few years of life are the best possible method of preventing future criminal behaviour.

That was the central message of the two reports on early intervention that I wrote for Her Majesty’s Government last year, and it is why I then wrote to all police and crime commissioner candidates challenging them to adopt early intervention policies as the unique selling point in their relationship with the police. Instead of treading on operational toes or seeking populism and publicity, police commissioners could use their skills, their independence and their role to bring a strategic and long-term view to reducing crime, which would be welcomed by police officers, victims and taxpayers.

I have been pleasantly surprised by the positive response that this debate has generated already. The Revolving Doors Agency reminded me that a quarter of young offenders are themselves fathers, perpetuating an intergenerational cycle that must be broken. Andrew Balchin, the communities director in Wakefield, referred to “bobbies and babies” initiatives in which police community support officers help parents keep children from offending. Councillor Maxi Martin of Merton said that “partnership, partnership, partnership” is everything. Guy Mason reminded me of Save the Children’s families and schools together programme, which is supported by Morrisons. Jean Gross talked about the social and emotional aspects of learning, or SEAL, programme used in every primary class in Nottingham between ages five and 11. Marion Bennathan of the Nurture Group Network highlighted the link between absenteeism at school and crime. Effective information sharing between partners was mentioned by Neal Kieran, principal community protection officer in St Albans.

Many other practical points have been made. The Local Government Association and the Children’s Society have taken an interest in this debate, because they see that police commissioners can play a role in getting to the source of crime rather than waiting until 15, 16 or 20 years later to pick up the pieces expensively. That demonstrates to me that massive expertise is available if Government can encourage police commissioners to use it.

Many police commissioners to whom I have spoken are well aware of this agenda. They range across the parties and include Staffordshire’s Matthew Ellis, Nottinghamshire’s Paddy Tipping, Nick Alston of Essex and Winston Roddick of North Wales, to name but a few. Police commissioners are perfectly positioned to explore the role of policy making based on evidence of what works, as well as social finance and payment by results in reducing crime.

We pioneered that approach with the police and other partners in developing Nottingham as the first early intervention city. Enlightened, forward-thinking police officers became the driving force of the new partnership. Alan Given, Shaun Beebe, Peter Moyes and many others were at the forefront of the movement. At one point, local police were prepared to signal their commitment to stopping crime before it started by financially supporting local health visitors. We then brought the family nurse partnership programme to Nottingham, giving more than 100 teen mums and their babies a dedicated health visitor and the social and emotional skills to make a bright future for themselves. It cost the same amount of money as banging up three 16-year-olds in a secure unit for a year, two of whom, incidentally will go on to reoffend. That sort of investment in cutting the supply of dysfunction and criminality is a no-brainer. I ask the police commissioners to join the rest of us in explaining this to the Treasury as the biggest deficit reduction program it could dream of. Billions of pounds that we currently spend on late intervention could be saved by small investments early in life, to prevent people from going wrong.

The police commissioners should follow the words of Sir Robert Peel, who wisely put preventing crime first in the list when creating the Metropolitan police, even ahead of catching offenders. This is going further than police commissioners lobbying to ensure that those on the edges of the justice system or at risk of offending receive support, which they should, from mental health, social care, drug and alcohol and employment services, important as those things are. This deeper step is about pre-emption: stopping crime before it starts. With the right early intervention policies, we can forestall many of the mental and social problems that are factors in generating antisocial behaviour and crime later in life. Cut off the supply. Tackle the causes, not just the symptoms. Yes, swat mosquitoes, but drain the swamp, too.

Early intervention can break the cycle of dysfunction that makes some families nurseries for offending. It can do this much more cheaply and reliably than intervening later and can generate lasting savings for local budgets, and lasting gains in the quality of life for local neighbourhoods.

Police commissioners using early intervention to attack the causes of crime at the source will also unlock, with tiny investments, a huge new stream of money. We are already seeing payback from investment in social and emotional programmes; those involving young offenders are massively reducing costly reoffending. Such programmes —for example, at Peterborough and Doncaster prisons— are also the pioneers of social finance and innovative bond issues.

I was recently in New York, where the deputy mayor made an innovative agreement with Goldman Sachs and a provider of social and emotional development. This reduced recidivism in 16 to 18-year-olds, generated a profit for Goldman and may ultimately result in a money-saving wing or prison closure.

Police commissioners should, in their oversight of policing budgets, work with institutions like the Early Intervention Foundation and others to insist that every police service has, as standard, such long-sighted invest-to-save programmes. That will create an income stream that the police will be pleased to receive year after year, as the savings accumulate.

Doing this locally is difficult. Sharing the costs and the benefits is the key to such innovative investment. If a health visitor can help prevent the expensive costs of policing and criminal justice further down the line, police commissioners should start working with local health services to plan for the spending and saving from prevention and early intervention. Local authorities, which are now taking on new responsibilities for public health, need to join these new collective financial arrangements, to invest a little bit now and redistribute transparently the funds that are generated by stopping crime early. Building effective partnerships with education and health will enable joint spending to take place early on, followed by redistribution of the big savings to all partners later.

My second ask of the Minister is that he encourages examples of early intervention and promotes it by recruiting just 10 of our willing police commissioners and linking them with those who have the expertise to provide evidence-based programmes, the monetisation of outcomes and the sometimes complicated contractual partnership arrangements—let us try to get some standardisation into the programmes to save a lot of money—to help us make such arrangements an everyday feature of policing by the end of the first term of the first police commissioners.

This is not hopeful speculation; this is happening now. Early intervention has proven results. I mentioned attaching health visitors to teenage mothers, as is done in Nottingham. We draw on a 30-year evidence base from the family nurse partnership and see reduced crime, better job prospects and educational achievement. We introduced the family intervention project, which has seen 100% of its clients complying with community sentences while engaged on the programme. These are not just the noisy neighbours; they are the most difficult families in our city. There has been a 56% improvement in children’s attendance at school. There have been big gains. Police commissioners could also link with the new troubled families initiative and make self-financing and, indeed, profit-making deals that could reduce crime as well as harvest dividends for reinvestment in policing.

Again, if the Minister and the Home Office wish to take this further, those of us involved in early intervention would be happy to help with the nuts and bolts.

In a typically British way, this important extension of democracy has had a difficult birth. However, police commissioners should put that behind them. They now have it within their power not only to give voice to ordinary people, but to make a strategic, lasting contribution to making our society a safer and happier place. If they use their position creatively to become champions of early intervention and argue for effective crime-reduction programmes that make us safer and generate a return to the taxpayer, they will demonstrate to all those who did not vote last week that there is a clear reason to do so next time.

Child Sexual Exploitation

Graham Allen Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

I have a slightly different take. I will not talk about cases, although we all have them and they are horrendous. I will not talk about picking up the pieces and how we help victims, although it is incumbent on all of us to try to do that. I will talk about something that people do not want to talk much about: the causes. Why do people perpetrate these horrendous crimes? It is important to talk about that, because if we can understand some of the causes, we can take action to alleviate and diminish these horrible episodes.

We here are responsible for making the overarching legal and cultural frameworks that can lead to there being less sexual abuse in our society. It is our responsibility not to hold another debate in five or 10 years’ time when more cases come forward or, as is the case now, to hold a debate some 15 or 20 years after such cases, but to take action now to change the culture that allows such people to proliferate and continue.

I would like to hear a response on that from the Minister of State, Home Department, the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne). However, much as I enjoy his company, I am saddened that there are no Ministers present from the Department of Health, the Department for Education or the Cabinet Office, because this is a matter for the whole of Government. I am not making a partisan point, because Governments over the past 20 or 25 years while I have been a Member of this House have not covered themselves in glory in trying to prevent offences in this field.

[Mr Andrew Smith]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Allen]

I will make a little progress first. I am conscious that some people have taken a considerable amount of time to make their points, so I will try to be a little more succinct.

It is important that Ministers do not view this matter in relation to celebrities, politicians or the BBC, but that they attempt to get a serious, strategic grip on how we can combat sexual abuse. We can do that in two ways. First, there should be a coherent and precise programme of research on the perpetrators of sexual abuse. Secondly, there should be an inquiry. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) mentioned an overarching inquiry. I would like such an inquiry to transcend the individual cases that we have all been talking about over the past few months.

[Mr Smith]

My hon. Friend talked about the ministerial presence or absence in this debate. Is that not symptomatic of an attitude that all too easily characterises Governments —I am not making a party political point—which is that Departments do not take seriously enough matters that are raised in Back-Bench debates or from the Back Benches? They would be well advised to start doing so.

[Mr Allen]

I will let my right hon. Friend make his own points about that. What is important is that Ministers do not act defensively or in a way that is intended to make tomorrow’s newspapers, but that they look at this matter strategically.

There is a plethora of inquiries that have taken place, are under way or are about to take place. The most important inquiry to have, which needs to be heavyweight and overarching, is one that backs off from specific incidents and looks at the steps that we could take immediately. It should ask why the extreme dysfunction of child sexual abuse takes place at all, how the cycle of sexual abuse can be broken, and what plans all public and private institutions must deploy to intervene pre-emptively to eradicate the sexual abuse of children over a generation and longer. It should be about long-termism and should set out a stall, hopefully on an all-party basis, so that we are not back here in 20 years’ time discussing these things. It should also include how we can change personal and family behaviours and social attitudes.

This matter is as significant as the Victorian elimination of cholera and typhoid through the provision of disease-free water. It is the public health issue of our time, and we need to step up and tackle it in a serious and strategic way. I would therefore go further than the former Minister who has just spoken, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham, and say that something on the scale of a royal commission is needed. Such a commission has just been announced in Australia. It should look not at particular cases or at how other inquiries went wrong, but at how we can combat the development of abusive behaviour within relationships and outside the family.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Allen]

If the Chairman of the Education Committee can be brief, I will of course give way.

[Mr Stuart]

I will be very brief. Royal commissions have famously been used to put things into the long grass. Such an overblown inquiry might just put the issue away until the public focus has moved on and so it might be counter-productive.

[Mr Allen]

Royal commissions have rarely been used in recent years, when inquiries have been used to put things into the long grass or to deal with specifics rather than the generic problem.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) on being so assiduous on this issue over many years, and the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) on helping to promote this debate. Perhaps I may also offer some friendly advice to the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood). A long time ago in 1989, when I had been in this House as long as she has—about two years—I asked questions of the then Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, and tabled early-day motions on the sexual abuse of children. I suggested—thankfully, this is still on the record—that the Home Office, and the Departments for Education and for Health should work together to figure out a strategic answer to the problem, and undertake serious, long-term research. I also suggested as part of that campaign that we should take video evidence from children in cases of child abuse. Thankfully that tiny bit of progress has been made.

I hope that success comes faster for the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon than any success that I may or may not have enjoyed. We must now look at this issue in the round, rather than at just those cases that affect us as constituency MPs. We must get to the heart of the matter, stop being reactive and start looking at the causes of the problem. There is a continuum. Abuse often begins in quite trivial ways; it escalates through violence; and it can go even further into sexual abuse—and we must start to understand how such relationships occur and how they degenerate, whether in the family or outside.

A tonne of evidence is available. I will not attempt to put it all on the record, although I will refer to a couple of points. Marcus Erooga has done a lot of work on this issue and writes about the

“high rates of convicted child abusers who have been themselves sexually abused as children”.

This is about breaking the cycle of abuse. In a horrendous case that took place 25 years ago in my constituency, children began to accept as normal some of the things that happened to them—I will not put those things on the record in Hansard—and they grew up thinking that that was part of normal sexual relations. As soon as the case was discovered, people went to great lengths to break those children away from the attitude that such things were normal. If they considered such things to be normal, it could happen again in the next generation.

I do not, of course, condemn anyone who has suffered sexual abuse as an offender in their own right—statistics do not bear that out and neither does common sense—but none the less, a very high proportion of people who perform such behaviour have had some experience of its being perpetrated on them by people they know. We can do something about that by helping people and ensuring that they have the social and emotional capability to make choices. As was mentioned earlier, people do not often choose to enter such relationships, and if we gave them the social and emotional armoury that most of us have, they would have a choice. They would be able to say no and to a greater degree resist grooming techniques.

Beckett, another source, states that abusers are

“typically, emotionally isolated individuals, lacking in self-confidence, under-assertive, poor at appreciating the perspective of others—”

in other words, no empathy—

“ill-equipped to deal with emotional distress. They characteristically denied or minimised the full extent of their sexual offending and problems. A significant proportion were found have little empathy for their victims; strong emotional attachments to children; and a range of distorted attitudes and beliefs, where they portrayed children as able to consent to, and hot be harmed by, sexual contact with adults.”

It goes on and on—personality characteristics and psychological well-being; parental histories and the cycle of abuse; substance abuse. Often, abuse is an inter-generational phenomenon that we can tackle by ensuring that people have some of the basic social and emotional capabilities that we all enjoy.

I was saddened that the case of baby P generated into finger-pointing and whether a particular social worker or person was responsible, and there was never a real analysis of why those individuals, who were allegedly care givers, treated baby P as they did. Why was no analysis done of where those people came from, why they acted as they did and why 20 years earlier—when I was new to the House of Commons and in the position that the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon is in now—when those care givers were born, nothing was done to ensure that they were adequately equipped to be decent, rounded human beings, just as we would expect for ourselves and our children?

This is not rocket science; it is about how to promote good parenting and the social and emotional aspects of learning that is provided to primary school children. Every child in Nottingham starts to understand qualities such as empathy, interaction, learning and respecting others, and each time one of those capabilities is built in, the prospect that someone will become abusive, antisocial or treat others in a disrespectful way is diminished. Every teenager in the city of Nottingham studies life skills—it is like personal health and social education but involves talking about relationships and what it is like to have a family or a baby, or to maintain a relationship. By giving people such skills, their parents, care givers or teachers give them not a guarantee but an inoculation against the things that we are discussing today.

This is about the development of empathy and love and about nurturing. If people have social and emotional capability, it is difficult to go wrong. If they do not have that, they might be prone to some of the behaviour that, at its most dysfunctional and extreme, can include the sexual abuse of children. We must think beyond tomorrow’s headlines and constituency casework, and beyond the horrendous things that happen to individuals, and look strategically at how we can start to take steps to eliminate, as far as humanely possible, the sexual abuse of children.

Finally, I congratulate the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon on initiating this debate—it is a great thing to have done. I hope that she, unlike me, will not be here in 20 years’ time listening to Members protest and object to terrible things that have happened in their constituencies, without having seized from the Government an opportunity to help change the culture that allows noxious individuals to grow and thrive in our society. We can do something about this issue, but we need a proper culture in which to develop serious research that the Government can pull together. We also need an overarching inquiry that deals not with individual cases, but tells us how we can combat the development of these predators and reduce sexual abuse of children in our society.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Browne]

The lead Minister is my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich. As I said in response to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), many aspects of this appalling criminal activity rest—in terms of governmental responsibility—with the Home Office, because a crime has been committed, and the Home Office obviously takes a keen and leading interest in criminal matters. However, other Departments, including the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department of Health, consider it on a cross-Government basis.

Part of the reason for today’s debate is the fact that a number of recent developments and concerns about child abuse have led to a wide and, some would say, confusing range of inquiries and investigations, and it may be helpful if I update the House briefly on where we stand. Before I do so, however, I think that I should respond to a number of Members who have raised the issue of a single judge-led inquiry into the issues of child abuse that have emerged over recent weeks.

As the Prime Minister made clear last week, the Government do not rule out the taking of further steps. We want to be absolutely on top of the problem of child sexual abuse. We do not want anything to be covered up or any information to be held back, and if there are more things that we have to do, we will do them. We must, however, let the police and others get on with the job of establishing the facts and, of course—in the case of the police investigations—establishing whether any criminal charges need to be pursued. We do not want any further inquiries or investigations to get in the way of that vital and immediate work.

[Mr Allen]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Browne]

Having said that I would not give way again, I will do so for the last time—for the time being.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Allen]

During my speech, I asked the Minister specifically not to concentrate on particular cases and inquiries—although they must go ahead, and he is going to outline why they are going ahead—but to step back and examine the phenomenon of sexual abuse of children. A report on this need not be produced by a judge; indeed, it might well be better for it to be produced, like earlier reports, by an academic or other impartial, independent or respected person. We need someone to view the issue from a broad perspective and to establish how we can prevent further such cases, rather than merely looking at what has happened and what we must do about it, which is what the Minister is doing at the moment.

[Mr Browne]

I was proposing to touch on where we stand today—because many bodies of work have been initiated or supported by the Government and I want people to understand the Government’s position, whether they approve of it or not—and then, in the second half of my speech, to deal with what we are seeking to do more broadly in policy terms. However. I take on board the points that the hon. Gentleman has made—with, as always, feeling and expertise. We are keen to understand and respond to this problem as comprehensively as we can, and I do not rule out the possibility of our doing things differently and better in the future.

There are four groups of ongoing investigations and inquiries, considering four broad issues. The first of them is the accusations made against Jimmy Savile. The Metropolitan Police Service has established Operation Yewtree to lead investigations into historical abuse relating to Jimmy Savile and connected persons. Three arrests have been made to date, and two further related arrests have been made by Greater Manchester Police. The MPS is pursuing over 400 lines of inquiry relating to over 300 victims. This is a criminal investigation, and it is absolutely right that all leads are followed up, offenders are brought to justice and victims receive the support they need.

More widely, Members may be aware that the Director of Public Prosecutions has launched a review into decisions by the Crown Prosecution Service not to prosecute Savile in 2009. The Home Secretary has also commissioned Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary to carry out a specific review to assess what police forces knew and how they dealt with allegations in relation to the specific but worryingly wide-ranging case of Jimmy Savile and related people. In addition to these police investigations and inquiries, a range of institutions, including the BBC, and NHS premises such as Stoke Mandeville hospital, Leeds general infirmary and Broadmoor have also launched reviews and investigations to establish what took place and to ensure that any relevant information is passed to the police and that we understand the circumstances that may have allowed a predatory sex offender to abuse vulnerable children, so that we can ensure that this cannot happen again.

As well as the recent revelations regarding Jimmy Savile, Members will be aware of specific recent allegations on the issue of abuse in care homes in north Wales going back many years to the 1970s. The Home Secretary has been absolutely clear about the need to ensure that those allegations are investigated thoroughly, and that that is done in a way that commands confidence and is seen to be properly independent.

The chief constable of North Wales Police has invited the director general of the National Crime Agency, Keith Bristow, to lead an investigation by the Serious Organised Crime Agency reviewing the historical police investigations and investigating any fresh allegations reported to the police about the alleged historic abuse in north Wales care homes. He will lead a team of officers from SOCA, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre and other investigative assets as necessary. He will produce an initial report by April.

North Wales Police Chief Constable Mark Polin has proposed a formal set of terms of reference for this review, which Keith Bristow has agreed to. The terms have been endorsed by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, who is today placing a copy in the House Library. The Home Secretary has made it clear that the Home Office is ready to assist with the additional costs of this work. The review will identify any new lines of inquiry and pursue any historical cases that warrant further investigation, to ensure offenders are brought to justice and victims receive the support they need.

Mr Bristow’s review will only consider allegations relating to historical abuse in north Wales. Any reports or allegations relating to current abuse will continue to be the operational responsibility of North Wales Police.

Scrap Metal Theft

Graham Allen Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

It is wonderful that so many Members are here for this important debate. Scrap metal theft is destructive, distressing and expensive. It is poorly legislated for, and we need to put that right.

Every MP has their own stories about metal theft and its impact. Mine are about, among other things, the desecration of war memorials; the destruction of phone services, church roofs and park benches; a school in Nottinghamshire remaining closed today, affecting 500 children aged three to 11, following thieves stripping lead from the roofs, which then collapsed into a classroom overnight, as the Priestsic primary school in Sutton-in-Ashfield bears witness to—there could have been a tragedy; the theft last week of the lead from the St Leodegarius church in my constituency, where my great grandfather was married; and my waiting at St Pancras station with hundreds of others the other week because of train cancellations caused by theft of trackside cabling not so long ago.

This even followed me on holiday to the Isle of Skye in Scotland last week, where cable thieves stupidly targeted fibre optic cables, leaving 9,000 homes and business in the north-west highlands not only without broadband and phone lines, but cut off from emergency services; a whole community was deprived of ambulance, fire and police services. These thieves are not the brightest buttons in the box; sadly for them, nine of them have died in commissioning this sort of crime in the past year.

In my city of Nottingham, 590 offences were recorded in the past 12 months; some 48% of all reported metal thefts come from people’s homes and 45% were thefts of lead from buildings. That is why I was asked by my city to convene two meetings with Ministers, for which I am most grateful. One was with the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice in October 2011 and the other was with Lord Henley, the Minister in the other place, in December 2011. I went with local crime reduction officers and Councillor Alex Norris from Nottingham to put forward our proposals, some of which are now coming to fruition in this Chamber. What all this demonstrates is that the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 1964 is woefully insufficient to regulate this crime.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend talks about thefts from the home, and he is, of course, concentrating on metal theft. May I just tell the House that in Leicester the theft of gold is particularly affecting many Asian families and Asian businesses? I do not think that gold is covered by the legislation to which he just referred, so if the Minister is going to introduce proposals and take steps—I know he has been examining this—I hope they will deal with the theft of gold.

[Mr Allen]

My hon. Friend makes his point in his normal astute way, remaining well within the bounds of order, as we would expect.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I do wonder whether gold is really scrap, so I think we are stretching the boundaries. But at least the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) has got it on the record and I am sure that he would want us to get back to the subject in hand.

[Mr Allen]

I am sure that the Minister has taken note of this new and innovative branch of the scrap metal business and may well be thinking about introducing legislation as we speak.

I have certainly understood the concern about scrap metal theft over the past week or so, because I have been inundated with individuals and organisations who have become aware of this debate and who have written to me, telephoned me or e-mailed me about how serious the situation is. Changes do need to be made. These are changes that will be welcomed by the vast majority of legitimate scrap metal dealers. They operate within a £5.6 billion industry and employ 8,000 people across the UK. Most of those people will welcome some of the proposals that hon. Members are collectively putting forward.

I welcome what the Government have done to trial and now to expand Operation Tornado to cover the whole country. Operation Tornado makes those selling scrap metal to participating dealers provide proof of their identity and it was an outstanding success when trialled in Durham and Cleveland, sparking a 55% reduction in thefts. I was delighted to see Operation Tornado being adopted by the Nottinghamshire police force a few months ago.

As campaigning Members of Parliament throughout the House realise, much more needs to be done. Many colleagues who are present in the Chamber tonight have put this matter on the record in various ways. In particular, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) for what he has done in recent weeks, for his efforts and for his Bill. He should be listened to when legislation on this issue is considered.

I welcome the announcement made by the hon. Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway) that he will dedicate his precious private Member’s Bill to this matter. His initial proposals, which I have had a chance to look at, are very welcome but he knows as well as I do the delicate road he must negotiate under the archaic private Member’s Bill process if he is to get his proposal into law. If he wishes to try, I would be happy to accompany him through that dark and deadly legislative jungle. I hope that the Minister will draw strength from those of us in the Chamber and from many Members who are not so that he is cast in the part of not the silent assassin of the hon. Gentleman’s Bill but the Indiana Jones of scrap metal.

[Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)]

As someone who once upon a time represented the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, I can empathise with his situation. I assure him that ever since I announced that I was introducing my Bill, it has received a substantial amount of support. I might be counting my chickens before they are hatched, but I am optimistic that I might be able to persuade the Government to back the Bill.

[Mr Allen]

I think that people from all parties will wish to support that. These procedures are full of trips, traps and minefields, but I will assist the hon. Gentleman if he wishes and I am sure that our combined experience, and that of our colleagues, will be able to placate any forces in the depths of Government that do not want private Member’s Bills to succeed. His Bill will be to the credit of everyone involved, including the Government, if it can be given a fair wind.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman rightly mentioned metal thefts in the north-east and those of us who represent constituencies there have been particularly concerned by metal theft from churches and war memorials. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that any future law on metal theft should have as an aggravating offence—and therefore attracting corresponding sentences—the theft from churches, war memorials and children’s graves?

[Mr Allen]

Those offences are especially odious. There is no good theft, but when people melt down the memorial to two children who were killed by the IRA in Warrington or personal emblems and memorials to those who have passed away, often for the sake of £10-worth of scrap, the hurt and damage done massively outweighs any profit to the criminal. If the hon. Gentleman finds his way on to the Committee that considers any relevant legislation, perhaps he could table an amendment on that specific point.

Let me turn to the areas for serious reform. I will take interventions on these points, as the Minister has kindly indicated that he wants to hear the voices of hon. Members. First, the Government must replace the current registration scheme and the police should be given greater powers to close unscrupulous scrap metal dealers. A range of sanctions should be created, perhaps like those mentioned by the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), against anyone operating without a licence or those found in breach of their licence conditions. It should be an offence for a scrap metal dealer to trade without a licence and a crime to sell metal to an unregistered scrap metal dealer.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. Does he agree that the current situation, where we have the ban on cash sales, which is very welcome, but we do not have a full and proper licensing regime in place, encourages a black market, which we must crack down on with exactly the kind of licensing regime that he suggests?

[Mr Allen]

The hon. Gentleman anticipates my argument. I agree with him.

A new licensing system must include the power to refuse an application if there are concerns about the integrity of the dealer. This is something that the present registration system does not allow, although it would make it less likely that stolen metal was sold on to scrap metal dealers. A set of conditions should be met before a licence is issued, and there should be the powers of suspension and revocation. The current inability of the police to enter the premises of unlicensed operators without a warrant in pursuit of those operating outside the regime must also be put right.

A new licence fee should be implemented to fund the regulation of the licence, and the Environment Agency should be allowed to use the funds raised from permits to fund enforcement action against illegal and non-compliant sites. Under the current regime, operators must register with local authorities, whereas the environmental permits are issued by the Environment Agency. At present there is no requirement for the Environment Agency and local authorities to consult each other, so hundreds of sites carry a scrap metal dealer’s registration but no environmental permit, and vice versa. This must end.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman and I, being Nottinghamshire MPs, are familiar, like other hon. Members, with this terrible problem, which has blighted churches in my constituency. Does he agree that there is a good argument to be had about who should give out and operate the licences? It could be argued that it is the police, and not necessarily local authorities, who should license scrap metal dealers.

[Mr Allen]

That is a very interesting point to be teased out in a Bill Committee, if the hon. Member for Croydon South is successful in getting his Bill into Committee. It deserves a great deal of attention. Any new licensing scheme should also be flexible locally, so that councils or whoever can adapt the system to the differing circumstances found in different areas.

The Government must focus much more on the role of forensic markings in preventing this crime. Alan Given, until recently the chief executive of Nottinghamshire Police Authority, says that maintaining

“a minimum standard in relation to longevity, retrieval and analysis”

of forensic markings is an extremely useful intervention that the Government can make. Reliable forensic marking can make metal worthless to steal, make trading stolen metal a high-risk activity, and play a key role in ensuring the prosecution of criminals.

The commercial and domestic use of forensic markings is common. Companies such as Network Rail, National Grid, BT Openreach and many others mark their metals with hidden ink. I take this opportunity to congratulate SmartWater on working with the War Memorials Trust to donate a free system to protect every war memorial in the UK by the end of the year.

Last year the city council in Nottingham and our crime and drug partnership started to mark metal street furniture. They have also done outstanding work backing a property marking scheme advertised on the back of buses in the city to ensure that criminals know that metal is being marked. This has even included putting up posters in custody suites.

If the trade does not seize this opportunity for sensible reform, I and no doubt many colleagues will seek to require scrap metal dealers to scan all materials arriving at their premises, but for now any legislation should allow local authorities or others to use the techniques that they consider necessary.

The final key area, as has been mentioned, is the ban on cash payments, which was introduced in Operation Tornado It must go further and include itinerant collectors and vehicle salvagers. That is extremely important.

Parliament is so often seen as irrelevant to ordinary people’s needs and slow to act. Here, on the back of concern that has been given voice by constituency MPs of all parties and an opportunity that has been given by the fluke of the private Member’s Bill ballot and the generosity of the hon. Member for Croydon South, we have a chance to move swiftly. I very much hope that the Minister will grab that chance.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Mr Jones, is it correct that you have arranged with the Minister and the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) to speak briefly?

Oral Answers to Questions

Graham Allen Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

5. How many community protection officers there are in the city of Nottingham.

[The Minister for Police (Nick Herbert)]

I understand that there are 102 community protection officers in the city of Nottingham. Nottingham also has 30 auxiliary officers, funded through the working neighbourhood fund, who work with the community protection officers. Those officers work in close partnership with neighbourhood policing teams in the city.

[Mr Allen]

Will the Minister congratulate the city of Nottingham division of the police—and, indeed, police community support officers and community protection officers—on the massive reduction in crime in the city? Will he emphasise that that is because people trust the uniformed presence that they have seen on the streets in the last five or six years, and will he ensure that that level of uniformed protection remains in future years under this coalition Government?

[Nick Herbert]

I recognise the role that community protection officers play in Nottingham as part of the wider policing family, alongside PCSOs and police officers. The Government have had to reduce national allocations in order to reduce the budget deficit, but we have also relaxed ring-fencing to give the city council and its partners freedom to determine their priorities in order to meet local needs and provide local opportunities.