Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse: Final Report

Debate between Grant Shapps and Yvette Cooper

Monday 24th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I welcome the new Home Secretary to his post and thank him for the advance copy of his statement. I join him in paying tribute to the victims and survivors who pressed for the inquiry and who have shown great bravery and strength in telling their stories and speaking out to seek justice, to seek truth and to seek protection for others. I thank the inquiry team for their work.

This is a deeply serious report about one of the worst imaginable crimes, the sexual abuse and exploitation of children—the violence, pain and terror that they have described; the degradation, the violation and the consequences that they have felt throughout their lives; and the deep failure of the institutions and people in power who were supposed to protect them. It was a failure to listen, a failure to believe and a failure to act on the part of institutions that, through generations, were found to have protected their own reputation rather than protecting children and to have put deference to authority above the basic duty of care to children, whom they badly let down. I and my party join the Home Secretary and the Government in their deep apology towards those who were so badly let down by state institutions that should have kept them safe. We are truly sorry.

The inquiry recommends major changes in child protection and in support for victims. The Home Secretary has rightly committed himself to overseeing a radical improvement in the way in which this crime is dealt with and prevented, and that is welcome, but I have stood at this Dispatch Box and heard similar promises before. The Home Secretary’s response today is not strong enough and does not go far enough, because this is not just a historic inquiry; the report makes clear that child sexual abuse is endemic and increasing. There are children at risk today, and there are basic child protection issues that are getting worse and require action now, in advance of the Government’s full response to the inquiry.

First, the report refers to

“the explosion in online-facilitated child sexual abuse”,

including grooming and the online streaming of the rape of babies and children. The Home Secretary did not really mention online harms, and, as he will know, the Online Safety Bill has been repeatedly delayed. Can he confirm that it will definitely complete its remaining stages next week and that its progress to the House of Lords will be accelerated, because this is urgent? Can he also confirm that the National Crime Agency will not have to make the 20% staff cuts that his predecessors asked it to draw up?

Secondly, the report says that

“significant reductions in funding of public services”

after 2010, when referrals were rising, are one the key factors that have had

“a deleterious impact on responses to child sexual abuse.”

Does the Home Secretary accept that that damage was done, and is he acting now to ensure that child protection services do not have to pay the price of his party’s mini-Budget when the public spending announcements are made next week?

Thirdly, everyone has been expecting the inquiry to recommend a mandatory duty to report child sexual abuse, and Labour has been calling for that since 2014. May I urge the Home Secretary to announce that he will support it straight away, and send a strong signal to those across the sector? Fourthly, he referred to the criminal justice system. As he will know, the charge rate for child sexual abuse has dropped from 32% in 2015 to 12% last year. Will he take urgent action to prosecute dangerous criminals, because that has been getting worse?

Fifthly, the Home Secretary’s own Department has responsibility for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, but just last week the independent inspectorate found that they were being placed in unsuitable hotels whose staff had not even been subject to Disclosure and Barring Service checks. According to reports over the weekend, hundreds of asylum-seeking children have disappeared. When his own Department is failing in the most basic child protection and safeguarding, the Home Secretary will understand that his words today are not enough. What action has he taken since he saw those reports over the weekend?

I know the Home Secretary will say that he is new in his post, but he will understand that that is part of the concern. This report is too important to get lost in all the political changes that have been taking place and all the confusion within Government. I therefore ask the Home Secretary to answer my five urgent questions now, and to recognise that we owe it to the thousands of victims and survivors who have spoken out, but also to the millions of children in the current generation who are still at risk of abuse, to ensure that this inquiry leaves a lasting legacy to protect our children.

[Grant Shapps]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her response to my statement. I repeat the message in the statement that I want to work across parties to do all we can to protect victims and, indeed, drive down this appalling crime.

The right hon. Lady raised a number of specific points, and I will, if I may, respond to her in writing, because I will then be able to give a more detailed response. However, one or two things did catch my eye as she was speaking. In particular, it is worth saying to Members who have not had a chance to read the report that 2 million pages of evidence were presented, and that there have been 107 recommendations and Thursday’s report contains a further 20. We have already started to implement many of those recommendations. I listed some in my statement so I will not backtrack, but, as I have said, I intend to respond to all this in full and within the inquiry’s own deadline, and as I have also said, I will try to expedite as many responses as I can. In particular, the right hon. Lady called for mandatory reporting; I noted that comment, and I will look at all those individual areas.

On prosecutions, the picture is a bit more complicated than has been presented in the right hon. Lady’s response. For example, the number of convictions for indecent image offences has increased by 39% in the past year alone. However, I accept that overall there is still a huge task to be done in the Online Safety Bill, which contains some very important clauses. I have not yet caught up with the Bill managers, but I know that it is progressing quickly and I want to see that happen. The figures are staggering, with 103,000 child sex offences recorded by the police in the last year alone. Much of this has gone online, and the right hon. Lady is right to pinpoint the measures in the Online Safety Bill as being extremely important.

As the right hon. Lady knows, I take a great deal of interest in the issue of asylum, including refugees—we have some living in our house, in fact—and I want to ensure that we do everything we can. I know that the Minister for Security, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), has made inquiries in the past few days on the priorities with regard to asylum-seeking children. With that, it will probably be most helpful to the right hon. Lady and to the House if I write to her in detail on all her points, and I will be happy to put that letter in the Library of the House.

International Travel

Debate between Grant Shapps and Yvette Cooper

Monday 20th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I pay tribute to the excellent work that my hon. Friend does as trade envoy to Kenya. I am delighted that Kenya has come off the red list. As I mentioned, we will provide details for how countries can onboard themselves to meet our requirements, and I look forward to adding to the list of 50 countries where people who are fully vaccinated will be able to come and go very much more easily. I look forward to working with her on that plan.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

We all hope that our vaccines will prove effective against any new variants so that we can all get back fully to normal, but we also have to be incredibly vigilant against any possible new variant that develops and that is resistant to our vaccines. The Secretary of State will know that in previous waves—at the beginning or with the delta variant—we have not had either sufficient surveillance or a fast enough response from Government to prevent those variants from spreading. What can he say about his new surveillance regime, both in terms of testing and response, that will prevent those problems from happening again, especially when it looks as though the testing and genomic sequencing is being downgraded?

[Grant Shapps]

I thank the right hon. Lady, who approaches this from a very wise perspective. The first thing I would say is that of course everybody will appreciate that we now have over nine out of 10 adults with at least one jab and over eight out of 10—83%, I think—of adults fully vaccinated. Of course, as that picture has been replicated around the world, that makes it easier to allow and open up international travel, and it is part of the balance.

The second thing to say is that using lateral flow tests, which provide virtually instant results, means that people may not be out and about for an extra day or perhaps more before they get their results. That of course has to be factored against the fact that a lateral flow test is known to be less observant—with different specificity and sensitivity rates—than a PCR test. The scientists have taken all of that into account in providing ideas for this regime. Of course, it is critically important that a lateral flow test is then backed up by a PCR. It will be, and we will also be talking more about requirements for ensuring that the lateral flow test has been properly taken.

International Travel

Debate between Grant Shapps and Yvette Cooper

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Businesses across the travel industry have been drawing on the £350 billion-worth of grants and loans, VAT deferrals, the furlough scheme and much else besides. The best thing we can do is get the country flying again and get people moving again. Our exemplary progress with the vaccination roll-out gives us the best opportunity of that happening sooner rather than later.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

As the vaccine rolls out and as international travel increases, if we are to prevent new variants from sending us back to square one, there needs to be an effective surveillance system with transparent analysis built in so that there can be swift action. We do not have that effective system at the moment, as we have seen from the fact that the delta variant has whipped around the country and is now closing schools and preventing UK residents from travelling abroad because people do not want it to spread. We must improve that system and not be in a situation whereby so many cases can arrive in a country before preventive measures are taken. Will the Secretary of State agree, as part of improving that system, to finally start publishing the Joint Biosecurity Centre’s analyses—not just the arrivals data, but the analyses of what is happening in other countries? The Scientific Group for Emergencies papers are published. We have been calling for the Joint Biosecurity Centre’s papers to be published for almost a year. Please publish them now. What has the Secretary of State got to hide?

[Grant Shapps]

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right about the need to prevent the variants. Our surveillance system, which involves our sequencing the genome more than any other country in the world, as I know she appreciates, is a big part of that. We frequently find that we know about overseas variants before the host country and consequently we often tell them about it first.

I want to ensure that the record of the House is entirely accurate. I talked about the risk assessment methodology that is already published online. The methodology includes variant assessment, triage, risk assessment and outcomes, which inform ministerial decisions. Under each heading, there is tremendous detail. For example, triage includes testing rates per 100,000, weekly instances, test positivity, evidence of overseas variants under investigation and much else. Then we publish the data on both the Public Health England and the JBC websites. I invite the right hon. Lady to look at that data. I think she will also appreciate that there are times when, for diplomatic reasons, it would be difficult to publish other countries’ data before they have done so. However, she will find a wealth of information, which we are already publishing, on the JBC and PHE websites.

Britain’s Railways

Debate between Grant Shapps and Yvette Cooper

Thursday 20th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Angela Crawley appears still not to be here, so we will go to Yvette Cooper.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab) [V]]

The current system has been failing my constituency for far too long, so I urge the Secretary of State to make sure that this plan improves things and is a step forward. The five towns are less than 20 miles from the centre of Leeds. If we were that close to the centre of London, we would have many trains an hour into the city, yet Normanton has only one train an hour into Leeds; Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley are all underserved; and we need more trains to Sheffield, York and Hull. I have met Transport Ministers repeatedly on this, so will the Transport Secretary now guarantee that this new plan will mean more local trains for the five towns?

[Grant Shapps]

I certainly welcome the right hon. Lady’s partial welcome, at least, for the White Paper. I completely agree with her about the necessity to join up northern towns. As the northern powerhouse Minister in Cabinet, I spend a huge amount of my time looking at the way that the railway service that I now get to run, Northern, operates through the operator of last resort. The service at the moment is just not good enough. She is right to say that if it was in the south the connectivity would be vastly better. That is why this Government are obsessed—obsessed, I say—with levelling up, and why I hope that her discussions with the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), are very fruitful. Great British Railways will, I think, be of great assistance to her constituents.

Income tax (charge)

Debate between Grant Shapps and Yvette Cooper

Tuesday 17th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the principle should be that, as far as we can make it work, people—individuals and companies—are in the same position when we come out of this situation. I feel that we will be in a somewhat changed world and changed environment on the other side of it, but good organisations should not be going bust. It will be hugely challenging. We will require a lot of different responses and mechanisms to get there, including, on occasion, organisations being run by the public sector, which we have already seen in the case of trains for a completely different reason.

Turning to trains, it makes no sense for us to run empty trains. As fewer people will be travelling following last night’s advice and guidance from the Government and the Prime Minister, timetables may be altered in the short to medium term to ensure that we do not effectively run ghost trains. We are also determined to ensure that companies are left in as strong a position as possible so that they can continue to operate afterwards. Despite the immensely challenging situation in which we find ourselves, we will work in partnership with the transport industry to keep essential services running for the public and for those who need to get to work, who have essential business and who will therefore still be travelling.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

On the proposal to reduce the number of trains, buses and tubes that are running, given that so many of them are so crowded at the moment, would it not make sense to keep many more of them running so that those essential workers who still have to get to work have more space?

[Grant Shapps]

The right hon. Lady makes an excellent point, as ever. The reality is that, because of social distancing, it might well be desirable to have more space between people so that they can keep some distance. Yes, that absolutely needs to be taken into account as we consider the timetabling.

We will get through this crisis together as a nation. Working in this great national effort, we will ensure that we come through on the other side and provide hope for all our citizens. The Budget shows that we are serious about the pledges we have made and about the trust that the electorate put in us only three months ago. We intend to deliver on those infrastructure pledges.

The Department for Transport has already been working hard to deliver on those pledges. For example, in recent weeks we have taken decisive action to improve journeys for millions of Northern rail commuters by putting the franchise into the operator of last resort. We have announced plans to extend discounted train travel to more than 830,000 veterans. The Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), has kickstarted work on reversing the Beeching cuts, which have so blighted the nation in decades past and prevented people from being interconnected. In January we announced the preferred route for the east-west rail link that will connect Oxford and Cambridge, which will increase access to jobs and make it easier and cheaper to travel, creating a region that has been dubbed the UK’s silicon valley. We are not only making journeys more efficient and easier; we are also making them cleaner. We are consulting on bringing forward the end of fossil fuel cars and vans to 2035, or earlier if practical. We are taking enormous steps forward.

The Chancellor has delivered a Budget that includes some of the most ambitious infrastructure programmes seen since the 1950s. It will help to level up this country. Infrastructure that is unreliable, overcrowded and no longer fit for purpose acts as a drag anchor on our entire economy. When it is efficient and gets people where they need to be, it can turn around the fortunes of our towns and cities. With interest rates at an historic low, now is the time to get Britain building.