Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse: Final Report

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

Absolutely, I will undertake to do that as a matter of priority. The National Crime Agency, GCHQ and a whole network of undercover officers and others work constantly on tackling organised exploitative crime through a programme. One thing that has struck me in my first few days in this office is the number of warrants that I have to sign off dealing with gangs who are exploiting children. My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the scale of the issue, and our determination to stamp it out and work with our partners in enforcement agencies knows no bounds.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

As one of the Members representing a part of the London Borough of Lambeth, with my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) sitting next to me, I pay tribute to all the victims and survivors of abuse suffered by children and young people in the care of Lambeth Council. It is a shameful period in the history of our borough. I also pay tribute to those whose lives were cut short as a result of the harm and trauma they suffered, and who are not here to see and read the vindication of their experiences as set out in the final ICSA report. It is a responsibility of us all to ensure that such shame can never again come to our communities, but we delude ourselves if we tell each other that children are safe everywhere in the UK today. We face a situation where 16 and 17-year-olds are routinely placed in unregulated accommodation, putting them at risk of abuse and exploitation; 222 vulnerable asylum-seeking children have gone missing from Home Office-procured accommodation and half of all local authority children’s services departments are currently rated inadequate or requiring improvement, so they cannot possibly be doing the best job of protecting the children in their care. What urgent work will the Home Secretary be doing on a cross-departmental basis to ensure that horrors such as those exposed by this report can never happen again?

[Grant Shapps]

I pay tribute to the hon. Lady for calling out what has happened in Lambeth and elsewhere; I have nothing to add to her words where that is concerned. A number of hon. Members have raised issues concerning unaccompanied children, particularly those seeking asylum. The accommodation care means that they should be moved within 15 days, but I think that needs to be done quicker, if at all possible. We have also set up a programme of paying local authorities, increasing placement offers to councils by £6,000 to accommodate every child. She asks about cross-Government work—I should possibly add cross-party work—and that is under way, led by my the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies). I will be taking a personal interest in the matter all the way through and convening meetings with other Secretaries of State to tackle the problem from every possible angle.