Tackling Child Sexual Abuse

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Tuesday 8th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips]

First and foremost, I pay the hon. Gentleman absolute credit. For years, he has spoken up about this issue—I am actually surprised that we have not had closer conversations. I would very much welcome some time with him to understand exactly what is going on in his local area—I think that is actually being arranged, from the letters he has sent to me. I am more than happy to sit down with him. Absolutely nothing that I have said today suggests that Bradford would not be able to access funding from the Home Office, just as Oldham has, to undertake the work that might be needed there. I would very much welcome a conversation with him about that.

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

I welcome the Minister’s statement and the progress that she is making. I thank her for her very long and deep commitment to this issue and to seeing justice for victims. I will ask her about the version of mandatory reporting that she proposes to introduce. My understanding is that the mandatory reporting duty will apply in situations where a person has witnessed abuse or received a disclosure of abuse, which seems to be quite a high bar. There are many examples of abuse taking place in schools and in children’s homes, for example, in which it emerged later that suspicions of abuse were very widespread, but nobody witnessed the abuse, received a disclosure of it or reported their suspicions, allowing the abuse to continue. Is my hon. Friend confident that the version of mandatory reporting that she is introducing is at the right threshold? Will she commit to review the impact of the new measure once it has taken effect and to strengthen it in future if needed?

[Jess Phillips]

I praise my hon. Friend for her commitment to these issues over the years. She is right: the thresholds for mandatory reporting are a finely balanced tool. We had to land on the criminal justice outcomes for the most egregious cases, as other Members have mentioned, where it seemed that social workers were directly covering up and where there were professional sanctions when people just failed to report. She talked about the issue of signs. I very much hope that that will be dealt with in the training and the roll-out of this measure, but when any new law comes into place and we roll out training, we will absolutely review it as we go along.