Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report

Lord Cryer Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her question. I will say two things to her. The 2020 report, as I recall, was not produced this Government or this Home Office. I will look at that report and the action, but the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, herself said only yesterday at the Home Affairs Committee, “If you look at the data on child sexual exploitation, suspects and offenders, it is disproportionately Asian heritage. If you look at the data for child abuse, it is not disproportionate, it is white men”. We need to accept the discussions and focus we have had to date and look at positive solutions for dealing with this.

When the noble Baroness says we need less complacency and more humility, I say that I have stood at this Dispatch Box on behalf of this Government and accepted all 12 recommendations from the noble Baroness, Lady Casey. I have accepted the bulk of recommendations from the IICSA report from Alexis Jay, and I have put in place additional police support to take action on historic cases and bring 50% more offenders to justice. I do not think that is complacent. I ask the noble Baroness to try to work with us constructively; let us look at the solutions. I will accept constructive criticism, but I am not going to be called complacent when we have accepted every recommendation, done the things we have done on IICSA and brought more people to justice.

[Lord Cryer (Lab)]

My Lord, the first person who raised the issue of the rape gangs—in other words, the first whistleblower—happened to be my mum, Ann Cryer MP, who started raising this in 2003. She was then smeared and attacked—particularly by Labour figures, I have to say—for being a racist. I am not talking about Ministers in the then Government, many of whom supported her, and my noble friend Lord Blunkett, then Home Secretary, went out of his way to make sure that prosecutions happened—which they did. I am talking about councillors, councils and other institutions that went on the attack, and lied and smeared about the rape gangs. It is possible that some of them genuinely thought that they could not bring themselves to believe it, but I do not believe that about all of them. I think some of them were complicit. Some of them knew it was going on and they decided to cover up. If there is evidence to that fact in those cases, they should be brought before the courts and prosecuted.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I pay tribute to Ann Cryer, the mother of the noble Lord, Lord Cryer. I served in Parliament with Ann and I know she raised these matters and faced extreme difficulties locally as a result, and took a very brave stand at the time. Again, I say to colleagues across the House, let us look at how we deal with this issue. My party has not been in Government for 14 years, but we have been in control of some of the councils. My party was not in control of government when a lot of these issues happened, but I still have a responsibility to make sure we deal with these in an effective way. I want to make sure that we accept these recommendations and see them through, and this House will monitor me to make sure we do it.