Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

Jonathan Brash Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

Let me just say that I was one of those who called for the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse very many years ago, and that I also supported the two-year investigation by that independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation, as well as some of its other investigations. However, we also have a responsibility to act. When more than 500 recommendations from inquiries are just sitting there with dust gathering on them, we have to ensure that we get action, including the audit that we need from Baroness Casey, who will be proceeding with that for three months before the commission on social care gets going. It is also important for us to have stronger police investigations—because if the police investigations do not happen, no one will get the protection they need—and for Tom Crowther to work with the first local areas that want to take forward local inquiries in order to develop a model and a programme that can be used in other areas, wherever it is needed.

[Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

Child sexual exploitation is without a shadow of a doubt the most disgusting, degrading crime imaginable, and we must at all times have the victims at the forefront of our minds. When Conservative Members table amendments to important legislation that they know will not result in an inquiry but will block child protection measures, and then spend the subsequent days spreading misinformation, they are letting victims down.

I welcome the national audit of grooming gangs, and I welcome the reopening of the police investigations to ensure that criminals are brought to justice, but may I check one point with the Home Secretary? She said a number of times that the five local areas she had identified were initial, pilot areas. Is it the ambition that wherever these crimes are taking place, local inquiries can take place?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. Wherever there are serious problems or failings and it is believed that local inquiries are needed, we want those areas to be able to conduct the kind of effective local inquiry that Telford was able to conduct, rather than having to start from scratch. Tom Crowther will work with five areas so that he can draw up conclusions about how we can most effectively learn the lessons of what happened in Telford, where victims and survivors felt supported and also felt that they delivered change—that things had actually happened as a result—rather than having inquiries whose recommendations just sit on a shelf, letting everyone down.