Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and International Committee of the Red Cross (Status) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Judith Cummins and Sarah Champion

2nd reading
Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

It is a real honour to follow the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns). I agree with her high praise of both the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

I am going to focus on the Red Cross/Red Crescent but should also say that personally I have benefited so much from the CPA. Its members have shared their experiences, and it is always a joy when they come to Parliament here—as parliamentarians, we love learning from each other. To build on the points made by the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford, I should say that we are in a very fragile world. This is an opportunity for us to invest time, money and commitment into our Commonwealth family. We need each other right now more than ever.

Let me now turn to the International Committee of the Red Cross, and, indeed, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent movement as a whole. Every day, they provide hope for hundreds of thousands of people across the globe who are facing disasters of many kinds. I want to thank the ICRC personally for its consistent and valuable engagement with my Committee. For those reasons, I fully support the Bill.

The network consists of 80 million people, most of whom are volunteers. They help others facing disasters, conflict, health issues and social challenges, and I pay tribute to them. The movement consists of the ICRC, 191 national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The ICRC itself has more than 18,000 staff in over 90 countries, and its work has gained it three Nobel peace prizes. At a time when more than 65 million people are fleeing 120 armed conflicts globally, the work of this organisation is vital and cannot be underestimated.

The ICRC is also crucial to parliamentary engagement with these situations, and I am sure that Members on both sides of the House have benefited from its wisdom. Its ability to provide the International Development Committee with up-to-date, impartial, trustworthy and relevant briefings from the ground—and it does that in private when necessary—has allowed successive IDCs to raise the profile of disasters, and, importantly, to hold Governments to account for their responses. In February this year, its teams in Egypt met our Committee to discuss the humanitarian situation in Gaza. The Egyptian team were co-ordinating all the supplies into Gaza at that point, and their work was phenomenal. Here was a group of volunteers who uprooted themselves to go where others needed their support the most, and what I witnessed was nothing short of remarkable.

The brave workers in this movement continue to pay the ultimate price. In 2023-24, six ICRC staff members were killed globally. As of 21 October, 21 Palestinian Red Crescent Society workers had been killed in Gaza and the west bank. Six members of the Magen David Adom, the Red Cross in Israel, have also been killed while helping others since 7 October 2023. Yet their colleagues continue the lifesaving medical care, food distributions, water and sanitation projects, supporting those who have been detained and reminding parties of their obligations under international humanitarian law in diabolical war zones. I should like us all to remember and pay tribute to their sacrifice today.

Early in my first tenure as Chair of the International Development Committee, I met the former ICRC president, Peter Maurer—virtually, as this was during the covid-19 pandemic. We discussed the impact of covid on conflict-affected communities, the situation in Yemen, Syria and Myanmar, and the need for the IDC to continue to shine a light on conflict-affected contexts around the world. That is a commitment that we continue to honour. In November last year, the Committee met the ICRC’s director for the Africa region to discuss Sudan. In the last Parliament, the ICRC submitted evidence for the inquiries into climate change, aid effectiveness, racism in the aid sector, and preventing sexual exploitation and abuse. Its submissions were hugely helpful as the Committee made its recommendations to the Government, and, again and again, they have proved to be an invaluable resource for Parliament on the application of international humanitarian law.

This much-needed Bill will allow the ICRC to continue to operate in the UK with its international mandate, and will provide the securities needed for it to continue its vital, impartial work with immunity from jurisdiction. I hope that the House gives it a safe passage.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

Change of Name by Registered Sex Offenders

Debate between Judith Cummins and Sarah Champion

Thursday 2nd March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion]

I thank my hon. Friend, who is as tenacious as I am in trying to challenge these gross abuses of the system. The figures he quotes are Safeguarding Alliance figures that it got as a result of freedom of information requests, but they are only for some police forces, so the scale of the issue is much greater than even that shocking figure.

If a registered sex offender wants to change their name, they must tell the police within three days, or they could face up to five years in prison. But these notification requirements leave the onus entirely on the offender to self-report changes in their personal information. If the sex offender breaches these requirements, and therefore faces prison, they must first be caught.

Data that I and others have collated shows that the scale of this issue is breathtaking. The Home Office confirmed, in responses to my written parliamentary questions, that over 16,000 offenders were charged with a breach of their notification requirements between 2015 and 2020. A Safeguarding Alliance FOI request to the Crown Prosecution Service found that over 11,500 registered sex offenders were prosecuted for failure to notify changes of information between 2019 and 2022. Those breaches are likely to have been for name changes or other such changes. It is clear that offenders are changing their names and not disclosing their new name to the police, but the exact scale of the problem remains impossible to capture. It is important to emphasise that these are only the cases we know about: many more offenders could have breached their notification requirements without the police’s knowledge. Offenders are also required to visit a police station to comply with notification requirements, but only once a year.

Evidently, thousands are getting caught when they breach their requirements, but it appears that many are not. An FOI request by the Safeguarding Alliance to police forces confirmed that at least 913 registered sex offenders have gone missing between 2017 and 2020. However, only 17 of the 45 police forces responded to the request, indicating that that figure is only the tip of the iceberg.

New data secured by the BBC demonstrates the same ongoing pattern, allowing offenders to slip through the cracks. Over 700 registered sex offenders have gone missing in the last three years. It is highly likely that they breached their notification requirements without getting caught, making them an active risk to the public. Again, only 31 of 45 police forces responded to that request.

Many offenders are following the rules. At least 1,400 registered sex offenders have notified police forces of name changes in the past three years, with 21 of the 45 police forces able to provide that data. However, the number of cases where notification requirements are not being obeyed far outweighs those where they are. We cannot rely on a system that depends on registered offenders self-reporting changes in their information. If we do not urgently improve the system, we will have to accept that hundreds more offenders will continue to disappear from the system meant to safeguard us.

When I first learned about this breach, I spoke to my local police chief. He was genuinely stunned. We was unaware of the loophole and asked how he was meant to find someone when they no longer knew who they were looking for. If we are going to protect children and vulnerable people, and prevent further abuse, we must be able to keep track of those who are already known to be a safeguarding risk. Unless we address the failure in the current system, police will continue to be unaware of a name change and the sex offenders register will not be up to date with the new names, therefore considerably reducing its effectiveness.

It is vital we remember not only the danger posed to society by sex offenders changing their names, but the devastating impact it has on their previous victims. Della Wright is an ambassador for the Safeguarding Alliance and a survivor of child sexual abuse. Della has spoken so bravely to tell her story in support of so many other victims who have been impacted by this serious safeguarding loophole. I pay huge credit to her, as her tenacious campaigning is what has brought this issue to public attention.

When Della was a child, a man came to live in her home, becoming one of her primary carers and repeatedly sexually abusing her. Years later, when Della reported the abuse, her abuser was already known to the police and he had committed further sexual offences against many more victims. Della was made aware that he had changed his name; he had changed it at least five times, enabling him to relocate under the radar and evade justice. When Della’s case was finally brought to court, he again changed his name, this time in between being charged and appearing in court for the plea hearing. That slowed down the whole process as new court papers needed to be submitted in the new name.

The additional distress to Della made a complete mockery of the justice system, but sadly Della’s case is far from unique. The Safeguarding Alliance is working with dozens of survivors—a number of them are here today—who have discovered their abuser has changed their name. Many say their perpetrators change their name before charging, meaning their birth name remains unmaligned. Perhaps most chilling for me is that, with a new name, they can apply for a new passport and driving licence, which means they can apply for a clean DBS check in that new name.

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. Does she agree that, in addition to ensuring that registered sex offenders have markers on their files at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency and His Majesty’s Passport Office, the DBS should require all applicants to produce a birth certificate to better verify their identity?

[Sarah Champion]

I support my hon. Friend’s recommendation. Anything we can do to try to close this loophole I support, because the scale of it and the fact that the systems we have in place are not working mean that we need—Minister, we need—urgent attention and urgent reforms.

BBC research found that more than 2,000 criminal record checks carried out by the DBS in the past three years flagged that the applicants had cautions or convictions, and that they had supplied incorrect or missed out personal details, such as their past names. Those figures are shocking. It is a relief that the DBS found so many of those cases but, if even a few slip through the gaps in the system, the consequences are devastating.