Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
Debate between Judith Cummins and Yvette Cooper(1 week ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Yvette Cooper)
Last Monday, I set out the actions this Government are taking to tackle the terrible crimes of child sexual exploitation and abuse, including mandatory reporting, a new victims and survivors panel, an overhaul of data and police performance requirements, tougher sentences for perpetrators, and support for local inquiries, including in Oldham.
The Safeguarding Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), met this morning with survivors from Oldham. Earlier this week, she and I met Professor Alexis Jay, who chaired both the seven-year national independent inquiry into child sexual abuse and the first local independent inquiry into grooming gangs in Rotherham. Professor Jay’s strongest message to us was that the survivors, who bravely testified to the terrible crimes committed against them, must not be left to feel that their efforts were in vain because, despite all the inquiries, no one listened and nothing was done. Following those discussions, I want to update the House on our next steps to take forward the inquiry’s recommendations, and to go further in tackling sexual exploitation and grooming on the streets and online, in order to keep children safe.
The independent national inquiry into child sexual abuse completed its final report in 2022. It took seven years, heard 7,000 personal testimonies and considered 2 million pages of evidence. There were devastating accounts of brutal rapes, sexual violence, humiliation, trauma and the betrayal of vulnerable children by those charged with protecting them, and accounts of people in positions of power who shamefully put the reputation of institutions before the protection of children. The inquiry included separate detailed reports on organised child abuse in residential homes and schools, and on abuse and cover-ups in the Catholic and Anglican Churches.
A two-year inquiry into child sexual exploitation by organised networks and grooming gangs, published in February 2022, examined over 400 recommendations made by previous inquiries and serious case reviews, as well as taking further evidence of its own. There have been further reports since then, including on Telford and on police performance. However, despite all the national inquiries, reports and hundreds of recommendations, far too little action has been taken and, shamefully, little progress has been made. That has to change.
Before Easter, the Government will lay out a clear timetable for taking forward the 20 recommendations of the final IICSA report. Four of those are specifically for the Home Office. I can confirm that we have accepted them in full, including on disclosure and barring, and work is already under way. A cross-Government ministerial group is considering and working through the remaining recommendations, and that group will be supported by our new victims and survivors panel. In addition, I can confirm today that the Government will implement all the remaining recommendations in the child abuse inquiry’s separate stand-alone report on grooming gangs from February 2022, including updating key Department for Education guidance.
Let me turn to the areas where we need to go further. As I said last week, the most important task should be to increase police investigations into these horrific crimes and get abusers behind bars. We will introduce stronger sentences for child grooming by making organising abuse and exploitation an aggravating factor, and today I can announce new action to help victims get more investigations and prosecutions under way. I am extending the remit of the independent child sexual abuse review panel to cover not just historical cases before 2013 but all cases since, so that any victim of abuse will have the right to seek an independent review without having to go back to the local institutions that decided not to proceed with their case.
Today, I am writing to the National Police Chiefs’ Council to ask all chief constables to look again at historical gang exploitation cases where no further action was taken, and to work with the child sexual exploitation police taskforce to pursue new lines of inquiry and reopen investigations where appropriate. These new measures will be backed by £2 million of additional funding for the taskforce and the panel, and all police forces will be expected to implement the 2023 recommendations from His Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services, including producing “problem profiles” on the nature of grooming gangs in their area. I have asked the inspectorate to review progress this year.
As well as reviewing past cases, we need much stronger action to uncover the full scale and nature of these awful crimes. The child sexual exploitation police taskforce, led by the National Police Chiefs’ Council, has estimated that of the 115,000 child sexual abuse offences recorded by the police in 2023, around 4,000 involved more than one perpetrator. Of those, around 1,100 involved abuse within the family and over 300 involved abuse in institutions, and the taskforce identified 717 reported cases of group or gang-related child sexual exploitation. However, we know that the vast majority of abuse goes unreported, so we expect all those figures to be significant underestimates.
The taskforce reports that 127 major police investigations across 29 police forces are currently under way into child sexual exploitation and gang grooming. Many major investigations have involved Pakistani-heritage gangs. The police taskforce evidence also shows exploitation and abuse taking place across many different communities and ethnicities, but the data on the ethnicity of both perpetrators and victims is still inadequate.
As I said last week, we will overhaul the data that we expect local areas to collect as part of a new performance management framework. I have also asked the child sexual exploitation taskforce to immediately expand the ethnicity data it collects and publishes, so that data is gathered from the end of an investigation when a fuller picture is available, not just from the beginning when suspects may not yet have been identified.
To go much further, I have asked Baroness Louise Casey to oversee a rapid audit of the current scale and nature of gang-based exploitation across the country, and to make recommendations on the further work that is needed. The specific 2022 IICSA report on gang exploitation concluded:
“An accurate picture of the prevalence of child sexual exploitation could not be gleaned”
from the data and evidence it had available. This audit will seek to fill that gap.
The audit will look at further evidence that was not previously available, including evidence collected by the police taskforce and the new problem profiles compiled by police forces. It will also include an equivalent audit of child protection referrals; it will properly examine ethnicity data and the demographics of the gangs and their victims; it will look at the cultural and societal drivers for this type of offending, including among different ethnic groups; and it will make recommendations about further analyses, investigations and actions that are needed to address current and historical failures. Baroness Louise Casey was the author of the no-holds-barred 2015 report into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, and I have therefore asked her to oversee this rapid three-month audit ahead of the launch of the independent commission into adult social care.
In many areas across the country, the focus must now be on further police investigations and implementing recommendations to improve services, but we will also provide stronger national backing for local inquiries where they are needed, to get truth and justice for victims and survivors. Last week, the Prime Minister and I met survivors from Telford, who had enormous praise for the way that local inquiry was conducted after there had been failings over many years. That inquiry led to tangible change, including piloting the introduction of CCTV in taxis and appointing child sexual exploitation experts in local secondary schools. As we have seen, effective local inquiries can delve into far more local detail and deliver more locally relevant answers and change than a lengthy nationwide inquiry can provide.
Tom Crowther KC, the chair of the Telford inquiry, has agreed to work with the Government to develop a new framework for victim-centred, locally led inquiries where they are needed. As a first step, he will work with Oldham council and up to four other pilot areas. This will include support for local authorities that want to explore other ways to support victims, including local panels or drawing on the experience of the independent inquiry’s truth project. The Government are already drawing up a duty of candour as part of the long-awaited Hillsborough law.
We will also work with mayors and local councils to bolster the accountability mechanisms that can support and follow up local inquiries, to ensure that those who are complicit in cover-ups, or who try to resist scrutiny, are always robustly held to account so that truth and justice are never denied. This new package of national support for local inquiries will be backed by £5 million of additional funding to get further local work off the ground because, at every level, getting justice for victims and protecting children is a responsibility we all share.
Finally, we cannot ignore the way in which child exploitation is changing as offenders exploit new technology to target and groom children. We should all be deeply worried about the pace and growth of exploitation that begins online. We are therefore bolstering the work of the Home Office-funded undercover online network of police officers to target online offenders, and developing cutting-edge AI tools and other new capabilities to infiltrate livestreams and chatrooms where children are being groomed. Further measures will be announced in the crime and policing Bill to tackle those organising online child sex abuse.
Nothing matters more than the safety of our children, yet for too long, this horrific abuse was allowed to continue. Victims were ignored, perpetrators were left unpunished, and too many people looked the other way. Even when these shocking crimes were brought to light and national inquiries were commissioned to get to the truth, the resulting reports were too often left on the shelf as their recommendations gathered dust. Under this Government, that has changed. We are taking action not just on those recommendations, but on the additional work that we need to do to protect victims, put perpetrators behind bars and uncover the truth wherever things have gone wrong. This is about the protection of children, the protection of young girls, and the radical and ambitious mission that we have set for this Government to halve violence against women and girls in a decade. I hope all Members will support that mission and support the measures that we have outlined today to help achieve that aim. I commend this statement to the House.
Yvette Cooper
I thank my hon. Friend for her questions. To go through them in turn, we will set out before Easter the timetable for taking forward the work around all the recommendations from the main independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. She will know that some of the recommendations raise complex issues, and considerable work will need to be done on some of them. We recognise that and have discussed that with Professor Alexis Jay. There are other recommendations we can take forward swiftly, and those covered and led by the Home Office are being taken forward swiftly. The work is already under way, including on disclosure and barring and on the duty to report, which will be included as part of the legislation.
On the local inquiries, we are not redoing the Telford inquiry. My hon. Friend is right that in Telford the extensive inquiry that was conducted involved, crucially, victims and survivors throughout. They were involved from the very beginning, designing the inquiry in the first place. The inquiry has led to substantial change, and there continues to be further follow-up work on it. That is the effective model. We need local councils, police and crime commissioners, Mayors and the Government to work together on them, so we are providing the additional £5 million. Tom Crowther will work specifically with the first five local authorities that want to do such work, drawing up an effective model that can be used in other areas.
On the ability to gather evidence and ensure that there is proper accountability, there has to be clear accountability. This process cannot be a way in which areas or institutions can avoid scrutiny. Obviously, the work in Telford and the original work in Rotherham by Baroness Casey managed to uncover truths in different areas, but there also needs to be other new arrangements on accountability. We are working with the Cabinet Office, Mayors and councils to draw up new accountability arrangements. That will ensure either proper follow-up or, as part of those initial inquiries, that a proper accountability framework is in place. We will link that to the duty of candour part of the Hillsborough law. Unlike the previous Government, who frankly never took seriously issues of candour, responsibility and accountability in the 14 years that they were in power, and refused to bring in a Hillsborough law, we will bring in such a law because we are clear that there must be proper accountability for the failure to tackle this abuse.
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right to raise those important points, and I know that she has worked on this issue for many years. One of the things we need to do is strengthen the law in this area. We need to have a much stronger legal framework to ensure that there is proper accountability; not just holding to account and properly punishing the perpetrators of appalling abuse, but holding to account institutions and individuals who fail to take the action needed to protect our children. That means the duty to report, making it an offence to cover up child abuse; a duty of candour, to comply and provide the information and transparency in these cases; and looking at the other local mechanisms that need to be in place in areas such as my hon. Friend’s and across the country, enabling us to ensure that there is proper accountability when things go really badly wrong.
Yvette Cooper
I am happy to follow up with the hon. Lady about the very serious issues she raised. She is right that this cannot be about institutions just marking their own homework. That is one of the reasons why we have made the right to review an independent one. For child sexual abuse cases, where victims feel that they have been let down by a police force or the Crown Prosecution Service, they should be able to take that right to review not back to the same police force, but to an independent child sexual abuse panel to get a right to review in order to see whether they can get their cases reopened and properly investigated and see perpetrators pursued.
The hon. Lady will also know that there are other routes to hold police forces to account, including the police inspectorate. Although it can currently make recommendations—for example, it has just found serious failings in Cleveland police’s response to child sexual exploitation—too often, those recommendations are not followed up because there are no powers to do so. That is why we will also be changing the police performance management framework to strengthen the ability of the inspectorate and the Home Office to ensure that action is taken to improve performance and implement recommendations for improvement where serious problems are found. I am happy to talk to the hon. Lady about the wider policing reform needed to make sure there is accountability.
Border Security: Collaboration
Debate between Judith Cummins and Yvette Cooper(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Yvette Cooper
We are obviously reviewing the situation as swiftly as possible. We have withdrawn the previous Syria country guidance, because it would not have been appropriate to take decisions on that basis, and we are monitoring the situation closely to look at how and when new country guidance can be drawn up. My hon. Friend will understand that there is considerable uncertainty about what is happening in Syria. We have welcomed the removal of the Assad regime. However, much is still unknown about what will happen in Syria next, which is why we have to be serious about this matter and monitor the situation closely. Other countries are doing the same.
Yvette Cooper
We have been clear that we need to reduce both legal and illegal migration because we have seen significant increases in both over the past five years. That is why we are setting out the policies that we have been introducing since the election. The hon. Gentleman is right to talk about the multiple different aspects and why we need to take action comprehensively, across the board. That also means that the response has to be across the board and has to include not just the prevention work and going after the criminal gangs, but increasing returns. It is possible to do that through new agreements; it is also possible to do that, frankly, by just making the existing system work considerably better. That is what we have been doing throughout the summer and we have already seen a significant increase in returns, with nearly 10,000 people who did not have the right to be in the UK returned.
Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill
Debate between Judith Cummins and Yvette CooperMonday 14th October 2024
(3 months, 1 week ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill 2024-26 View all Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Yvette Cooper
The hon. Member is right that there has been considerable work by many venues and premises in Northern Ireland to respond to the kinds of threats and risks that, sadly, communities have faced through the years. He may also be interested to know that in Manchester a voluntary version of Martyn’s law was introduced after the appalling Manchester Arena attack; training and support were provided for venues and many businesses were keen to sign up. That has been very well supported and the view in Manchester is that it has been hugely successful.
The experience of the hon. Member for Strangford in Northern Ireland and the experience in Manchester is that, too often, there has been a tragic reason as to why organisations have responded in that way. We need to make sure those same lessons are learned right across the country. That is why we are setting out this comprehensive legislation, so we are not in a situation where the biggest venues only respond when something terrible happens—when it is too late and lives have been lost.
We are committed to working extensively with the business community during the passage and roll-out of the Bill. As well as the ongoing programme of direct engagement, we have also updated ProtectUK to make it easier for businesses and others to navigate and understand the supporting information on the Bill. We are acutely conscious in introducing this legislation of the need to get the proper balance and detail right. That is why, as hon. and right hon. Members will know, the Bill’s proposals have been subject to extensive development, and the draft version of the legislation was subject to pre-legislative scrutiny under the previous Government.
Most crucially, we have raised the threshold for being in scope from 100 to 200 individuals. We recognise the need for a location-specific approach because the procedures in one place may not apply to another. We have also ensured that in both tiers appropriate procedures and measures are required only
“so far as is reasonably practicable”.
Those words are crucial to recognising the importance of protecting life and our way of life.
With Figen here, we always keep in our minds that terrible day in Manchester seven and a half years ago. The youngest victim was an eight-year-old girl, Saffie-Rose Roussos. Her headteacher asked the question afterwards:
“How do you tell 276 children that their friend has been murdered”?
That is a question we all ask: how can we explain how anyone could have targeted the event that day, with young children enjoying their love of music and dancing? But that is the point. When terrorists want to cause maximum damage—when they want to destroy our way of life—of course they seek out crowds, but they also seek out innocence, happiness and joy. That is why our task is not just to take measures to keep people safe but to work tirelessly to ensure that people can get on and enjoy their lives, and that we never let terrorists, extremists and criminals win.
Let me finish by quoting Figen. She said:
“It’s time to get this done.”
I could not put it better. I commend the Bill to the House.
Violent Disorder
Debate between Judith Cummins and Yvette Cooper(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend makes an important point about the number of young people involved. Some of them had a string of convictions—they had history—but there were also young people who were drawn into violence and disorder, sometimes antisocial behaviour and the looting of shops, or sometimes into serious violence as well. There is an important issue about how we prevent young people getting drawn into violence and antisocial behaviour. That is one of the reasons we are so determined to set up the Young Futures programme, and one of the reasons we need to look at the online radicalisation of young people as part of the extremism review.