Julian Smith
Main Page: Julian Smith (Conservative - Skipton and Ripon)Department Debates - View all Julian Smith's debates with the Home Office
(9 years, 8 months ago)
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Mrs May
The hon. Lady raises an important aspect. I would point out that in one of the very early cases in which perpetrators were brought to justice, that success was the result of a very good piece of work done on that occasion by Derbyshire police—I think in Operation Retriever. The overarching inquiry was set up with a prime purpose of looking at the historic incidents and allegations and the lessons that needed to be learned from those, and whether more needed to be done now to ensure that horrific crimes of that type were not being perpetrated today. I will be talking to Professor Jay about how the Rotherham report work can feed into that inquiry, but I think that is where the focus must be—to ensure that state and non-state institutions are behaving in a way that ensures that these things cannot happen in the first place, and when they do, are taken seriously and dealt with properly.
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
It beggars belief to many across Yorkshire that Rotherham council today retains responsibility for children’s services. I urge my right hon. Friend, at ministerial meetings, to look carefully at stripping the council of children’s services, as we have done in Doncaster, Slough and, previously, Hackney. I also urge her to look at the role of legal officers within the CPS, who in this report, like the police, did nothing near what they could have done to help victims.
Mrs May
As I said, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government is minded to commission an independent inspection of Rotherham council, with a particular focus on its corporate governance and service arrangements, and obviously, as was indicated earlier, Ofsted will be going into Rotherham again to look at the areas for which it has responsibility. Following those inspections, decisions will need to be taken about the future responsibility for these issues.