Tackling Child Sexual Abuse

Julian Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 8th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips]

I praise my hon. Friend for her commitment to these issues over the years. She is right: the thresholds for mandatory reporting are a finely balanced tool. We had to land on the criminal justice outcomes for the most egregious cases, as other Members have mentioned, where it seemed that social workers were directly covering up and where there were professional sanctions when people just failed to report. She talked about the issue of signs. I very much hope that that will be dealt with in the training and the roll-out of this measure, but when any new law comes into place and we roll out training, we will absolutely review it as we go along.

[Sir Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

I welcome the mandatory reporting progress. It is worth acknowledging the Bill that I led through the House, which has now paid out £100 million in Northern Ireland to survivors of institutional sexual abuse. During the progress of that Bill and the discussions I had, the mealy-mouthed apologies from institutions were abhorrent. May I urge the Minister to push very hard on church institutions and other institutions to ensure that they pay and they apologise?

[Jess Phillips]

Absolutely. Some of the changes that the right hon. Gentleman will read about in the documents that will be published subsequently concern that exact issue of an apology, and the limitations of mealy-mouthed apologies. What that means to the victims is so awful, so I will absolutely commit to push the institutions to do exactly what they need to do to make honest apologies. I have to say that, in recent weeks and months, we have not always had the best examples of that on display.