Draft Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 (Amendment) (Provision of Information) Order 2025

Katie Lam Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2025 General Committees

[Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Murrison.

I thank the Minister for their remarks on a topic about which there should be little disagreement. We must give the police the power to access the information that they need to safeguard the vulnerable. There is no reason why non-territorial and specialist police forces, as well as those in the Crown dependencies, should not also be able to do that. Removing the legal ambiguity described by the Minister is therefore something that we support without reservation.

It will be helpful if the Minister could clarify whether they believe there are any outstanding issues requiring remedial action. The Government will have our full support in doing that, too. The Government have also said that they consulted affected forces and agencies, and the National Police Chiefs’ Council, while working with the DBS on the changes. We would welcome hearing about anything else that the Government might have learned in that process about data sharing in law enforcement, and ways to improve it.

While we reflect on the safeguarding of vulnerable people and ways in which the authorities can allow things to fall through the cracks, it seems remiss not to acknowledge the deep and abject failings of the British state to protect its children from sexual exploitation, including by organised grooming gangs. I must therefore take the opportunity to urge the Minister to reconsider the Government’s position and commence a national inquiry into those horrific crimes. When state organisations fail us, we must correct those past failures. We can either do that by changing legislation, as we are supporting the Government to do today, or by understanding better what has gone wrong and making sure that it does not happen again. We urge the Government to do those things.