Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report

Laura Kyrke-Smith Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

We are strengthening the safeguards in the asylum system. The system that we inherited was too weak and not strong enough to ensure not only that the rules are respected and enforced, but to deal particularly with issues of criminality and public risk. We are strengthening those safeguards, including the law around sexual offences, and we are looking particularly at issues around the way article 8 is being interpreted. We are also strengthening public protection arrangements. We are bringing in new arrangements to ensure that, should any issues be raised by the police or others about any safety risk or anybody in the asylum system, joint public protection agreements and arrangements between the police and Immigration Enforcement, people can be kept safe.

[Laura Kyrke-Smith (Aylesbury) (Lab)]

I welcome the clarity and focus on action that the Home Secretary has brought to the House. This morning I spoke to the father of a young woman in my constituency who was the victim of child sexual exploitation. He thinks that this is the right way forward, but his concern, and mine, is for those victims and survivors whose trauma will be opened up again by the process. As he put it:

“When you open Pandora’s box, you’ve got to have the tools to deal with whatever comes out.”

Will the Home Secretary say more about the tools that she will put in place to support the survivors at the heart of this issue?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Too often, victims and survivors have been asked to tell their story, often to multiple agencies, and then have seen no action, which simply strengthens the distress that they feel. Seven thousand victims and survivors gave evidence to the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. As we draw up the arrangements for the national inquiry, we will work closely, as will the safeguarding Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips), to keep victims and survivors in our minds. We must ensure that they have support, and that the point my hon. Friend has raised on behalf of her constituent, and for the victims and their families, is taken seriously.