Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

The Labour Welsh Government are responsible for child safeguarding in Wales, and the Home Secretary said that none of the independent inquiry’s 20 recommendations was implemented by the previous Tory Government. Six recommendations applied to Wales, but no new actions were taken there either. Given that her statement rightly puts victims and survivors first, will she tell me how victims and survivors in Wales will now be able to demand a culture of real change?

[Yvette Cooper]

Many issues obviously cut across, including issues around policing that apply to England and Wales—for example, the police performance framework that we are talking about, and some of the data issues that we are talking about—so we need to work with Welsh police forces and the Welsh Government on taking the measures forward. They are immensely important, because part of the problem has been that there is no sense of what is actually being measured and what will actually change. What are the performance standards that we expect from all police forces right across the country? If those do not exist, too little changes in practice. A performance management framework has been missing from Wales, as well as from across England, and that is what we are determined to introduce.