Serious Crime Bill [HL]

Lord Bishop of Durham Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 40BZC, which is in my name. I, too, welcome this clause. My amendment, which is promoted by the Children’s Society, finds a different way to address the same issues we have already debated in this group. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said in her introduction, there are currently a number of inconsistencies in the law. My amendment finds a particular way to try to address them.

The amendment changes the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 to increase the age of a child victim of cruelty and/or neglect from under 16 to under 18. I argue that it is a simpler approach than some of the other amendments in the group. It would bring the criminal law into line with the rest of child protection legislation and would send a signal that 16 to 18 year- olds should be protected in the same way as children who are younger than 16.

The latest statistics, with which I was supplied by the Children’s Society, show that, in 2013, 14,290 children aged over 16 were children in need because of either abuse or neglect. A further 1,110 children aged over 16 were recognised as children at risk of significant harm and placed on a child protection plan. Of those, some 290 children had emotional abuse listed as the main category of their abuse.

As some members of the Committee will know, I sit in family court, youth court and adult court as a magistrate. I can clearly say that the most disturbing of those three jurisdictions is family court. You deal with some extremely vulnerable people—and some extremely vulnerable young people. It would be no surprise to anyone who works in either the youth or family jurisdiction that 16 and 17 year-olds are among the most vulnerable groups we deal with. I believe that they should be given the same protections as those aged under 16.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

I rise to support the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, on behalf of myself and my colleague, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro, who chairs the Children’s Society. The Serious Crime Bill rightly seeks to update the law on neglect of children. We welcome the Bill and the Government’s commitment to seeking to improve the response to victims of emotional neglect. The current law is outdated and inadequate. We also support the amendment tabled by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss.

The UK is one of the only countries in the world that fails to recognise emotional neglect as the crime it is. It is to the Government’s credit that they seek to address that through the Bill. However, I believe that the Bill should go further and increase the age a child can be defined as a victim of cruelty and neglect from under 16 to under 18, which the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, seeks to do through his amendment. By changing the law in this way we can, for the first time, offer protection to all children from cruelty and neglect.

I, too, am grateful to the Children’s Society for its briefing, and I shall offer a story that it gives of Jessica. Jessica was known to social services because of the neglect and abuse she experienced in her family. When she was 16 the relationship between her and her family deteriorated and she was forced to move out of her family home. In the next year and a half she experienced unsuccessful placements in a hostel and bed and breakfast accommodation. Experiences of neglect at home made it difficult for her to form meaningful relationships. During that time, starting with her first unsuccessful placement in a hostel, Jessica became a victim of sexual exploitation, started using drugs and developed mental health problems. Stories such as Jessica’s mean that we need to ensure that this measure applies to all children under 18.

This definition is the one enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is in the Children Act 1989, which governs what safeguarding responses children should receive if there are concerns about their well-being. The PACE codes of conduct for the police were amended last year so that all under-18s are treated as children. From a safeguarding point of view, children should be viewed as being under 18. Sixteen and 17 year-olds can be very vulnerable. The statistics mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, showed that. Yet they do not always get access to the services that younger children can receive. Professionals often see 16 and 17 year-old children as more resilient than younger children. They are often seen as more able to avoid abuse, or more grown-up and therefore more able to cope. It does not help that the criminal law aiming to deal with the perpetrators of child neglect does not cover 16 and 17 year-olds. This sends all the wrong signals that they are not as vulnerable as younger children.

The Government’s other reforms increasingly recognise that 16 and 17 year-olds are children. For example, they are not normally treated as adults under the benefits system. The position has recently been reinforced through the rules of the new universal credit system—a basic condition of entitlement for which is that the claimant is at least 18. That was debated in this House when the Welfare Reform Act 2012 went through Parliament. I would like to hear from the Minister why children aged 16 or over cannot be considered at risk of neglect and why the new law on emotional neglect should not apply to them.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak very briefly as I hope that the Minister will take these amendments away and come back with a combination. I support the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and her companions in their amendment, but I am absolutely with the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, in relation to the age of these children.

Some years ago the Social Research Unit at Dartington produced a compendium of all the research about emotional abuse in children. It showed that the development of children who had been emotionally abused was more severely impeded in the long term than the development of those who had been physically abused. This is different from sexual abuse, which is another thing. Children who had experienced physical abuse were more likely to be able to survive and grow through it than those who had been emotionally abused. Those children whose parents had never made a proper emotional contact with them were unlikely to make relationships later. So, in terms of mental health and the economics of the situation, looking after these children, and doing so until they are 18, makes really good sense.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, this amendment is exactly the same as Amendment 40C; it has just been put in a different position. I am most grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham for adding his name to it. Abuse of the most vulnerable people in our society is wicked and a great deal more widespread than most of us think. There are those who use power, strength and blackmail to subject those who cannot fight back to the most horrible abuse. It is done behind closed doors and certainly that is where a lot of it stays. However, there is hope because there are signs, if only we would look for them. We need not only to see them but to act upon them as well. We need to give the abused people opportunities to confide in a trusted adult, in the secure knowledge that that person will do something to make it stop. That is why we need a new duty to report abuse.

Of course, I know that legislation is not a silver bullet, but it can help and it has done so in other countries. In addition, I agree with those who say that we need more training, awareness raising and the protection of the law for those who expose the horror. Amendment 40BZEA covers not just children but vulnerable adults as well, although for simplicity my remarks will mainly refer to children. However, the vast majority of what I say also applies to elderly and disabled people, and those with serious mental disabilities too—all groups that have suffered far too much abuse in recent years by unscrupulous people.

We heard on the BBC only this morning about cases of abuse of people with mental disabilities where nobody said a word. My intention is not to criminalise people—though there must be penalties if this measure is to be effective—but to empower those who know that something is wrong and to protect them as well as the children. The current system is not working. The recent report about Jimmy Savile’s activities made that very clear. There needs to be an increase in the detection rate of child abuse in the UK, which is estimated to be only 5% of the actual amount, according to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s report in 2010, How Fair is Britain?

I shall explain what my amendment does. Proposed new subsection (1) puts a duty on individuals standing in a position of personal trust towards children or vulnerable adults and who work in “regulated activity”, as defined in Schedule 4 of the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006. The duty is to report abuse that is known about and where they have reasonable grounds for knowing or suspecting abuse. If the abuse is adult on child, or on a vulnerable adult, it should be reported to the local authority designated officer. If it is child on child—and there is a great deal of that—they should report it to the local children’s services. If the local authority has chosen to have a single point of contact, the report should be to there.

Proposed new subsections (2) and (3) say that the report must be made within 10 days of the knowledge or suspicion, unless the abuse has already been reported by someone else.

Proposed new subsection (4) allows the Secretary of State to exempt certain groups from this duty, in the interests of ensuring that children and vulnerable adults can feel comfortable disclosing the abuse—for example, to their doctor or a confidential helpline such as ChildLine. There will be a term of imprisonment or a fine for failure in this duty.

Proposed new subsection (7) refers to Schedule 4 to the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 for the list of institutions that are covered by the amendment. It includes all forms of teaching or training of children, care or supervision, treatment and therapy et cetera—and a similar group in relation to vulnerable adults. In other words, it relates mainly to the people who would normally need a CRB check in order to do their job; it does not include family members.

This is a measure whose time has come and I encourage the Government to grasp the moment. In a recent independent survey, 96% of the public thought that we already had such a law. Although the public would strongly support it, we do not have one at the moment. We have a whole range of regulations, professional duties et cetera—none of which have been effective in situations in which adults were worried about being the whistleblower, about reputational damage to their institution, or that they may have got the wrong end of the stick. This measure would protect and empower those people, and protect children.

It is not for teachers, nurses and care workers to decide whether there is a case to go to the police. It is not their job. It is the job of the experienced officer within the local authority—as opposed to triage, which the Minister has just mentioned—to investigate and then report to the police when they believe that there may be a case to answer, or to take some other action.

There are other parts of the world where there is a duty in law to report, such as Australia, every state of which has some version of this duty and some sort of penalty. It has been very effective in exposing that which was previously hidden. It has been shown that there is a high rate of substantiation of the allegations, contrary to what the Minister has just said. In the case of reports by teachers, 70% led to police action prior to the new law; and the percentage after the new law came in was 69%, which was very close. The percentage would have been higher if it had included situations in which the children needed help but the police were not involved. Only 2% of reports were found to be malicious. These figures came from Professor Ben Matthews, a highly regarded researcher on these issues; and I am happy to supply them to the Minister. I heard Ben Matthews say on the BBC a few months ago, around the time of the famous “Panorama” programme:

“Mandated reporting in some form is an essential part of an effective child protection system”.

Someone I know used to work as a child safeguarding officer in Australia and was familiar with the effective working of the measure. She also told me that that Australia has a programme in schools called, “No, Go, Tell”. It is pretty obvious what that means. When she came to work in this country, she was amazed that we do not have something similar here. That makes the case for good-quality PSHE in all schools in which children are taught what not to tolerate in terms of invasion of their personal space, and what to do to keep themselves safe.

What have others said about my proposal? Last week, as we heard, the NSPCC made a major and welcome shift in its policy on this matter, but it does not go far enough. It has proposed what I have called “safeguarding lite”. The idea is to have a duty on closed institutions such as boarding schools and children’s homes not to cover up known child abuse. By the way, it is not clear who within those institutions would have that duty. There are several things wrong with that. First, it ignores the majority of children. There are 8 million children in education in this country, and less than 1 million of them are in boarding schools and children’s homes.

Secondly, by covering only “known” child abuse, the onus is put on the head teacher or care home manager to decide whether abuse is known or not. That is not their job; it is the job of local authority designated officer, who has the training and experience to know whether to report to the police or take some other action. That is what those officers have been trained to do. Thirdly, the policy is confused. Think about this: a head teacher in a boarding school has a duty to report a case, but the following term, if he takes over a maintained primary school, his duty is only under some regulation, with no legal penalty for ignoring it.

Think about a girl who would have this protection in a boarding school, but if she goes to a church youth club in the holidays she has no protection. Think of a boy who has protection in a care home, but has none when he goes to the local sports club. This matter is the responsibility of all of us, but in particular it should be the duty of all those who work with children in a position of trust. It should go with the job, along with the duty to get a CRB check.

The Local Government Association has briefed us all and asked us to look at how the duty would operate in reality. I know there are those who are concerned that the system would be swamped with cases if my amendment became law. I say two things in answer to that. First, if that is the case it means that there is an enormous amount of child abuse out there going undetected and untreated. That causes mental health and relationship problems throughout the lives of those abused, and allows perpetrators to get away with it and abuse other children. It also costs the public purse a lot of money in the long term.

Secondly, the experience in Australia was that, yes, the number of concerns reported increased, but they were investigated and considered by the right people. There was a very high level of substantiation and only a tiny amount of malicious reporting, which I believe is a fair price to pay. Anyway, such cases are looked into by experienced people who recognise malice when they see it.

I expect that noble Lords will recall the case of baby Peter and the fact that there was an increase in the number of children taken into care after it became public. That has settled down to some extent now, but it means not that too many children are taken into care now, but that too few were before, possibly because of resources. We must ensure that the system has sufficient resources and is robust enough to weed out cases that do not warrant action. In any case, the vast majority of child abuse would not entail the child being taken into care if she was not already.

The Local Government Association talks about us all having a moral responsibility to report abuse. Of course we do, but we have had that for years and it has not worked. What we need is not the confused and complicated system proposed by the NSPCC, but a very simple amendment to the law. The people on whom the duty in my amendment would fall are already defined in law: there is already a definition of,

“reasonable grounds for knowing or suspecting”.

We need training in recognising the early signs of abuse and neglect for all those who work with children and vulnerable adults, and we need guidance on how to report it. We need everyone to make it their business to protect children and vulnerable adults as a public duty, but we need to strengthen the law to help those who know something to have the courage to do something. I beg to move.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I support the amendment. I begin by pointing out that, had I been in this House two years ago, I would not have supported it. It is my experience of listening to and hearing stories, not just from within the church sector but from many sectors, that has led me to be convinced that this is a move we need to make.

Currently, under the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006, a form of mandatory reporting already exists; that is to say, a duty to refer arises in certain situations connected with regulated activity. Admittedly, that is just for vetting purposes, but what the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, effectively proposes is an extension to this. It will mean that those who work with children or vulnerable adults in regulated activity and have reasonable grounds for suspecting or knowing that abuse of these vulnerable groups has taken place are under a duty to report this to the local authority. I wholeheartedly support this principle, and I welcome the suggested amendment. Indeed, every person who works with children or vulnerable adults, which includes teachers, doctors, nurses, youth workers and volunteers, has a responsibility for keeping them safe. No one individual could possibly have a complete picture of a vulnerable person’s situation. All professionals who come into contact with those vulnerable groups have,

“a role to play in identifying concerns, sharing information and taking prompt action together”.

That is from Working Together to Safeguard Children.