Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Lord Bishop of Durham Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, it is worth reminding ourselves of the speed of change in the world that has led to this legislation. If these proposals had been before us even 18 months ago, I suspect that we would not even have entertained them. Therefore, the speed of change that has brought them about demands that we say that we do not wish to forgo our existing liberties, some of which would be restricted by this Act, without having recourse, in two or three years’ time, to a serious look at whether the measures are working. So I fully support the idea of a sunset clause. I am prepared to accept that two years may be rather too brief, given all the circumstances and the likelihood that we are going to live with this for some time. I would, however, encourage the House to support these amendments in some form, since I believe that the removal of our liberties that is encompassed in these clauses is so serious that we should not put them into permanent place.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly support the inclusion of a sunset clause, for the very good reasons that have been given. The only debate is, really, how long. Two years is possibly too short. We need to think about how quickly we will be able to gain information about how it is working, what the full implications are and so on. Equally, however, we do not want it to be too long. So how long is a piece of string? I would think perhaps three or four years. However, I believe absolutely that we should have a sunset clause.

Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Lord Bishop of Durham Excerpts

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I share with every other reasonable person a horror of the evil actions and effects of terrorism, grief for the suffering caused by terrorist acts and a heartfelt concern for those whose lives are lost or wounded through it. Events in Paris last week clearly illustrated this to us all. However, those events also highlight the need to ensure that we keep a global awareness and perspective, as the fresh Boko Haram attacks in Baga and its surrounding villages last Friday show us. Here, around 2,000 were killed. As we consider counterterrorism and security here in our land, we must stay aware of the global nature of the issues.

In every true place of worship, among people of all faiths, the horror of evil and the grief at loss of life and suffering for friends, families and communities are felt and articulated in lament, confession and intercession, day by day and week by week. As we consider the latest set of government moves to strengthen the laws which guard our people against terrorist acts, we have to hold our nerve in our convictions about liberty, equality and fraternity, and look steadily at the changes being proposed. These matters are too serious for us to polarise or politicise issues beyond what is justified in legitimate debate.

I shall not address the elements of the Bill in exhaustive detail. Others have far greater expertise in each of the areas concerned. However, I want to make some points about the Bill’s provisions in their own terms. As I do so, I believe that it is important to step back and see the proposed changes in the context of broader trends in how we live, govern ourselves and seek to ensure the security of our people.

I begin where local churches begin: trying, under God, to be agents of reconciliation; building communities marked by trust, mutual respect and care, and not by fear and suspicion. In many places, faith communities are coming together to build understanding and break down prejudice and stereotypes. Yesterday, in response to events in Paris, in my previous diocese of Southwell and Nottingham, faith leaders from Muslim, Jewish, Christian and other communities enacted a day of fasting as a sign of mutual commitment and dependence on God in seeking peace for all. They stood in solidarity with one another. In my current diocese of Durham, where the numbers of adherents to faiths other than Christianity are relatively small, work is continually done by the faith communities in places such as Sunderland, Gateshead, South Shields, Stockton and Darlington to build strong community relationships. The Near Neighbours programme nationally has had a significant impact on every place in which it is run.

This groundswell of community building is, and is seen by faith groups as, the most powerful force against radicalisation, especially among young people, on whom so much of the sense of risk tends to be focused. The Department for Communities and Local Government is doing some excellent work supporting local initiatives in this field. Groups with wider knowledge than local churches, such as the Quilliam Foundation, emphasise that this type of work in the community is vital to the Prevent Strategy.

I welcome therefore the increased resourcing of Home Office-driven work through the Channel programme to identify and intervene in the lives of people at particular risk of radicalisation. Nevertheless, the resources going in that direction seem to be much greater than those going towards the community work that is so fundamental to long-term prevention, and that does not carry the risks of fuelling narratives of persecution and heroic resistance. Countering radical terrorism is a long-term grass-roots matter. Long-term support for good community development will reap the best long-term rewards. This is not so much a matter of draining the swamp by immediate legislation as tilling the ground.

In this context, the placing of a statutory duty on a range of specified authorities to prevent people being drawn into terrorism is a significant step. Some have mocked the idea of nursery staff being obliged to report any signs of extremism in a family. I do not share the mockery, as terrorist behaviour is abusive behaviour. Nevertheless, the placing of such an obligation adds to the risks of creating a culture of suspicion and the sense that every citizen is expected to be on the lookout to report on their neighbour rather than build good relationships with them. Great care needs to be taken not to overburden schools or erode their capacity to build diversity and trust among pupils, staff and parents. Some of us are already less than comfortable about the way in which a wider range of citizens is coming under analogous duties in relation, for example, to immigration status.

The Home Office has helpfully launched a consultation on the draft guidance, which it has published, and faith groups will be looking carefully at those proposed guidelines. Just as there must be concern for the young child in that context, so too there must be concern for those separated from a parent made to move under a TPIM. Breaking up a family, as could occur, could create longer-term harm even, at one extreme, sowing the seeds of the next generation of terrorists in young children. Great care needs to be taken with any form of what amounts to internal exile that leaves children wondering what has happened to their parent.

On the matter of temporary exclusion orders, I acknowledge the need to have some kind of handle on the return to this country of people who may have been fighting in other countries. I share with many others the concern that there is currently no check by any court or some other judicial means on the decisions made by the Home Secretary. These are grave decisions, as they come as near as the Government think international law will allow to rendering people temporarily stateless. I strongly believe that some form of judicial review and appeal is needed. I share the overall concern of the Law Society about the judiciary’s lack of ability to scrutinise decisions on a number of matters in the Bill. I hope that serious consideration will be given to correcting this omission in Committee.

Across a number of its clauses, including those which I have mentioned and the communications data provisions, the Bill engages the question of the balance between security and privacy. It contains a number of new safeguards to ensure that the balance does not tip too far in favour of security at all costs. I welcome this determination to keep the balance healthy. A senior police officer said recently:

“My job is obviously to help keep people safe. To get that balance between security and privacy is parliament’s job”.

I do not think that that is the whole story. Parliament, even in its most careful and precise formulations of law, cannot remove from any authority the need to strive for a mature and well informed understanding of how to draw appropriate boundaries between security and privacy based on the law as it stands. A member of the Church of England can speak only with humility about keeping people safe. It is a journey that we are making in other contexts.

In conclusion, I refer to part of the very helpful reflection of the Reverend Dr Sam Wells, rector of St Martin-in-the-Fields, on Radio 4 last Friday. He reflected on liberty, equality and fraternity. Having reflected on liberty and equality, he then said that fraternity,

“names the challenge of our times: what happens when our identities and opinions take us to very different places? Fraternity is the reconciled diversity that Christians call the kingdom of God … The issue isn’t straining to uphold liberty … The real challenge isn’t how to live: it’s how to live together”.

I offer these comments of general principle with the concern that we are not paying adequate attention to the issue of fraternity and community building, but I also offer them with the promise of the prayer and support of people of faith up and down the country as Parliament wrestles with what are deeply grave responsibilities.

Serious Crime Bill [HL]

Lord Bishop of Durham Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I once again support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. Indeed, since I last spoke in this place on this matter, the need for an obligation to be placed on certain individuals to report knowledge or reasonable suspicions of abuse involving the most vulnerable has become more pressing.

It was with increasing dismay that I read about the events in Rotherham. The independent inquiry report into child exploitation there makes sobering reading. At least 1,400 children were subject to sexual exploitation between 1997 and 2013, with collective failings from both the council and South Yorkshire Police. The report noted:

“Over the first twelve years covered by this Inquiry, the collective failures of political and officer leadership were blatant. From the beginning, there was growing evidence that child sexual exploitation was a serious problem in Rotherham ... Within social care, the scale and seriousness of the problem was underplayed by senior managers. At an operational level, the Police gave no priority to”,

child sexual exploitation.

There has also been the recent case of Thorpe Hall School in Essex. For more than 14 years a senior teacher had secretly photographed young boys undressing in changing rooms. The child protection unit CEOP, now taken over by the NCA, had been aware, via a report from Canadian police, that this teacher was a purchaser of paedophile videos, but more than a year passed from that report before Essex police were notified. Similarly, in the case of Dr Myles Bradbury, the paediatric haematologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, who pleaded guilty on 15 September this year to numerous sexual offences against children, CEOP had, again, been aware since July 2012 that he had been buying paedophile videos online but passed this information to Suffolk police only in November 2013. The National Crime Agency stated that CEOP’s delay in disseminating the information was “unacceptable”.

Sadly, the list continues to grow. In Birmingham, on 18 October this year, the city’s safeguarding children board noted that,

“the perpetrators of these horrific crimes remain at liberty and continue to target other children”.

These numerous scandals have shocked, and continue to shock, the nation and serve to emphasise the importance of imposing an obligation that is subject to criminal sanction if there is a failure to report.

Power and secrecy, which are so often present when abuse occurs, are magnified in an institutional setting, where there is often a considerable power imbalance between the most vulnerable and the perpetrators of abuse. It should not be forgotten that the vulnerable, particularly in institutions, are at risk not only from individuals who may commit abuse but from all adults who fail to report suspicions and knowledge of abuse. Indeed, the vulnerable may be placed in institutions in order to safeguard them from abuse but, ironically, it is in these very institutions that their exposure can become more acute.

This issue will not go away. Time and time again, individuals in institutions have failed the most vulnerable in their care by failing to report. The fact remains that, although child abuse is a crime, reporting it is only discretionary, which is why I welcome this amendment, the provisions of which, as can be seen, have been strengthened and clarified since our last debate. Regulated activity providers and those who are in a “position of personal trust” must be held accountable if they fail to report.

Public opinion is in favour of such legislation, as a recent YouGov poll indicated. The former Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, has stated that the introduction of a mandatory reporting provision would close a gap in the law which has been there for a long time. The Child Protection All-Party Parliamentary Group has called on the Government to consider certain institutional duties which,

“require people in leadership positions in institutions ... to report allegations of criminal abuse committed against children by people working on behalf of the institution”.

The former Secretary of State for Education, after hearing the words of a survivor of abuse, also suggested that the Government should re-examine their position, after previously blocking such an idea.

On 22 July this year, the Government co-hosted, with UNICEF, the first Girl Summit aimed at strengthening domestic and international efforts to end female genital mutilation and forced marriage within a generation. As part of this, the Prime Minister announced that mandatory reporting would be introduced for health, educational and social work professionals in known FGM cases. If mandatory reporting is to be introduced in relation to this specific area of abuse, surely it would make sense to extend this to cover other types of abuse. Now is the time. We need to act.

As I stated previously, I agree that imposing such an obligation may increase the number of reports, and this will need to be resourced properly. However, this increase is no bad thing. Knowledge or reasonable suspicions of abuse must be reported. The omission of an obligation has allowed those such as Savile and Bradbury to continue to abuse. I do not agree that the introduction of mandatory reporting will lead to authorities being swamped by erroneous or fallacious reports. In fact, mandatory reporting can highlight cases that otherwise may never come to the attention of the relevant authorities. I hope for an announcement from the Minister that there will be a serious look at the evidence.

We need a culture in our institutions and across our society that prioritises the protection of the most vulnerable over and above all other considerations. As the Home Secretary stated in the other place:

“We know that child sexual exploitation happens in all communities. There is no excuse for it in any of them and there is never any excuse for failing to bring the perpetrators to justice”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/9/14; col. 168.]

This is why I wholly support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. A change in the law could lead to a change in culture, helping to raise awareness, where certain individuals realise that if they fail to report their knowledge or reasonable suspicions of abuse they may be subject to prosecution.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, when I was chair of education in Cambridgeshire some 20 years ago, it was brought home to me very starkly how the lack of mandatory reporting had allowed a caretaker to abuse children in a school over a 16-year period. It was not taken seriously at any point over that time when parents, or even some of the children, reported concerns. Had that system been in place—even the first report—the head would have been under a requirement to force a proper inquiry. As a result, this man’s actions would have been curtailed and a large number of children would not have been subsequently abused.

Even though that happened some time ago, the problem still continues. We have heard from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham about some of the larger cases at the moment. I should have declared an interest: I am a trustee of UNICEF. I echo the point of the right reverend Prelate that if we are talking about mandatory reporting for female genital mutilation, which is a form of child abuse, we should also be considering it for wider child abuse as well.

Another point that has been raised outside the Chamber refers to concerns felt mainly by professional psychotherapists about an exemption in their treatment of perpetrators of child abuse, or would-be perpetrators, under the normal terms of confidentiality if there is a requirement to report. The exemption is in proposed paragraph (8) of the amendment. It quite specifically says that it is possible for a person to have that exemption. We need to reassure professionals that important work such as that should be one of the few exemptions allowed to continue without further report to the law.

I want to raise a more topical concern. Much has been said about the Jay report and what has been happening in Rotherham and subsequently in Sheffield and other places. I am very concerned that yesterday UKIP published a photograph showing a young girl who might be deemed to be a victim of abuse while the headline said something like, “1400 reasons why you should not vote Labour in the PCC election” .

Frankly, UKIP’s hypocrisy is breathtaking. Its record on tackling serious child abuse is disgraceful. The only record of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, asking Questions about child abuse is on 13 October this year, after the by-election was called, and he has been in this House since 1990. Even that Question was focused entirely on the UKIP obsession with Muslims, ignoring the fact that child abuse happens in all areas of the country and is not exclusive to any culture, community, race or religion.

However, it is not just UKIP in the Lords. In the European Parliament, its Members abstained in a vote to strengthen legislation about sexual abuse and the sexual exploitation of children and child pornography. Further, UKIP’s candidate in the Croydon North election in 2012, Winston McKenzie, said that gay adoption was child abuse. Gordon Gillick, a UKIP Cambridgeshire councillor, told a meeting of some children in care that they were takers from the system and wanted to know what they would give back to society. As we have heard, many children in care are the most vulnerable to grooming and abuse.

We need to have an honest and open debate about child abuse but it is completely inappropriate for a party that has not taken it seriously, even within its own actions when it threw out a paedophile and allowed that person to come back to receptions, particularly those with young UKIP members. We need to make sure that UKIP—it offers a policy of making sure that children are safe—can deliver that by having safe policies itself. I do not believe that the evidence is there.

Finally, I am also grateful for our discussions with the Minister on this. I hope that he will be able to offer reassurance to those of us who want a public debate and public consultation about the mandatory reporting of child abuse. I look forward to his response.

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.