Child Sexual Abuse Inquiry: Recommendations

Lord Davies of Gower Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord brings tremendous experience to this area, and I share exactly his sentiment and intention. Child abuse is a vile crime. We have to take criminal action against individuals who commit it, but we also need to ensure that we support the victims of such crimes. The noble Lord makes an extremely important point that, whatever the gender, sex, colour or race of any perpetrator, they should be held to account by government and the criminal justice agencies, and pay penalties. Their victims should be supported by the forces encompassed by this House and the House of Commons.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure that all noble Lords will join me in thanking Professor Jay for her tireless work in leading the independent inquiry into these abhorrent crimes. Inquiries are extremely informative and benefit society as a whole. Taking this into account, can the Minister explain why his Government are refusing so vehemently an independent inquiry specifically on the topic of child sexual exploitation? Does he agree with me that victims are the most important group of people in any criminal investigation?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I will certainly answer the noble Lord on those points. First and foremost, the report that was managed by Alexis Jay, and set up by the noble Baroness, Lady May of Maidenhead, in 2015, has produced a large number of recommendations to government, which were published in 2022. The then Government, of which he was a supporter, responded to those recommendations in May 2023 and took no real action between May 2023 and when we took office in July at the general election.

We intend to take forward those recommendations, and my right honourable friend the Home Secretary announced on Monday three specific measures: first, a mandatory reporting recommendation, as in the report; secondly, a report to ensure that we have an aggravated offence for people involved in grooming; thirdly, that we will take action on child sexual abuse online. Those are three important issues. A further inquiry would not necessarily add anything to what Alexis Jay has done. There are independent local inquiries, which we have supported and allowed to continue, and that is fine. But what we are really interested in is putting in place the action on the recommendations made to date, which is what my right honourable friend the Home Secretary said she would do and what the focus of this Government is going to be.