Child Sexual Exploitation

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood). She is a first-class MP, and her constituents have every right to be proud of her, particularly for bringing forward this important and timely debate.

A lot of this discussion has centred on care facilities, orphanages and children’s homes, and rightly so, not least because of recent headlines. We have also heard about the exploitation and sexual abuse of children within nuclear or orthodox families, in private homes, and within public schools. The problem is widespread, and I, too, support those who have called on the Government to launch a wide-ranging inquiry into this issue.

Children do not choose their parents or the family circumstances into which they are born, but the tone of many comments made in this place, not today—this debate has been very measured—but in the recent past, have fundamentally misunderstood the problem. When talking about children in care, some people talk about vulnerable children, but it is the environment in which they often find themselves that is vulnerable. It is an environment not of their choosing, an environment that, in a way, can be directed and changed by the state. Despite some bad examples, as we have seen in recent weeks, the majority of people working in care homes, orphanages and child care facilities do so with due diligence, professionalism, and love, care and affection.

I speak with some authority, because I spent the first six years of my life in an orphanage. Having been to the orphanage reunion last week, I can tell hon. Members that every person there spoke highly of all the carers. I do not have one single bad memory. Perhaps I am lucky. Perhaps I am blessed. But it is important to put that on the record. The majority of people providing care do it with love, professionalism and dedication. I pay tribute to those who showed me love for the first six years of my life. There are those who, in the first six years of their life in a so-called orthodox family, do not enjoy the same level of care and love. So, although there are bad apples, the majority are doing a good job every hour of every day of every week. I pay tribute to them.

There is a wider issue about exploitation: what the state is doing and not doing. We have rightly focused on sexual exploitation, but the fact is that the taxpayer spends £250,000 for each of the 5,000 children in care facilities today. There are a total of 90,000 in care each year, and 60,000 in care right now—it ebbs and flows over the year—but 5,000 are currently in full-time care. Someone mentioned Oliver Twist. I think I am the only member of the Oliver Twist club. I remember being in the Dining Room, and somebody said, “Oh what’s that tie, Pritchard? What club is that?” I said, “It’s the Oliver Twist club,” and he said, “I’ve never heard of that.”

Perhaps today, more people have heard about it. It is for those people who I believe all have a God-given skill or ability. Some will end up as fantastic mechanics, artists or scientists, so it is absolutely correct that the state gets this right. It is absolutely wrong that too many children in care leave with no qualifications. It does not mean that they do not have brains, intelligence or an intellect. Too many children leaving care end up homeless, in prostitution or on the wrong side of the law. Not only is it wrong and bad value for money for the taxpayer to spend nearly £1 billion a year for the 5,000 children in full-time care, it is also morally wrong that we are sending them out to a life often locked into poverty or crime because the state has failed to monitor their educational achievement or lack of it.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a compelling personal speech. Will he join me in paying tribute to the unsung heroes of family life and the care system, the grandparents and extended kin? They do an heroic job, often taking care of the children of their children who are afflicted with drug and alcohol problems or other family issues.

[Mark Pritchard]

I am very happy to do that. I would like the Government to be more imaginative and innovative in the tax system—as I think the Conservative Opposition said before the election—in recognising the work of grandparents and rewarding them for it, because where the family works well, it is obviously the best place for children to grow up.

I have huge respect for the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), the new children’s Minister, as I did for his predecessor. I am excited about his promotion, because I know that he has great personal knowledge of fostering and adoption. This is an opportunity for him as an individual Minister and for the Government. As I said in a speech last week in the Chamber—albeit a speech on Europe—if we are not making a difference in this place, what is the point of being here? While there is strategic focus in the media, the Government and the nation as a whole, this is perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the coalition Government to make a real difference by changing the way children are fostered, making changes to the adoption system and fundamentally changing the way we look after children in full-time care.

As I mentioned, my view is that everybody has something to contribute—everybody has a God-given ability or talent. Therefore I hope the Government will bring forward definitive and precise measures to tackle the issues arising from the mistakes made in the past—to be fair, under successive Governments—where children left care with the list of problems that I outlined earlier, costing the taxpayer even more money, by the way, as the homelessness bill, the criminal justice bill and the bill for getting people off drugs and alcohol rises.