Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right; we have to ensure that victims’ voices are heard and that they can have the confidence to come forward, because often they feel that they will not be believed and will not get the support they need if they do speak out. That can make it extremely difficult. I also support her words about the Safeguarding Minister, who not only does a phenomenal job in the Home Office now but has been a tireless champion for victims of abuse and exploitation for very many years. Without her, there is no doubt that the Home Office would not be making the progress we are now making on tackling these serious crimes.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

Many victims of the grooming gangs still do not feel that justice has been done. It is very concerning that the two men leading the Greater Manchester inquiry resigned because they felt that they were being blocked from accessing the information they needed. The IICSA was an important start, but it was not—and was never meant to be—a detailed report into the grooming gangs. It looked at six places where the grooming gangs operated, but they operated in more than 40 places. The right hon. Lady says that the answer is locally led inquiries, but we have had years for that to happen and it has not happened, or it has not happened properly. Indeed, in many cases the local authorities were part of the problem and we were asking them to mark their own homework. I totally agree with her about the importance of the Jay recommendations, but will she please rethink so that we can actually listen to the voices of those who, to this day, have never been listened to?

[Yvette Cooper]

The whole point of us setting up a victims and survivors panel is to ensure that the voices of victims and survivors continue to be heard as part of the implementation, as part of the action and as part of the further investigations that need to take place. This cannot be a case of simply having a one-off inquiry and then everybody turns their back, moves on and talks about something different; we have to ensure that there is serious change. There was obviously a two-year inquiry that looked at organised grooming gangs and child exploitation, but we have also had the issues around Telford —Telford was not included in detail as part of that inquiry —and there will be other areas where detailed questions are still unresolved. That is why we want Tom Crowther to be able to work with the Government and with other areas on how best to ensure that victims and survivors feel that their voices will be heard, in the way that the hon. Gentleman describes. He is right that too often they do not feel that, and that is often because, frankly, we still need further police investigations into those terrible crimes and the perpetrators who have still not been brought to justice.