Serious Crime Bill [Lords]

Debate between Paul Beresford and Yvette Cooper

Monday 5th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

We will certainly do so. I am happy to talk further to the hon. Gentleman about the matter. We, too, have spoken about the issues surrounding mandatory reporting not only of female genital mutilation, but of child abuse more widely. There is a strong case for making sure that professionals across the board are aware of the serious damage being done to young people as a result of these awful crimes.

We welcome the proposals to strengthen the law on domestic abuse. I pay tribute to Women’s Aid and Paladin, which have campaigned for the strengthening of the law so that it recognises the cumulative impact of different forms of psychological abuse, as well as physical abuse, and the way that that can trap women in particular and men in abusive relationships, causing huge harm to them, their families and the children. We look forward to discussing the clauses in detail.

On protection for children, I pay tribute to Action for Children for its campaign to strengthen the law on child cruelty, and to the campaign by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and by Lord Harris, who argued, with our support in the other place, that the Bill should include a new offence of sending a sexual message to a child.

As an overall response to the scale of serious crime, however, the Bill does not yet go far enough, because crime is changing and serious crime is a grave and growing problem. Over the decades there has been a welcome fall in the number of high-volume crimes, including most theft offences, domestic burglaries and car crimes, but the number of many of the most serious crimes is going up. Reported rapes continue to rise at about 30%, yet new figures show that the number of arrests has gone down by 8%. Arrests as a proportion of recorded rapes have dropped from 90% to 63% in the past few years. That is completely unacceptable. Violent crime is also increasing, but prosecutions and convictions are falling.

On sexual offences, the Home Secretary sometimes refers to a Yewtree effect and historical offences, but that is not the case, because the latest figures show that the majority of the increase in reported sexual offences has occurred in the previous 12 months. Reported child sex offences are perhaps one of the most troubling areas of all.

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

Does not the right hon. Lady accept—I hope she does—that people are reporting because suddenly they have an opportunity to do so and are going to be taken seriously? That was not the case before, and the issue was discussed when the Sexual Offences Act 2003 was put through by a Labour Government.

[Yvette Cooper]

The honest truth is that we do not know what is happening to underlying prevalence, but we do know that reporting has increased. I have been very careful to talk about the reporting of rape: reports of rapes and sexual offences have increased. We want more people to come forward and report crimes because we know that many of them have been underreported. However, the serious problem is that, although more cases are being reported, fewer cases are being prosecuted and reaching conviction. I am not talking about a simple proportion of crimes: these are absolute numbers. Fewer rape arrests are taking place even though more rapes have been reported to the criminal justice system. That is a serious weakness and I am concerned about what is happening in the criminal justice system and policing under this Government.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

The right hon. Lady ought to look at the Committee stage of the 2003 Act, where a Labour Government, with assistance from the then Opposition, considered that very point and the extreme difficulty involved. Before she tables any amendments, I ask her please to read that Hansard report. The issue was faced then.

[Yvette Cooper]

I think the hon. Gentleman would agree that we want more rapes to be reported, because we know they are underreported at the moment. It is significant that, over many years under a Labour Government, we saw an increase in arrests, prosecutions and convictions, both for serious sexual offences and for domestic violence. Over the past few years we have seen a drop in the proportion of domestic violence offences reaching conviction and a drop in the number of rape arrests and prosecutions for the most serious sexual offences. That is a serious problem. Those numbers are not falling because the number of crimes is falling. The situation is quite the reverse: they are falling because the criminal justice system and policing under this Government are not able to deal with the scale of the problem and are not conducting sufficient investigations or taking sufficient action.

For example, the number of child abuse prosecutions has fallen from 9,235 in 2010-11 to 7,998 in 2013-14, at a time when more child sex offences have been reported to the police. The number of prosecutions has fallen and there are 800 fewer convictions as a result. That means that more abusers and dangerous criminals are getting away with it. That is a serious concern.

Where in this Bill are the national standards we need and the commissioner to tackle violence against women and girls? Where is the policy for mandatory reporting of child abuse and for compulsory sex and relationship education to prevent abuse in the next generation? Where is the policy to ban the use of community resolutions for domestic violence so that cases are not diverted to inappropriate apologies rather than taken through the courts? Where is the policy to stop people with a history of domestic violence owning a gun? The Government could introduce so many more policies, but they are not included in the Bill.

Where is the action to enforce the existing law? It is a serious concern that the child abuse inquiry, which has already been stopped twice by chaos over the chairs, is still not established on a firm footing and it is taking the Home Secretary months to work out how to give it the full powers it needs. This is extremely important and it is incomprehensible why it is taking her so long to get it established on a proper footing.

Where, too, is the action to tackle some of the most serious offences of all? I am particularly concerned about the rapidly escalating problem of online child abuse. The Bill includes some measures, which we welcome, but I have pressed the Home Secretary repeatedly to do more and to level with Parliament about the scale of the problem and the challenges that the police and agencies face in addressing it, and so far she has repeatedly refused to do so. She knows that the National Crime Agency has details of between 20,000 and 30,000 cases of online child abuse through Operation Notarise alone, yet she has refused to confirm that figure and so too—I presume under her instruction—has the NCA. Why is that? Surely we have a right to know the scale both of that crime and of the information given to the NCA, so that we can debate the Bill’s measures and whether they are sufficient. Evidence from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre shows that a significant proportion of those who engage in online abuse go on to commit contact abuse.

The number of arrests under Operation Notarise so far totals just over 700 out of more than 20,000. How many of those 19,300 cases could be involved in contact abuse? When will those cases be investigated? The police and the NCA have briefed the media that not all of them will or can be investigated, but is that true? The Home Secretary ought to tell the House as part of the debate on this Bill. Even if they are eventually investigated, how long would it take?

There have already been unacceptable delays in Project Spade, an international operation that caught more than 2,300 people purchasing online child abuse imagery. Their information was passed to CEOP by Toronto police in July 2012, but it was not disseminated to police forces until November 2013. That intelligence included information on Myles Bradbury, who was arrested in December 2013 on the basis of Project Spade but who had abused children in the period when no intelligence was being passed on. There can be no repeat of the Myles Bradbury case, yet the long delays in investigating cases under Operation Notarise risk exactly that. I urge the Home Secretary to tell us what the figures are, how long the delays are, how many of the cases have not yet been investigated and how many children could potentially be at risk by the failure to do so.