Child Sexual Offender Data

Debate between Rupert Lowe and Robbie Moore

Monday 1st June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Rupert Lowe]

rose—

[Robbie Moore]

I will also take the next intervention.

[Rupert Lowe]

The hon. Member has made a very good point. We have been in touch with the Government and Baroness Longfield and have said that we will help them, but so far nobody has actually made contact with me.

[Robbie Moore]

The point is that all hon. Members in this place have a duty to represent our constituents and to feed any information that we have to Baroness Longfield, as the chair of the national grooming gangs inquiry, so that we can make sure, now that the terms of references have been set, that the local inquiries that form part of that national inquiry take place in the right areas.

That brings me to my key point. Keighley and the wider Bradford district is an area where people have been ignored and abandoned, at a local and national level, for far too long. For years people there have fought hard for our area to be included but they have been ignored. Since I was first elected to this place to represent the people of Keighley and Ilkley, I have stood alongside victims and survivors such as Fiona Goddard and alongside leading child abuse lawyers such as David Greenwood to call for one simple thing: a full independent inquiry should take place across Keighley and the wider Bradford district. These heinous crimes did happen and are happening right now. For decades, child sexual exploitation and gang-related grooming have haunted communities that I represent. Lives have been shattered. Trust has been broken. Far too often, those crying out for justice have been met with silence.

My second question for the Minister is: will she announce in this debate that Keighley and the wider Bradford district will be included as part of the national grooming gangs inquiry? If the Government were confident enough in January 2025 to announce that Oldham would be included, why on earth are they not confident enough today to announce that Keighley and the wider Bradford district will be included? As I have said many times before, I fear that the scale of the issue across the Bradford district will dwarf that in places such as Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford and Oldham, where previous inquiries took place. Bradford has been referenced a lot in relation to child sexual exploitation, and many victims and survivors have unfortunately been trafficked through the city. I would therefore like to hear a positive response from the Minister.

My final point is about the cost of the national grooming gangs inquiry. The Government have allocated £65 million to that inquiry, but we are yet to understand which local areas will form part of it. My third question to the Minister is: will the Government expand the allocation of funds to the national grooming gangs inquiry if the inquiry’s chair, Baroness Longfield, deems that more money is needed because more areas need to be looked at as part of the inquiry?

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Rupert Lowe and Robbie Moore

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Robbie Moore]

The point to make quite clearly is that every single farming business will, in one way or another, be impacted by the £1 million threshold kicking in. Why? Because for an arable farm in Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire or wherever it is, the price of feed wheat is still at about the same price it was 20 years ago, but the costs of all the inputs have been rising. Not only are such businesses subject to cash-flow challenges as a result of this Government removing the delinked payments —dramatically dropping them to £600—as well as removing the sustainable farming incentive and bringing in the fertiliser tax or the double cab pick-up tax, but they will be impacted by the changes to inheritance tax. That impact will be felt by hill farmers in Keighley and Ilkley; arable farmers in Lincolnshire or, dare I say it, down in Cornwall; and farmers wherever there are, even those subject to high land values in Northern Ireland. This Government must listen to our farming community right now, because whether farmers come down today or tomorrow to make noise with their tractors outside, I hope they continue coming to make sure that this Government listen.

It is not just our farming community that is impacted by the IHT changes. This has an impact on our family businesses, our hospitality businesses, our breweries and our manufacturing and engineering businesses. That is why I simply cannot understand why we have not heard from Back-Bench Labour MPs representing urban constituencies, who may be representing a manufacturing or engineering business, a hospitality business or a hotelier. Why on earth have those with such family businesses in their constituencies not been loud and proud in making noises to the Chancellor about the negative impacts these IHT changes will have on our many family businesses?

[Rupert Lowe (Great Yarmouth) (Ind)]

I have recently joined the Public Accounts Committee, and in my short time on the Committee I have come across qualified accounts and local authorities not having audited accounts; only 4% of them have audited accounts. I have watched the Government wasting almost endless amounts of money, and then I witness this madness of them basically breaking the backbone of British farms and British small businesses, and in effect ensuring that there will be none of the long-term investment that drives our economy. Does the hon. Member agree with me that, before we start breaking up these enterprises, we should get the Government’s house in order and cut state waste?

[Robbie Moore]

I do agree with the hon. Member that the Government must get their own house in order before implementing strategies that are impacting many of our hard-working businesses.

The changes to BPR are detrimental. Why? I would use the example of a business in my constituency that has already worked out that its liability after the changes to BPR is about £800,000. The business is owned by the fourth generation, who are in their late 80s. They have been told that the only way to pay a BPR liability, should a death occur after April 2026, is to sell plant or machinery, or to sell shares in their business, either way losing control of their business or not being able to keep their business productive. That demonstrates how uninformed the Government are about the changes they will be making.

I think I have made my point. [Interruption.] The Minister sits on the Front Bench laughing away, but had she had the time to go outside and engage with our farming community, or at least get around the table with Back-Bench Labour MPs and Opposition Members who have been consistently raising this issue over the last year, she might not be sitting there smiling away; she might be able to come to the Dispatch Box in her winding-up speech to give some sort of positive conclusion and hope to those many businesses who will be impacted by this disastrous Labour Government.