Crime and Policing Bill

Sam Carling Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 10th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)]

I enormously welcome this Bill, in which there is so much that will make a real, positive difference for my constituents in North West Cambridgeshire. Due to time constraints, I will have to skip through a lot of the praise I had for the Bill and move straight to an area where I would like to have a conversation and a dialogue with the Minister about what we can do, and that is the area of mandatory reporting.

I enormously welcome the fact that this Bill will finally introduce a statutory duty to report the possible sexual abuse of children when those who have responsibility for children are made aware of it. It has been a long road. In March 2018, the previous Conservative Government said the case for mandatory reporting had “not currently been made” and that they would not introduce the policy. The independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, chaired by Alexis Jay, showed how misjudged that position was.

[Luke Myer]

I thank my hon. Friend for supporting me in my debate last week on Professor Jay’s recommendations for the Church of England. Does he agree with me that, alongside the Government implementing those recommendations, it is critical that faith organisations implement them as well?

[Sam Carling]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I thank him for that intervention. As a society, we must move towards ensuring that children are protected.

When it comes to the detail, I am not fully sure that the Bill, as currently drafted, delivers on the Government’s pledge to implement the IICSA recommendations. That is mainly because, on my reading, it does not create criminal sanctions for non-compliance, which was a key part of the 13th IICSA recommendation. The only consequences spelled out in the Bill for failure to report are that someone could be referred to as their professional regulator, where relevant, or to the Disclosure and Barring Service, which, to quote the Bill’s explanatory notes, will

“consider their suitability to continue working in regulated activity with children.”

That is all really positive, but we have to go a little bit further. As currently drafted, is the Bill enough to tackle the chronic under-reporting of sexual abuse identified by the Jay inquiry?

The new offence of stopping someone else from reporting child sexual abuse is very welcome. For example, it should stop managers pressuring people who work under them not to report such abuse, but I do not think that it will cover such cases in religious groups. As an example, I would like to talk about the religious organisation in which I was raised, the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Most people know very little about them, but they are a very insular religious community with a deep distrust, in many cases, of secular authorities, much of which comes from the fundamental nature of some of their beliefs. Witnesses have a mindset in which the first port of call for any issues with another member of the faith is their local congregation’s body of religious elders, who are men—always men—appointed from within their ranks. The organisation denies that it stops these elders from referring allegations of sexual abuse to the police, but numbers speak louder than words.

Almost 10 years ago, the Jehovah’s Witnesses were one of the case studies examined by an Australian royal commission on institutional responses to child sexual abuse. The commission found that, in Australia alone, allegations had been documented by religious elders against 1,006 individuals, and not a single one was reported to the police. In the UK, elders sometimes say that it is a victim’s absolute right to go to the police, which is often the organisation’s response to such criticism. But behind the scenes, they heavily discourage it, telling victims that publicity would bring reproach on God’s name.

This secretive attitude is best exemplified by a recent speech by a member of the religion’s governing body: “Suppose that someone is convicted and put in jail, or someone is found guilty by men, as Jesus was. It does not mean that he is guilty in the sight of God.” I should flag that he was not specifically referring to child sexual abuse, but that attitude is pervasive. I describe this example to highlight just how critical it is that the duty to report is backed up by criminal consequences for ignoring it, because some of these organisations will do anything to avoid compliance.

Is the Minister willing to meet me to discuss this issue in more depth, and how we can address it? I would also appreciate it if she could comment on the scope of the individuals that the Bill places under a duty to report. I am not convinced at the moment that many religious leaders—who often hold very significant power and influence, as I have outlined—will be included. This goes back to the IICSA report, which recommended that the duty to report should fall on anyone who works in regulated activities, but also on anyone in a position of trust over a child, as defined by the Sexual Offences Act 2003. On my reading, the Bill does the former but not the latter, as currently drafted, and addressing this by using both criteria could significantly strengthen the legislation.

I welcome this Bill, which contains very powerful provisions to progress measures outlined in the manifesto on which Labour Members stood to make our streets safer and tackle crime. I look forward to voting for it this evening.