Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Third sitting)

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 20th May 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Great. It is nice that we can hear you in the ether. We cannot actually see you either now, so you cannot see us and we cannot see you. We would quite like to see the witnesses if that can be organised. Who would like to ask the first question? I call Sarah Champion.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Q 153 It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. I have two questions. Will the changes in the Bill, particularly around youth offending, help early intervention and prevention, and reduce reoffending?

Sam Doohan: There are some things in the Bill that will help to some degree, but there are some omissions. A good deal of the youth offending regime, with regard to criminal records, will stay the same. Larger changes in the Bill, particularly around cautions, are not being made for young offenders, so they will face the same regime as now and will not receive any benefit.

Another critical omission is that once the Bill passes it will still technically be possible for someone to commit a crime as a child, be convicted after they turn 18 and then receive a criminal record as if they had committed the crime as an adult. We are very keen to see some change to that. We firmly believe that we should stick to the principle that young people deserve not only a second chance but special treatment and consideration.

Helen Berresford: While there are some things in the Bill that we welcome in terms of young people—for example, the changes to remand, which will make a really big difference to what has been an ongoing issue for a while—we have a number of concerns about some of the proposals, which will likely increase the number of children and young people in custody and the time they spend in custody, with no evidence of the impact that that will have on either reducing crime or reducing reoffending. We have seen significant progress over recent years with the decrease in the numbers of children being sent into custody. That has been a really positive story, but we are very concerned that a number of the proposals in this Bill will reverse that and increase the number.

[Sarah Champion]

Q Which proposals specifically? Have you got them there to rattle off?

Helen Berresford: Some of the proposals will increase the sentencing, such as some of the proposals around sentence length and the starting tariffs for murder, for example, and some have implications for increasing the numbers, such as the changes to detention training orders. There are a number of different proposals that will likely increase the numbers of children and young people going into custody.

Campbell Robb: I would add that, overall, some of the welcome things around problem-solving courts and some of those things could be extended into the youth, and we need to see more of that. I would like to see some more discussion during the passage of the Bill about some of the non-custodial approaches that could be introduced in the youth estate, as well as in the adult estate.

[Sarah Champion]

Q Thank you. Lack of employment is a major barrier to rehabilitation after release from custody. Do you think that proposals to reform the criminal records regime go far enough to address that?

Sam Doohan: To a large degree, Unlock would say that we are happy with the direction of travel, but we do not think that the Bill in its present form goes far enough. There is something of a split in the criminal records regime, essentially between those who go to prison and those who do not, and we are happy to see that the majority of people who do go to prison will see reduced spending periods for their convictions. However, we are still quite unhappy to see that some people will still disclose for life. We believe that needs quite close attention paid to it.

Further down the regime, even when we talk about what in the grander scheme of things we might think of as quite minor offences, the criminal spending regime around road traffic offences, and speeding in particular, is radically out of step with everything else in the rest of the spending regime. People end up having to disclose, say, a speeding ticket for five years, which is longer than if they had gone to prison for a year. We think that not only does this need to change and be brought into step, but that on the whole we should emphasise not only faster spending but fewer situations in which people legally have to disclose, and a higher standard of demonstrable need to discriminate on the basis of a criminal record.

Helen Berresford: We would very much agree with that. At Nacro, we run a criminal records support service, and we receive thousands of inquiries every year from individuals who are trying, and often struggling, to navigate a very complex system. We very much welcome the direction of travel and the proposals in the Bill to reduce that burden, which is also felt by employers. That is a really important part of this: lots of the employers who we support struggle to navigate the system themselves, and that can lead to them being more risk-averse when it comes to employing people with criminal records.

I agree completely with what Sam said. There are some anomalies and outliers here, and this Bill is a real opportunity to deal with them. Motoring convictions is a great example of that, and I think that can be fairly easily dealt with. There are a couple of other points that come up in this Bill, such as the new out-of-court disposals and the diversionary caution. A simple caution previously did not have a disclosure period, and I think putting one in only increases barriers, which is contrary to the Government’s direction of travel. I think there are some real opportunities to go further and tidy that up, but we very much welcome the direction.

Campbell Robb: I have nothing to add—[Interruption.]

[The Chair]

Sorry, Mr Robb, we did not hear that because we have a bell going off in our ears. Could you repeat that?

Campbell Robb: I hear the bell ringing. I was just agreeing with both of them; I have nothing to add.

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[Allan Dorans]

Q Thank you, Sir Charles; this is my first Bill Committee, and I look forward to serving under your chairmanship. Dame Vera, in your view does the Bill go far enough to put the interest of victims at the heart of the criminal justice system? If not, what further measures would you like to see included in the Bill as a priority?

Dame Vera Baird: I do not think that it does go far enough. Sentencing is not a territory that I want to get into particularly because victims’ views are very different about sentencing. It is by no means the case that everybody who is a victim of crime wants extremely heavy sentencing. There was a piece of research recently by RoadPeace that shows that they are not particularly strongly supportive of the increased sentences for driving offences, and would prefer driving bans rather than what they see as people who have driven dangerously but are not dangerous people being locked up in prison for a long time. They feel that long sentences may deter charging or jury verdicts.

Victims, just like everyone else, are a mixed bag, but what they want very much is to be treated decently by all the criminal justice agencies; to have adequate support and courteous engagement; to be kept up to date; to have all the entitlements when they come to court that will help them to give their evidence well; and to be supported right through, including after the sentence, going into the time when someone is serving their sentence—keeping them up to date about what is happening so that they might then more easily accept what happens when the individual comes out.

That whole procedural justice—what works for victims—is absolutely key. It does start to appear quite well in the new victims’ code of practice, but certainly that code of practice, which is about the sixth version of it that we have had, must be implemented, when the others have not been. There is nothing in the legislation here to help with that. The victims’ law is coming down the line and I hope that we can do more for victims in that.

Apologies for taking a long time about digital download. I meant simply to end by saying that all the problems that we have experienced can be solved by the drafts that we have prepared, which have been accepted by everyone but the Home Office. I urge the Minister in charge to look at that again.

[Sarah Champion]

Q Good morning, Dame Vera. I have a couple of quick-fire questions, which hopefully you can answer briefly, please. There should be, in the victims’ code, consultation when an offender is going in front of their parole board, and the victim should receive notice, if not an automatic right to submit evidence to it. Unfortunately, that tends not to happen. I have had two cases in the last six months where offenders have been downgraded and could be eligible for release and the victims knew nothing about it. One of my amendments is to make it mandatory that victims have their statement read out during a parole hearing. What are your thoughts on that?

Dame Vera Baird: I agree. I wonder whether the problem starts with the victim contact scheme and whether we are not embracing enough people into it. We have done some really good work with HMPPS about that. They are moving to a much stronger invitation to join the victim contact scheme and are offering all sorts of ways to do it, even after the event. That would put people in a position where their statement would be taken, and it would be read.

In fact, during the course of the pandemic, a lot of victims have gone online and read their statement to the parole board. The number of victims who have done that has gone up, and we think the online provision—giving satisfactory remoteness to an individual from a prisoner, but none the less communicating what is good—is probably a good model for the future, but it is imperative that that opportunity is given to victims.

[Sarah Champion]

Q Thank you. That leads me nicely to special measures. Again, there is the provision for special measures in courts, but it is at the judge’s discretion, and it also depends on whether the facilities are there. Do you think they should be mandatory for vulnerable witnesses?

Dame Vera Baird: In essence, yes, I do. We have just done a report about special measures, Ms Champion, and it would be good if you looked at it. The problem starts with the fact that the needs assessment is not done clearly by a single agency. It is all across the CPS, witness care units and the police. We have said that it should be in the witness care units. It should be done in a professional and thorough way with them co-ordinating it.

Then there is the real problem that the range of special measures, and the one that might suit you as a witness, are not always available and are not always offered even if they are available. There is a risk of some sort of court culture limiting the choice when the intention is that the best evidence should be given for the benefit both of the complainant, to cut the tension, and of the criminal justice system, to get evidence that it might not get otherwise.

Let me add that the roll-out of section 28 enables vulnerable and intimidated witnesses to pre-record their evidence weeks and weeks—probably, in reality, years—before a case can come to trial, and then be cross-examined on video too so that, many weeks before it comes to trial, they have finished their involvement in it. Obviously, it often just needs to be a choice, but that can be the default position to get a lot of vulnerable and intimidated witnesses out of the queue at the Crown court, put an end to their stress and record their evidence while their memory is fresh. I think that should be the default position available for all the categories that you mentioned.

[Sarah Champion]

Q Thank you very much. Just one line, please, commissioner. Non-penetrative child abuse offences are not seen as serious crime; therefore, they do not fall under the double jeopardy rule. Should they be?

Dame Vera Baird: Yes.

[Sarah Champion]

Thank you.

Dame Vera Baird: We wrote last year and asked for exactly that.

[Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)]

Q It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. Welcome, Dame Vera. Your role as national lead on victims for the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners is important, and we are grateful for all your work. We heard quite distressing evidence from PCCs this week about the impact of unauthorised encampments—illegal activity, damage, fly-tipping and intimidation—on the local communities where the encampments are. Do you accept that local residents who are in close proximity to the unauthorised encampments are victims of crime?

Dame Vera Baird: I am not the lead for the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners; I am the Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, and I do not know about that conversation.

There are two difficulties. One is that an unauthorised encampment often causes great discomfort to neighbours of it—that is probably a gross understatement. The other concern I have—very frankly—is that my experience is that the appropriate statutory provision is not always made to provide Gypsies and Travellers with an alternative place that is lawful and so they, too, are put in a very problematic position.

I saw what Martin Hewitt from the National Police Chiefs’ Council said the day before yesterday. He said that he did not think the police needed more powers; it would be much better if more lawful places were made available. And then there is no difficulty with getting Gypsies and Travellers out of places where they should not be, because there is a lawful place to put them. So I am afraid at the moment we have kind of two sets of victims.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Second sitting)

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 18th May 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Hywel Williams]

Q May I ask one other question briefly? Can you comment on the dangers of sentence inflation from the Bill, particularly when sentences across the board, as well as rates of incarceration, are higher in Wales than in England and when black, Asian and minority ethnic people are over-represented in Welsh prisons to an even greater degree than they are in England?

Adrian Crossley: Sentencing inflation is a very real problem. For decades now, we have seen incremental rises in sentencing, right across the board. There is a theory that the more we increase the more serious offences tariffs, there is a trickle-down effect; essentially, it pulls up sentencing for lesser offences. We see, for example, sentences for drug offences increase over a 10-year period by about 30%, and for theft by around 22% over the same period. This has a very real effect on people’s lives. It is not just a question of a few extra years—that would be serious enough as it is—it can often be the difference between somebody having a sentence suspended and actually being taken away and put into a cell, so it is a very real problem.

Some regard this as a Bill of two halves with what some regard as very punitive sentencing on the one hand and some very progressive, challenging and, I would say, quite brave proposals for community reform and rehabilitation on the other. A great deal of subjectivity is involved in deciding how much time somebody should serve for very serious offences. I do not see anything necessarily wrong with reviewing how this society deals with very serious offending. If there is an increase in tariff, which we as a liberal democracy think is right, that is fine, but there are real dangers with that. My view is that we are likely to see a Prison Service that is wholly incapable of dealing with the stress of an extra 20,000 people—what is forecast for the next few years—inundated with new offenders who are likely to have very little access to meaningful reform and rehabilitation. That is deeply concerning to me.

If as a society we feel that that more serious offending requires a higher tariff, we also have to address the numbers in prison. The most important thing we need to do is to look at whether people who are currently being sent to prison, perhaps at the lower and medium end of offending, really need to go there. The Centre for Social Justice published a paper last year called “Sentencing in the Dock”. Our position was very clear that modern technology, with GPS tagging and alcohol tagging—I could list a number of requirements that are already rightly in the Bill—could provide a sufficient deprivation of liberty to act as a real punishment for serious offending or medium to low-level offending.

We need to be much bolder about the amount of people we keep out of prison and deal with in the community. We can see clearly that in treating alcohol, drug addiction, mental health problems, literacy and numeracy, you are far more likely to have an effect on those key drivers of crime if you deal with people in the community than if you put them in prison. We could be much bolder in dealing with community disposals. There is a real risk of sentencing inflation here, of a prison population growing out of control and, in my view, of brutalising people who might otherwise be able to reform.

Phil Bowen: I agree with a lot of that. The only thing I would add is that proposals are set out in the White Paper that are being taken forward by the Ministry that seek to strengthen the community justice parts of the system. They include things such as investing in early intervention and prevention, including the improvements to the out-of-court disposals regime, which I think is vital for young people and people from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities in particular.

The nationalisation of the probation service represents a real opportunity to strengthen community sentences and win public confidence in community sentences back from the courts. I also think a strong interest and investment are needed in high-quality treatment for offenders and the more dynamic use of electronic monitoring. While I agree with a lot of what Adrian has just said that some proposals in the Bill seek to increase the use of prison, that takes away money from smarter investments in community justice. I would also like to emphasise that there are things in the Bill that we support, because we think they take forward that idea of smarter community justice.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Q Two quick questions to the witnesses. If we brought in a definition of child criminal exploitation, do you think that would help or hinder the police and support for victims?

Adrian Crossley: My view is that definitions usually start their life imperfect and develop with a great deal of expertise from public and experts who understand this issue perhaps better than I ever could. Notwithstanding that, and understanding that there may be a starting point of imperfection, they are useful. In my view, definitions of important criminal principles help real decision makers on the ground make practical decisions that are fair and consistent. Notwithstanding the fact that I see problems with that—we have seen so many different definitions of domestic abuse, which started its life as domestic violence, that it is clear these things are fluid and can develop—I think they have a practical application.

Phil Bowen: I have nothing to add to that. I agree with that.

[Sarah Champion]

Q Can I ask for your comments on special measures in court? I am thinking of witnesses being able to give evidence remotely, which at the moment is at the discretion of a judge. If there were a presumption that a vulnerable witness had an automatic right to those measures, do you think that that would help or hinder securing justice?

Phil Bowen: I think presumption to all of them is very useful. The other thing that I think is worth underlining is that part of the model of the specialist domestic abuse courts, which ought to operate in every magistrates court but at the moment do not, is that independent domestic violence advocates make sure the victims are asked about special measures and those special measures are put in place. I think there is a delivery and implementation question, as well as a legislative question, about whether the resources are there to help victims of domestic abuse and ensure those special measures are put in. Yes, I think a presumption would be useful, but I think it also requires attention to implementation and delivery issues. Special measures should already be used in specialist domestic abuse courts across our magistrates court estate and, in many cases, domestic abuse victims are without access to those measures, for want of anyone who asked.

[Sarah Champion]

Q Thank you. I am hoping this could be one of the benefits we get out of the covid experience. Adrian, any comments?

Adrian Crossley: I endorse pretty much all of what Mr Bowen has just said. I will not repeat what he said, so forgive me, but I particularly want to emphasise the focus that was placed on the reality of actual implementation. I worked for some years as a prosecutor and in defence, and I can say that, very often, lack of special measures is not the result of an omission in thought or some massive procedural error. Sometimes the implementation of special measures and, certainly, the pragmatics of what happens in court are not there and the stress that that puts witnesses through is absolutely huge. Sometimes, we talk a lot about witnesses not turning up or defendants gaming the system, hoping that the stress of waiting for trial is so bad that the witness just will not turn up, but the chaos and confusion that is caused by a broken system that is fixed on the day can be hugely distressing to a witness. I think implementation is important.

That point is not where I was going to go, however. Just for balance, I should say that it is always right that the accused should be able to face their accuser and evidence should be tested properly. Nothing that I have seen that has been proposed, including video examination in chief and cross-examination before trial, gives me any concern that without the right implementation that could not be done well. We always have to have an eye on making sure that the accused has a fair trial. This is important; it is not a nicety. However, the measures I have seen proposed give me no real cause for concern about that. I think it makes a massive difference to the view of the complainant and, unfortunately, it would also make a massive difference to the view of some defendants, who may face the reality of the evidence against them earlier. It may encourage pleas that should have happened earlier.

[Sarah Champion]

That is very reassuring.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

Q I have a number of questions across different areas, so short answers would be appreciated. First, Phil touched on the disproportionate impact on specific communities of minimum custodial sentences. Do you think the Government have given enough consideration to this aspect of the criminal justice system?

Phil Bowen: Very quickly, I think the proposal in clause 100, which reduces judicial discretion about imposing minimum custodial sentences, is a regrettable step. I have seen no evidence to suggest that that discretion has been misused. I am not sure on what basis that clause was proposed, and we have been arguing for its removal from the Bill. I see a place for minimum custodial sentencing, but I tend to be against anything that fetters the discretion of judges.

Adrian Crossley: Statutory minimums can have a function when we want to give a standard approach to the severity with which society regards a certain offence. My view, though, is that over a decade or two, judicial discretion right across the board—not just in this clause—has been steadily eroded, and I do not find that particularly helpful in criminal justice. Judges are well equipped to make decisions about what is in front of them, and they are well advised. No guidelines can ever foresee the variety that life can bring you, and my view is that the more judicial discretion there is, the better our criminal justice system is likely to be.

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[Antony Higginbotham]

That is helpful, thank you.

[Sarah Champion]

Q This question is directed at Jonathan: the terrorist clauses in the Bill are welcome, and they seem comprehensive. Is there anything, in your opinion, that is missing that you would like to see there?

Jonathan Hall QC: No, I tried to be as comprehensive as I could when carrying out my review of the multi-agency public protection arrangements. I thought long and hard about the additional powers that might be needed, and I am pleased that they are contained in the Bill. I cannot think of anything else. From a detailed, legal perspective I would just say that there are a couple of points of detail about two of the powers, and maybe the Committee will want to question or press on whether further safeguards are needed. I did not draft the powers, of course, and I recommended that they be done generally and they have now been put into statutory language. Overall, I have nothing to add to what is here.

[Sarah Champion]

Q I am not sure if either of you can comment on this, but I particularly welcome pre-charge bail being on the face of the Bill. The Minister and I discovered the chilling effects of the 2017 legislation. Will either of you say if the Committee ought to be mindful of any resource issue around pre-charge bail or release under investigation?

Matt Parr: Shall I go first? I am afraid it will be a short answer. We are aware of the issue, and as you may know we do a 43-force inspection of all police forces on a rolling basis. We think that it is a bit early and that we need more time to reach an informed view on the issue, but we will look at it in our next round of inspections.

Jonathan Hall QC: I have a short point to add: I did look at one issue. There are special arrest powers in section 41 of the Terrorism Act 2000, and those powers differ from other arrest powers in that they allow for people to be held for up to 14 days. I did consider whether there should be the power to bail after arrest in section 41 in my first report, but for various practical and technical reasons I thought that was probably wrong. That is the only thinking I have done about that.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

Q Jonathan, could you outline your findings from the Fishmongers’ Hall inquiry to help the flavour of the Committee’s conversation? I think we are all in the same place on what is in the Bill, but it would be useful to hear that from you.

Jonathan Hall QC: I thought there were three key points. First, managing the terrorist risk from released offenders involves practitioners from agencies who are not always good at working together. For example, the probation service and MI5 do not have, historically, an easy way of working together.

Secondly, the likelihood of making really good decisions at the right time, which is what matters, would be increased if there was a shared understanding of risk. That involves greater data sharing, and not just secret data sharing—though that is important—but sharing data from all other sources. One of the good things about the Bill is that it resolves an uncertainty about when data can and cannot be shared. It also requires better understanding in all the agencies about what tools exist. Probation has a really fantastic, powerful tool—the ability to recall risky offenders to custody. That is probation’s power—it is not the police’s or MI5’s—and it is important for MI5 to understand that and to make sure that the person making that decision understood the risk. So a comprehensive understanding of each of those powers is important and, as you know, I recommended a couple of extra powers, which are in the Bill.

Thirdly, there is a particular difficulty in practice of managing people who had not been convicted of terrorism offences but who were of terrorist risk when released. Take, for example, someone who went to prison for a very violent offence and became radicalised in prison—they present a terrorist risk on release. It is quite difficult to get them into the structures that exist for managing such a terrorist risk, but the Bill is going to change that to make it easier—[Inaudible.]

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[The Chair]

Hang on a second. I think we are supposed to be taking evidence from our witnesses. Do you want to answer that, Mr Hall?

Jonathan Hall QC: Yes. To continue the thought, where someone reaches the end of their sentence, their sentence cannot be increased—for example, by adding an extra licence period. In a way, it sounds quite a sensible idea that if someone is very dangerous, when they get to the end of their sentence you should just add a licence on administratively, but that would be completely wrong in principle, because the point of a licence is that you can be recalled. If someone was sentenced to 10 years by a judge and got to the end of their sentence, and you then added on a licence period of, say, five years, if they were recalled—quite a few terrorist offenders do end up being recalled—they would end up serving up to 15 years. That would, of course, be wrong in principle.

[Sarah Champion]

Q As the witnesses are talking about parole, I have a specific question. Do you think there should be an assumption that victims are able to give either written or verbal statements to the Parole Board about the implications of its decision?

Jonathan Hall QC: I am not trying to avoid it by saying that it is a really good question, but I have not properly absorbed the role of victims in the work that I have done as reviewer of terrorism legislation. One of the difficulties of terrorism is that you are looking more at future risk than at past impact, but obviously, a really bad terrorist attack has the most atrocious consequences for individuals. I am going to slightly dodge it, if I may, by saying that I have not really thought that one through, but I will take it away.

Matt Parr: I do not really have anything to add. It struck me at first glance—it is the first time I have thought about it—as a reasonably attractive idea, but again, I have not really given it a particularly great amount of thought.

[The Chair]

Are there any further questions? It appears not. In that case, I thank you both very much for your evidence.

Examination of Witnesses

Councillor Nesil Caliskan, David Lloyd and Alison Hernandez gave evidence.

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[Ian Levy]

A community is a community, and free speech should be exactly that—not about the person who can shout the loudest or bang the biggest drum.

[Sarah Champion]

Q My first questions are to the councillor. We might need to follow up in writing—I am a bit deaf, I am afraid. I am very aware of the multi-agency work that happens between local authorities and the police, but I am also aware of the unequal distribution of resources to do that sort of work, with local authorities often having their statutory duty, meaning that they have to pick up the brunt of the work without necessarily additional resources coming their way. Are there things in the Bill that give you and your members concern with regard to the resource implications for local authorities?

Councillor Caliskan: The first thing to say is that the Local Government Association broadly welcomes the Bill. We recognise its intentions for victims of crime and to support communities. However, there are aspects of the Bill, for instance, the offensive weapon homicide reviews, that I referred to, that lack clarity on the implications for resources, and why they are necessary, given that other reviews take place that could probably cover some of the issues. Reviews take place when you want to learn from an incident. It is unclear what the outcome of an offensive weapon homicide review would be and what learning would be achieved from that.

On the broader point about resources and support, local government have been under incredible pressure in funding youth offending services for several years. We know that youth services have seen a cut in their budgets. Youth offending services primarily have two functions: to stop reoffending, and to stop offending in the first place. The second function is not a statutory responsibility, and it is up to local authorities and partners, such as the police and NHS, to be willing to put in resources to stop offending in the first place. The early intervention and prevention aspect of things will be critical if the intention of the Bill to reduce crime over a long period of time is serious. Alongside the statutory responsibilities that the Bill sets out, the LGA’s view is that it is critical that there are adequate resources to be able to intervene with preventive measures at an earlier stage.

[Sarah Champion]

Q That is very interesting, thank you. Alison, I have a particular interest in road safety because I have a smart motorway running through my patch. That is not covered in the Bill and—I have looked—I cannot see scope for getting it into the Bill. From a road safety perspective, are there other areas that we could add to the Bill that would make a difference?

Alison Hernandez: There are a few bits in the areas we have been looking at. One area that is particularly of public interest is around the level of offending on our roads from poor driver behaviour generally. There is an absolute appetite from the public—we carried out a survey about 18 months ago on road safety through the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners and over 66,000 people responded. It was absolutely clear that people witness offending behaviour on the roads where they live for about 70% of the time. So there is an appetite for more enforcement and for the fines levels, and that is in the Bill around delivering courses for some of those driver behaviours, which I think is really great. We are interested in seeing another area, which would be a levelling up of the fines for some of those offences. They are all different, whether for speeding, using a mobile phone, or not wearing a seat belt. The fines are all at different levels. Our suggestion is: why don’t you level up the fines, then you also have an opportunity to spend more funding on road safety?

[Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)]

Q On unauthorised encampments, I am sure all the MPs in the room receive a mixed bag of correspondence on this issue.

I am very interested in this issue and there are two parts to my question. First, do you think that the existing powers under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 are sufficient to address the issues that arise from unauthorised encampments for communities that are affected? If not, do you think that this Bill goes some way to fill any gaps that have been identified and raised by a number of different groups?

Separately, regarding local authorities, I think it is little-known that local authorities are actually required to find space for Travellers’ sites, transit sites and authorised encampments. Do you have examples of local authority areas that are doing that alongside communities and the police, and it is working well? And what more can local authorities do?

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[The Chair]

Q We will now move on to our sixth panel of witnesses. We have 30 minutes. Could I ask you to introduce yourselves for the record, please?

Marc Willers QC: Good afternoon. My name is Marc Willers. I am a QC barrister practising at Garden Court Chambers.

Adam Wagner: Good afternoon. I am Adam Wagner, a barrister practising at Doughty Street Chambers.

[Sarah Champion]

Q From a human rights perspective, are any groups disproportionately discriminated against in the Bill?

Adam Wagner: I will leave the Gypsy and Traveller aspect to Marc. From a protest perspective, what worries me about the Bill is that it decouples the public order element from the Public Order Act 1986. It makes that Act do things that it was not designed to do—to protect public order by effectively giving the police powers to impose directions on any protest that is very noisy, which is any protest.

In terms of discrimination, I regularly act for clients who protest—not for any particular thing; I act for clients who protest all sorts of things. My concern is that the police and potentially the Government will end up cherry-picking the kinds of protest that they consider to be valuable and the kinds that they consider to be problematic. That will ultimately be a political decision, not one based on public order. Ultimately, it does not matter whether it is a left-wing Government or a right-wing Government—they will have the ability to discriminate against groups that they do not agree with.

Marc Willers QC: You might have guessed that I am going to indicate that the Bill, particularly part 4, discriminates against Romani Gypsies and Irish Travellers, two ethnic minority groups with a traditional way of life, an integral part of which is living in caravans, and which also involves nomadism. The Bill will criminalise trespass at a time when many of those who resort to and reside on unauthorised encampments have nowhere else to go, the reason that being site provision, an elderly but enormous elephant in the room, has not been addressed since 1960, when the Government and Parliament of the day introduced the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960, which closed the commons.

A statutory duty was introduced in 1968 by Lord Eric Avebury, but that duty was subsequently repealed in 1994. I am afraid that the encouragement of private site provision has failed abysmally, and we still have a cohort of Romani Gypsies, Irish Travellers and, indeed, new travellers who do not have a lawful stopping place. Criminalising trespass and giving greater powers, which the police have roundly suggested they do not need, to occupiers of land for the police to enforce really puts another nail in the coffin of nomadism and makes such people’s lives extremely difficult. The disproportionate impact on Gypsies and Travellers is there for all to see.

[Sarah Champion]

Q Thank you very much. To focus on the protest aspect of the Bill, do you think that the terminology around protest is simple enough for protesters to understand, or could it lead to confusion? Again, I will start with Adam, please.

Adam Wagner: It widens the test for being able to impose conditions on a protest to encompass pretty much any protest that is noisy enough to cause intimidation, to harass, or to cause

“serious unease, alarm or distress”

or “serious disruption”. If you are a protest organiser, you will know that that could apply to any protest. You have to appreciate that the current section 12 of the Public Order Act 1986 allows for conditions only when a protest causes

“serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of the community.”

That is already pretty wide.

By making it about noise, you are effectively saying to the organiser that any protest could be caught by that description, so they will have to rely on the good will of the police and the Home Secretary, because the Home Secretary will have a regulation-making power not only to define any of the new terms that I have expressed, but to give examples. Organisers will have to rely on the police and the Home Secretary to decide that their protest is not worth putting conditions on. From a protester perspective, that puts you entirely in the hands of the police and the Home Secretary. That very problematic for somebody organising a protest, because a lot of people will think it is just not worth it, particularly when they are representing an unpopular cause or one that they consider to be controversial. Those are precisely the protests that are the most important, and the most important to protect.

[Sarah Champion]

Q Have you done any analysis on how the measures, particularly the sentencing measures, will impact on women, children and primary carers?

Adam Wagner: No; I have not, I am afraid.

[Sarah Champion]

That is very lax of you, but we will pass.

[The Chair]

Is there anything you wanted to add, Mr Willers?

Marc Willers QC: Much the same can be said about proposed new section 60C of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, in terms of its language. It seems to me that a lot of the language used is vague and uncertain. There is a reference to causing “significant distress” as one of the conditions that could lead to the criminalisation of an individual who refuses to leave a piece of land. That, in itself, brings inherent problems, because a private citizen could very easily invoke the power and leave a police officer with a fait accompli—in other words, they have no option but to arrest an individual who refuses to leave land in circumstances where the occupier says, “I am being caused significant distress by the very fact that this individual is parking on land that I occupy.”

That distress can be engendered or underpinned by the prejudice that Gypsies and Travellers face in our society today. It is a widespread and long-standing prejudice, dating back to the first time that Romani Gypsies came to these shores in the 1500s. I am afraid that it is fuelled by mainstream media and politicians. It is instilled in the minds of many members of the public, and it is bound to play a part. There may well be unwarranted and unjustified concerns on the part of the occupier, which could lead to the criminalisation of an individual who has nowhere else to go.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (First sitting)

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 18th May 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Thank you. I call Sarah Champion to ask the first question.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Q Good morning, everyone. I want to ask a question specifically relating to the police covenant. I am concerned about the level of support for officers dealing with the trauma of having to investigate child abuse cases, and also the knock-on impact that that will have on the survivors. What mandatory training do you have at the moment?

Assistant Commissioner Hewitt: We are always concerned about any officers that have to routinely undertake the kind of work in which there will undoubtedly be an impact on the officer’s welfare. We have a range of wellbeing work that we do, including a specific wellbeing service, Oscar Kilo, that looks after all aspects of wellbeing, particularly mental health wellbeing, which has become one of our priorities in recent years. When you get into specific roles such as the one that you identified there, there is training and assessment for officers who go forward and undertake those roles. There is also regular checking and assessment of those officers so that they are looked at again, spoken to and monitored for any of the specific impacts.

As you have identified, there is a range of roles that we now have officers undertaking that are by their very nature distressing, and of course we recognise that kind of repeated exposure, so there is psychological testing and support provided to those officers. In particular roles, that will incorporate routine and regular checking to ensure that the officer’s welfare is fine. That fits within the much broader work that we undertake more generally on wellbeing, and, as I say, particularly and increasingly mental health wellbeing.

[Sarah Champion]

Q Are there any risks or concerns that you would have if that training became mandatory for all officers as part of the police covenant?

Assistant Commissioner Hewitt: The reality is making that work. An issue that we undoubtedly have around wellbeing and the occupational health service provision is the restricted amount of capacity. That is one of our challenges. In all circumstances, where we want to refer officers or staff for support, one of our frustrations is that it often takes quite a while to access that support. Although there is a positive in the concept of providing more universal support, it would have to be balanced with being able to actually provide the capability and the capacity to do that effectively. That is one of the challenges we face.

[The Chair]

Chief Constable Harrington, do you have anything to add?

Chief Constable Harrington: Like Martin said, we have some systematic processes for those who engage in high risk areas. Some of the capacity issues are dealt with by our trauma incident management response, which enables supervisors and peers to recognise, debrief and spot the people who need further and greater intervention, and almost to triage that response following any kind of traumatic incident, particularly in the cases that have been referenced.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Thank you. I think we will try to follow the same pattern as before. I will try to get Back Benchers in first, and then I will allow about 10 minutes each for the Front Benchers.

[Sarah Champion]

Q Mr McCabe, may I start by apologising for my tardiness? It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship. The strange surroundings threw me. I do apologise for that.

Can I ask of our witnesses the same question that I asked of the chiefs? In the police covenant, would it help and support your members if there were mandatory provision at the very beginning of training and all the way through to support you on a psychological level? I am very aware that you are the first people on many occasions to see some hugely traumatic situations. I am particularly thinking, on child abuse, of the amount of time that police officers have to invest in seeing some pretty horrific things. Should we put in the police covenant mandatory training and support for officers to deal with that trauma?

John Apter: I am happy to start. Thank you for the question. The police covenant is very close to my heart, and it is something that the Police Federation has campaigned for. Absolutely, it needs to be meaningful and tangible, and it needs to have a benefit for those it is there to support—not only officers, but staff, volunteers and retired colleagues. Mr Hewitt said earlier that much has been done about wellbeing in policing over the past few years, and I support that.

We have come an awful long way, but we have not gone far enough. One of the frustrations that my colleagues have is the inconsistency within forces. I have had this conversation with the College of Policing, and part of that is the lack of ability or willingness to mandate particular aspects of training and support. The covenant gives us a great opportunity to put in place mandated levels of psychological support and training from the start of somebody’s service to its conclusion and beyond.

Chief Superintendent Griffiths: I echo John’s view on this. There has been a rise in some of the challenges that officers face—even our members—in terms of psychological trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder and so on. In my role as president of the Police Superintendents’ Association, and as a trustee of the police charities that help and support in these issues, I have seen a rise in some of the challenges that officers face—not only those on the frontline, but my members who are senior operational leaders.

The service has come a long way with the frontline review, the officer safety review and a rise in our focus on wellbeing as a consequence of some of the challenges we have faced over the past decade. Do we need anything additional in the legislation in respect of that? There is a need for consistency across occupational health standards, but I think that could be achieved through the programme management rather than through legislation. There is a real focus in the service now, through Oscar Kilo and wellbeing, the NPCC, and staff associations in this area, and we are working closely together, so there is a golden opportunity with the police covenant to best serve and support officers and staff across the whole country.

[Sarah Champion]

Q The Bill, as it stands, is a working document. If you were able to draft amendments specifically to provide more support for victims of crime, what would you both like to see in it?

Chief Superintendent Griffiths: It is hugely important for us to be victim-orientated in our policing services. We have really focused, over the last 10 to 15 years, on vulnerability issues and the significant vulnerability areas of policing, through the College of Policing and the NPCC drive, and we have identified victims, both online and in the physical space. That is a clear focus for us as a service: how best to serve victims.

In many of the initial contacts with victims, we provide a very good service and there is very good feedback, but over time, with the pressures that we are under, that sort of connectivity, and the confidence and trust that victims have in policing, can get strained because of the lack of contact. That is not to say that things are not going on, but we have to work within a system—particularly through the criminal justice system, which is also under strain—where we have to work with victims as best as possible, to deliver the best possible service.

In terms of our service delivery to victims, not only are our tact and diplomacy important in the way we deal with them, at the incidents or wherever they report matters to us—whether current or historic—but there is almost a path by which we have to keep connected to those individuals to provide them with the best possible service. I think that is key for us: that connectivity, drive and support through all the criminal justice processes.

[Sarah Champion]

Q Do you have the resources to do that at the moment?

Chief Superintendent Griffiths: We have the increase with the additional 20,000 officers who are coming in. It is my hope and expectation that we can actively deploy them to support victims, along with the other challenges and demands that we have. Do we ever have enough police officers? No. There are always things that we want to do, and we have the same ambition as society: to do the very best we can and do as much as we can. In that sense, we never have enough, but in terms of our ability to deal with some of the demand, the increase in resources is very welcome, and hopefully, we will be able to provide a better service to the whole public, as much as our focus around victims.

[Sarah Champion]

Q Thank you. And from the Federation’s point of view?

John Apter: I completely echo and support Paul’s comments—he and I work very closely together on this. My colleagues want to do the best they can for victims of crime. What I would add to what Paul said is, “Let us not forget the victims within the service.” You heard from Mr Hewitt that assaults on officers, staffers and other emergency workers have increased by 19% during the pandemic—some horrific levels of attacks—and very often, my colleagues say that they feel they are treated as a second-class victim.

I think we have done enormous things to improve that over the years. A project called Operation Hampshire, of which we are particularly proud and which is being led by the Met, is improving the quality of service that victims within the service get. If I were to add to my ever-increasing wish list on the legislation, I would say that yes, the victims in the public must get the best service possible, but I want to see that same level of service—not better, but the same—extended to my colleagues and members of police staff, because all too often, they feel that that is not the case.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Sarah Champion Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading - Day 1
Monday 15th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab) [V]]

I welcome parts of this Bill, but there are glaring omissions, especially around violence against women and children. In Rotherham, and across the country, all too often victims and survivors of crime, especially sexual violence, lack confidence in the system, and this Bill was the opportunity to change that. There are far too many instances where sentencing is too lenient, or indeed where predatory or violent behaviours are not even criminalised.

I am relieved that the Government are finally reintroducing pre-charge bail conditions. Removing them in 2017 led to survivors living in fear of reprisals from their abusers. I also very much welcome the fact that the Government are finally bringing forward the “positions of trust” provisions that make it illegal for faith leaders and sports coaches to have sex with 16 and 17-year-olds in their care. However, the Government need to extend this law to cover the likes of driving instructors, youth workers, police officers and private tutors.

I am pleased about the progress on extending the offence of arranging or facilitating the commission of a child sex offence to include the rape and abuse of a child, and on stronger sentences for commensurate harm. However, the Bill must be strengthened to address online sexual exploitation. Aggravating factors must be included, as has been done in Australia, when it comes to sentencing. The Bill should be amended to state that approaching a person with regard to child sexual offences also specifically includes doing so online or via other telecommunications.

The provisions on the establishment of a list of countries considered to be at high risk of child sexual exploitation or abuse by UK nationals need to include countries that are at risk from UK citizens who commit abhorrent crimes online. Too often, I hear of UK nationals remotely directing abuse of, often, Filipino children from their own homes. Currently, there is a loophole in the law whereby a registered sex offender can change their name through deed poll and then go under the radar of the authorities. Alarmingly, I recently uncovered the fact that over 16,000 sex offenders breached their notification requirements in the past five years, which means that they disappeared from the system set up to monitor them.

Finally, I am astounded that while the Bill makes several changes to procedures in courts and tribunals, the Government have not used it as an opportunity to further improve support for victims and witnesses of sexual abuse.

Tragic events of the past week have shown just how important this Bill is. For too long, abuse, and particularly violence against women and girls, has gone on unchecked and survivors have been left to deal with a system that is not only not working but often making their situation worse. Crimes against women often specifically occur because they are women. These crimes are not gender neutral, so the law should not be either. We must consider a definition in terms of making misogyny a hate crime.

Grooming Gangs

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab) [V]]

I really appreciate the fact that we are having this debate, because I have spent eight years trying to get justice for survivors of child sexual exploitation and to prevent grooming gangs. I have been vilified, smeared and threatened, by the far right and the far left, who use this crime for their own political agenda. The only impact it has had on me is that I get a taste of the intimidation that survivors have to endure. So their threats just make me more determined to make sure we permanently get rid of any form of child sexual exploitation. But their actions embolden the abusers. They make it more difficult for those in child protection to do their jobs, and they deter victims from coming forward.

I fail to understand why this topic is so emotive, when there is a clear picture of gangs with a similar profile being involved in sexual abuse and exploitation. This should be investigated without fear or favour, as any other gang-related crime would be. We live in a democracy, and the law should be able to be applied in an even-handed way.

We are very fortunate in Rotherham, because the National Crime Agency’s Operation Stovewood is looking at cases of CSE by grooming gangs between 1997 and 2013, a 16-year period. It has already identified 1,569 survivors and 261 designated suspects. To date we have had 20 convictions in court, and four awaiting trial. That is in 16 years. I know survivors who are 70 years old. Think about the scale and length of time of this abuse.

Now some specific suggestions to prevent CSE by grooming gangs and to secure convictions. Each potential victim should have a named person they are comfortable with, and that person should be shared across all stakeholders. The treatment of witnesses and survivors must be constantly reviewed to make sure they are able to give evidence in a safe format and receive the support they deserve.

Mandatory relationship education for all primary schoolchildren should have been in place in September 2020, but we have still not been given an implementation date. The law desperately needs updating on positions of trust and online harms. There should be stricter sentencing. The use of pre-charge bail, particularly where there is a flight risk, must be swiftly cut back.

Serious consideration needs to be given to offender release. Sexual predators do not change their patterns of behaviour, and they return to the same communities where they carried out the abuse. Prevention must be our focus, which means health professionals should be trained to spot and support potential perpetrators.

Trading standards officers should be able to investigate premises where they believe grooming gangs operate. A multi-agency approach is key, but it has to be full and equal across all partners and that should include Government Departments. I am glad the Government are looking to make funding for support services more stable. To succeed, it has to be long-term funding.

Unregulated care homes must be banned for all children under the age of 18. We need to promote closer interaction between the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. We need to use disruption tactics as much as possible which avoid victims having to give evidence. Our adversarial court proceedings further brutalise victims and survivors, and this is unacceptable. We have to change it.

We need to establish a national set of triggers that allow local authorities to provide support for children showing signs of harm, rather than the current postcode lottery. We need to make sure that every toolkit dealing with CSE understands that children have a range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds, as currently there is an assumption that victims of CSE are non-disabled white girls, and that is not true. We need to require every local authority to take urgent steps to improve the accessibility of CSE services.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Lady is well past her four-minute time limit, I am afraid. I will give her a final sentence.

[Sarah Champion]

Fundamentally, the Government need to work in a cross-departmental way to end this crime once and for all.

Serious Criminal Cases Backlog

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Wednesday 20th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I say to victims: we are there to support you, to hear you and to seek justice for you. As my hon. Friend knows, we are hiring 20,000 extra police officers to keep victims safe. We are keeping the court system running in these difficult circumstances. We are getting back to a period in which magistrates courts are clearing the backlog and, I believe, the Crown court shortly will do so. So I say to victims: justice will be done. Your voice will be heard. Come forward. We are here for you. Do not hesitate—we want to hear your story. We will listen to it, we will act and we will make sure justice is done.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab) [V]]

Shockingly, only 1.4% of those reporting rape secure a conviction, and that figure was before the news of deleted police records and the covid court backlog. For the last 10 years, this Government have run down the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, courts, prisons and probation, so what confidence can the Minister give to victims and survivors of sexual violence that they will be able to secure justice?

Oral Answers to Questions

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

Very much so. I can assure my hon. Friend that the places of worship protective security funding scheme has been designed so that each place of worship can apply for practical security measures that suit their individual needs, ranging from CCTV to alarm systems. This allows each place of worship to remain open and accessible for worshippers, while providing greater security. We want to ensure that this scheme listens to worshippers and their communities when seeking to achieve the balance to which he rightly refers.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

What progress she has made on preventing the sexual exploitation of children by organised gangs.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Priti Patel)]

I thank

the hon. Lady for her a question and pay tribute to her for the work that she has done specifically on the whole issue of child sexual exploitation.

[Sarah Champion]

I am grateful that the Home Secretary takes this topic seriously. We in Rotherham are very fortunate because we have National Crime Agency to deal with past cases, but will she also look at cases across the country, the resources that police forces have there and the local authorities that have to step in and put the child protection and victim support in place, as there is not enough nationally?

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Lady is right. It is fair to say that she and I go back a long way on this issue. I recall that she first came to see me on this point when I was in the Treasury many years ago. She knows that I have recently announced that the Home Office will be publishing a paper to help us better understand the characteristics associated with groups. I would welcome it if she were to work with me and to join our external reference group that I have established on this important area. She specifically raises issues about third-party organisations, and she mentioned some in her own constituency. I have met many survivors and sufferers with her on this issue. They have had a terrible time. They have also been failed by many aspects of the state and society. We can never allow that to happen again, which is why I am committed, not just through resourcing, but through the work that I have commissioned in the Department, which I know she will join me in and support us on, to make sure that no other aspect of the state, organisation, third party, or Government institution turns a blind eye and ignores the needs of individuals in the way that happened in her constituency.

Operation Augusta

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher.

I am going to be brief, because I have said the same thing for six years. However, I think it needs reiterating, because it clearly is not getting through. I am incredibly grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) for bringing this debate forward. These things need to be heard, because things are still going wrong. I, too, watched the drama “The Betrayed Girls”, but it could have been a documentary and, to be honest, it could have been almost anywhere in the country. Time and again, I meet girls—often, they are now young women—who have been through an identical experience.

There is an almost identical pattern of grooming and then sexual exploitation, which often leads to trafficking and prostitution as the children become adults, so I am concerned that there is still no national strategy for the disruption and prevention of this specific form of child abuse. Why is that? There are incredibly close similarities between grooming and exploiting children for sex, and grooming and exploiting children for criminal activities. My hunch—I do not know this; it is just a hunch—is that those things are probably done by similar gangs of people. Will the Minister please commission research on that?

As my hon. Friend said, we also need a perpetrator profile. Unless the police understand the way these networks operate, they are unable to disrupt them—they are unable to get ahead of the curve and prevent children from being harmed. We absolutely must have that profile. It would be a simple thing to do. A forensic psychologist could be commissioned to do it. Again to be blunt, we have probably 300 perpetrators of exactly the same method of criminality in jail. Please, let us use that resource and use their experience for a positive purpose.

I also want to focus the Minister’s attention on the fact that statutory support for victims and survivors just disappears as soon as they turn 18. That is very important because, under this method of criminality, although children tend to be groomed at around 12 or 13 and the sexual exploitation happens between 13 and 16, it continues into adulthood. Often, because of the mental torture and manipulation that victims have gone through, it takes them years once the abuse has stopped to be able to articulate it, let alone to be believed. That is why it tends to be adults who come forward to speak about these crimes. We need support in place for adults to enable them, I hope, to have the strength to go through the court process.

Next week, I will launch a report by my all-party parliamentary group, the APPG on adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, on the impact of this crime and the likelihood of justice. It impacts every aspect of the lives of survivors, from their mental health to their physical health. It affects their likelihood of being addicted to drugs, their ability—or inability—to maintain long-term relationships, and their ability to fulfil their education and therefore their career. I say to the Minister that he needs to work in a cross-departmental way to establish a fund so anybody who discloses this sort of abuse, particularly if they are an adult, can immediately get, for example, six sessions of counselling or support. That would enable them to stabilise their life so they can go on and have a good life, and to be a good witness so we can get the prosecutions we so desperately need.

A number of Members mentioned accountability. Accountability is important because, clearly, people have failed in their duty to protect those children, for whatever reason. Accountability is important because we need to know it will not happen again. If there are training needs or if some sort of disciplinary action should follow, that should be implemented so other children are not let down in the future.

The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who has done so much in this area, said that this issue was not really on the radar of the statutory agencies until 2011. I agree, but he also knows that this model of behaviour has been going on since the early ’60s. That is the earliest I can find it documented. I have people in Keighley, Birmingham and, indeed, Rotherham who can testify that they saw it going on in the early ’60s. It was not on the radar of the statutory agencies, but it was on the radar of the wider communities. There was a lack of trust and respect because people knew a crime was being carried out but the agencies did not act on it. Unless there is accountability now, it will be very hard to bring forward that trust and respect. I therefore urge the Minister, on behalf of the survivors and of children who are still vulnerable, to ensure that we have a fund for survivors and that we see accountability for these crimes.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I want to thank the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) for securing this debate on the independent assurance review on child sexual exploitation in Manchester, and particularly for the serious and effective tone he set for the debate. The subject is clearly important not only to Members for Greater Manchester constituencies, but to Members representing places across the country, given what the review uncovered.

The report of the first phase of the review, focusing on Operation Augusta, was shocking. It told a story that has sadly become far too familiar, of vulnerable young people let down by those whose job it was to protect them. The Government welcome the publication of the report. While it is distressing to read, we must bear in mind that reviews such as the independent review in Manchester are critical. If we do not confront the failures of the past, we risk repeating them. Reviews such as this give a voice to the survivors of abuse and allow their stories to be heard—stories that previously were too often ignored.

I turn to one or two of the points raised during the debate by hon. Members. Regarding the query from my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson), we expect the review later this year. However, we as the Government cannot commit to a specific date, because the report is an independent one and therefore the exact date of publication is in the hands of the reviewer. There were particular queries in relation to the coroner’s report; I understand that there has been correspondence between the Mayor of Greater Manchester and the Attorney General, and that the Attorney General is considering the request to look at reopening that particular inquiry.

There were also some comments, not surprisingly, about what is being done to hold to account those who failed so visibly in this investigation. My understanding is that the Independent Office for Police Conduct, which is rightly independent of the Government, has been in discussions with the Greater Manchester authority and is scoping a potential investigation. I hope hon. Members will realise why the Home Office cannot go much further than that at this stage in commenting on particular individuals.

There was also commentary about the iOPS system in relation to Greater Manchester Police. I understand that the Mayor has commissioned Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services to undertake an inspection, and we are awaiting the written report. We expect it to be published shortly and will, of course, closely consider any recommendations that it brings forward.

It was partly because of cases such as this that, in 2015, the Government established the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse to get to the truth, expose what has gone wrong and learn lessons for the future. The inquiry is investigating institutional responses to child sexual exploitation by organised networks, with public hearings scheduled to take place from 20 April this year. There was some talk in the debate about commissioning research; I understand the inquiry has already announced it has commissioned research into the motivation and behaviour of perpetrators who operate as part of organised networks. Given that, we do not believe it would be appropriate for the Government to set about duplicating the work while it is under way. We will wait for the findings and are ready to commission further research if necessary. I feel I might be about to get some comments on this from the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), who I will happily give way to.

[Sarah Champion]

I am a core participant in that bit of the IICSA inquiry, and unfortunately the Minister has been sold a pup—it would be a nice pup—because it is looking very much at those six organisations and how they deal with the problem going forward. There is no retrospective accountability, and there is not the detailed investigation into the profile of perpetrators that the police really need.

[Kevin Foster]

I thank the hon. Member for her intervention. I am sure that my ministerial colleague will be happy to hear her response and discuss it, perhaps at greater length, if there are specific concerns. Obviously the independent review is independent and will scope its own research as it sees fit and appropriate, so the Government are loth to potentially duplicate that. Moreover, the point of having an independent review is to hear the view of an independent source, rather than its being the Home Office as such that is commissioning research. Certainly we would be more than happy to engage perhaps a little bit further than we will be able to do in the remaining six minutes of this debate, if she has particular concerns.

The victims and survivors of these crimes demonstrate enormous courage and strength in coming forward, reporting what is happening to them and sharing their experiences. In some cases, they have to relive those experiences to share them. For too long, the police and other agencies treated vulnerable children and young people as a problem. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said, they referred to them as “child prostitutes”, when there is no such thing—there is a child being seriously abused.

The victims’ voices were not heard, children were left unprotected and predators were left to continue to abuse those most vulnerable in our society. I want to make it clear that we will not accept that now. Children and young people rely on both Government and local partners for safeguarding and support. It is therefore our duty to protect them from these appalling crimes. Their voices must be heard. We must recognise abuse for what it is and treat victims with empathy and respect, not doubt and suspicion.

The Government have driven change in the way that these crimes are responded to, and it is right that child sexual abuse is now prioritised as a national threat. We are clear that, when victims come forward to report abuse, they should expect every effort to be made to bring offenders to justice. One point I share with the shadow Minister relates to the idea that resources were reprioritised or investigations ended; it is almost impossible to think what could be more important than preventing children from suffering serious sexual offences. What could be more important than that?

The Home Office has therefore provided support through its police special grant fund for investigations relating to child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, north Wales, west Yorkshire and other areas. In response to the shadow Minister’s point, we would of course consider any application that came forward from Greater Manchester as well. We are changing the way police respond to crimes against vulnerable people, including child sexual abuse. As part of this, we have worked with the College of Policing to draw up a comprehensive package of training to ensure the police are better placed to respond to child protection issues. We are also funding the Vulnerability Knowledge and Practice programme to develop policing best practice in response to vulnerability as a whole.

Yet, as has been touched on, keeping children safe is not just the job of the police. We have also changed the way police and other agencies work together to ensure an effective response in safeguarding children. The Children and Social Work Act 2017 introduced the most significant reforms in a generation, ensuring that police, health and local authority partners within an area work together to protect vulnerable children. We have also introduced joint targeted inspections of local agencies’ performance in protecting children from threats such as child exploitation. Effective multi-agency working is recognised as the foundation for success.

In 2019, the Government launched a new tackling child exploitation support programme to help safeguarding partners in local areas to tackle a range of threats to children from gangs, sexual and criminal exploitation, online grooming, trafficking and modern slavery. We have already seen some effective multi-agency working, such as the Home Office-funded Lighthouse in London. This ground-breaking service is based on international best practice and under one roof provides child-friendly, victim-centred, multi-agency support to child victims of sexual abuse.

However, we must go further and deprive predators of the opportunity to abuse and exploit our children in the first place. That is why, as part of our efforts to prevent abuse and exploitation, we have launched the Trusted Relationships fund. The fund supports local authority-led projects across England, working with 10 to 17-year-olds identified as being at risk of child sexual abuse or exploitation, criminal exploitation or peer-on-peer abuse, to build their resilience and strengthen their relationships with the trusted adults in their lives. As part of that, more than £1 million will be awarded to Greater Manchester for the four-year programme. The Home Office has also provided funding support for a regional network of exploitation prevention officers, who are helping local partners to join up, spot the signs of abuse and intervene early to safeguard vulnerable children. It is our priority to ensure that all victims and survivors believe they can come forward to report abuse and get the assistance they need.

That is why we have increased grant funding for victim support services across the country: in this financial year, the Government are providing more than £7 million of funding for non-statutory organisations supporting victims and survivors of child sexual abuse, and in September the Government announced an additional £5 million of funding for separate specialist sexual violence support services, including £1 million towards recruiting more independent sexual violence advisers, who play such a critical part in supporting victims through the criminal justice process. The Government have also increased spending from £31 million in 2018 to a planned £39 million in 2020-21 to improve services and pathways for survivors and victims of sexual violence and abuse who seek support from sexual assault referral centres.

While we can and must do more, it is important that we acknowledge how far we have come in the years since the closure of Operation Augusta and recognise the improvements in how police forces and other agencies deal with these crimes. Inspection reports tell us that professionals’ understanding of vulnerability has improved and there is now a real emphasis on the safeguarding and protection of vulnerable children across England and Wales.

On 4 September 2019, the Government announced an additional £30 million to safeguard children from child sexual exploitation and abuse, increasing funding for cutting-edge technology and making available the best intelligence and law enforcement capabilities, which will enable police officers to target offenders and provide more support to victims. Later this year, the Government will publish a national strategy, the first of its kind, to tackle all forms of child sexual abuse. Our new strategy will set out our whole-system response and how we will work across Government, law enforcement, safeguarding partners and industry to root out offending.

I thank the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton once more for securing this debate. Vulnerable children, victims and survivors of these appalling crimes, rely on us, both in Parliament and in local communities, to represent their needs and ensure they receive the support to which they are entitled. As a Government, we will continue to work tirelessly across all Departments to tackle child sexual abuse in all its forms.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered Operation Augusta.

Policing and Crime

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I rise today not so much to deliver a speech, but to ask the Minister for help because I do not know what else I can do as an MP to get justice, to get prosecutions and to get accountability when it comes specifically to grooming gangs exploiting children.

I am incredibly grateful for the hard work of South Yorkshire police. The frontline officers have been exemplary in both listening to and supporting victims, survivors, parents and the broader community. However, we must also accept that there is reputational damage to South Yorkshire police from past failings. They have yet to be recognised in full, and they have yet to be resolved. I want a line drawn under this so that our police force can have both the respect and the trust that it needs, and I need the Government’s help to be able to do that.

Five years ago, almost to the day, on 4 February 2015, I had a meeting with the then Prime Minister, David Cameron. I presented him with a five-point plan for tackling this scourge, and I will read my introduction to that:

“From my experience in Rotherham I am convinced that we need a national strategy to tackle organised child abuse. Criminals do not observe local authority or police force boundaries. Locally, there are neither the resources, or expertise, to tackle organised child abuse, by which I mean gang-related child sexual exploitation, institutional abuse, paedophile rings and prolific abusers.”

Sadly, I could be reading that today—indeed, I am—because the situation has changed very little. I am incredibly glad and grateful that the Government have introduced relationship education—one of the things I am proudest to have campaigned on.

[Seema Malhotra]

My hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful speech. I pay tribute to her work in her constituency on these difficult, complex and devastating issues, and in seeking justice for those who have been groomed. Paedophile rings behave in ways that we cannot imagine, and people continue to pursue those who are victims in their rings, even once they have gone to jail. Resources must be made available to deal with that issue far more comprehensively than is currently the case.

[Sarah Champion]

My hon. Friend is right, but the difference between paedophile rings and grooming gangs is that for the former, the police have the research and understanding to know what the motivators are. A police force can look at patterns of behaviour or get ahead of the abuse because they see those patterns, and then they can disrupt it. Sadly, for all the promises that the Government made, we still do not have that research about grooming gangs. That is something I asked for, and something I would like the Minister to reassure me about.

I sent a letter to the then Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid)—I have been working on this for a while—and on 6 December I received a reply:

“Thank you for your letter of 3 September to the Home Secretary seeking an update on Home Office activity to understand the characteristics of group-based child sexual exploitation…In your letter you emphasise the need for research and the importance of sharing relevant findings with agencies tasked with protecting vulnerable children and young people and disrupting offenders…I recognise that the Home Office is uniquely placed to provide some of this insight, protecting operationally sensitive information where it is appropriate and necessary. Officials will consider the most appropriate approach in sharing this work and will advise Ministers, including the Home Secretary, in due course.”

I hope that officials have now advised the Home Secretary about a matter that is pressing, up and down our country.

The Government have committed to publishing a national child sexual abuse strategy that will look at all forms of abuse, but I am talking specifically about research that is used to disrupt grooming gangs, which should be published imminently. Will the Government make a commitment on timing, and say how that information will be shared nationally? How will police forces, local authorities and the voluntary sector be resourced so that they can use that data to disrupt such behaviour?

I turn now to the historical failings of our police forces. Two weeks ago, the Mayor of Greater Manchester published a report into Operation Augusta, which was about trying to disrupt a grooming gang and seek justice. The headlines from that report are shocking. It found that police and social services failed the girls, and that police resources were insufficient to deal with the issue. The girls were seen as prostitutes and as somehow complicit in their own abuse. Greater Manchester police dropped an operation that identified up to 97 potential suspects, and at least 57 potential victims. Eight of those men went on to rape girls. As recently as 2018, the chief constable refused to reopen the dropped operation.

The following week, the Independent Office for Police Conduct released a report into one strand of its investigation into the handling of past child abuse cases by South Yorkshire police. I wrote to our chief constable, and stated:

“The report’s conclusions make profoundly disturbing reading. South Yorkshire police failed the child multiple times, and by doing so, led her to be exposed to long-term horrific abuse. It is particularly concerning that the report upholds a complaint against a senior officer and that it has not been possible for this officer to be identified.

As I am sure you would agree, I do not believe it is possible for Rotherham to have confidence in its police force whilst officers found to have failed so badly, and with such catastrophic consequences, are not held to account for their actions. I would therefore welcome your assurances that every effort will be made to identify officers involved, and that any possible misconduct will be both investigated and action taken, including where appropriate, disciplinary action.”

I have still not received a satisfactory response to that, although I hope I will receive one. This not a witch hunt; this is about restoring confidence in our local police force. This is about victims and survivors feeling that they have had closure, and that what they went through will never happen to anybody else. I ask the Minister: please, let us look at transparency and accountability in our police forces.

I ask all hon. Members present, including the Minister, to ask their police forces for information about the caseloads of officers who are dealing with child sexual exploitation, compared with those dealing with other crimes. How many dedicated child sexual exploitation officers are qualified in the professionalising investigation programme—PIP2—and what is the ratio of uniformed police officers to detectives assigned to CSE investigations? What is the retention rate of investigating officers on CSE cases, and what is the average level of experience among officers assigned to CSE investigations? I say to all of you: if you think you do not have child exploitation in your patch, you have. Ask those questions and make sure that your force is properly resourced to protect everyone in your constituency.