Immigration Bill (Second sitting)

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[James Brokenshire]

Q 79 Such as?

Neil Carberry: The obvious one would be parts of agriculture.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Q 80 I look forward to serving under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. Mr Carberry, offences are already specified in the Immigration Act 1971 that are applicable to migrants who breach their immigration conditions. Do you believe that clause 8, which creates the new criminal offence of illegal working, is necessary, and do you think that it may have unintended consequences?

Neil Carberry: What we are particularly concerned about is that any criminal offence is genuinely used to go after criminal activity. Employment law offences are typically civil offences. As I have already said, breaches are largely inadvertent, or if they are not inadvertent they are due to lack of understanding on the part of an employer. The right place to police that is through education, the tribunal system, the advice that ACAS offers and so forth. I am not a criminal lawyer. To the extent that the offence that has been created is to be used to go after employers where there is repeated, multi-faceted and exploitative treatment of workers, we are very happy for that offence to exist, so long as the businesses that are brought to justice are engaged in those steps. What worries us particularly is not the existence of the offence but the risk that there may be a general drift of employment law in the United Kingdom from the civil to the criminal, because that would be quite destructive for employee relations in general.

[Sarah Champion]

Q 81 Just to unpick that, do you think that actually criminalising the workers is useful in changing practice?

Neil Carberry: I think that the critical issue is the action by employers. The CBI is not taking a position on criminalisation of workers; that is not within our vires as a business organisation.

[Sarah Champion]

Q 82 I agree that if employers are employing people illegally, they should be accountable for that. Do you feel that the Bill goes far enough to enable that to be enforced?

Neil Carberry: I think that the critical issue is not the law in this case; it is the will to go after some of the very worst practices in the UK labour market. It is about co-operation between the police and other authorities in getting into some of these beds in sheds places and taking action. One of the lessons we have to learn from the experiment with the Gangmasters Licensing Authority is that the GLA has largely been a box-ticking licensing organisation that has increased costs on the compliant. There is relatively little evidence that the creation of a registration approach has actually done anything to prevent exploitation. From a CBI perspective, we would far rather that the Government had a strong offence, structured in a way that would stack up in the courts, and then used powers of prohibition, for instance, to drive out bad practice. Of course, that is what we had before the GLA was brought into existence—albeit that they were not heavily or effectively used.

[Sarah Champion]

Q 83 Finally, do you believe that the director has the remit and the resources to prevent this from being a box-ticking exercise? Would they have the authority to make the necessary changes?

Neil Carberry: That remains to be seen. The director clearly has to develop an enforcement plan, which has to be approved by the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills. I would hope that that enforcement plan was well grounded in the effective work that some of the agencies are currently doing and would therefore be resourceable from within that. I had discussions last week with the HMRC team who are looking at non-compliance with the minimum wage; they feel that they currently have the resources to continue the good work they are doing.

[Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)]

Q 84 I want to turn back to the evidence given to us this morning by Professor Sir David Metcalf. When he was discussing the CBI, he said that the regulation of the labour market proposed in the Bill would take away the cowboys and help your sector. He went on to say that it would go a long way towards raising the welfare of British residents. Do you think he has applied a risk-based, intelligent approach to his assessment?

Neil Carberry: I think the proof of the pudding is in the eating when it comes to the director. On the existence of a labour market director to do this work, his assessment could well be the case. What worries us is less what is in the Bill as introduced than some of the discussion in the Government’s consultation paper last week, which seems to suggest a broadening of a licensing approach. I think that would ultimately be a doubling up regulation on the compliant and would draw away from kicking down the doors of the non-compliant. From our perspective, there is every chance that the labour market director’s role could be very beneficial to lawful companies and workers.

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[The Chair]

You are all very welcome.

[Sarah Champion]

Q 101 Thank you all for coming today. Lord Green, to give us some context, what is your estimate of the current size of the irregular migrant population in the UK?

Lord Green of Deddington: Yes, I am very glad to offer you some context, because I think we really have to see the Bill in the wider context. We realise that there are already 11 Acts of Parliament dealing with immigration and that there is a handbook of immigration law of nearly 2,000 pages. So we have that in mind, but, even so, the Bill in principle has our full support. We think it is a serious and intelligent attempt to tackle illegal immigration and the pull factors that drive it.

It has also come at a pretty opportune time. I need hardly tell you that immigration is the major issue of public concern, especially as the crisis in Syria and the middle east has led to the effective collapse of the borders of southern Europe. We have been lucky here in that, in recent years, we have had only 20,000 or 25,000 asylum claims, but I think we all remember when that number hit 80,000 and we found that there were half a million files lying around in a warehouse, which was appalling, especially for those who had genuine cases, but on any level that was appalling and must not be repeated.

In terms of context, it seems to me that we now need to get ahead of that curve, both in identifying genuine claimants and removing and deterring those who are in fact economic migrants. We think that the Bill can help in that task.

To answer your specific question about the probable size, in 2009, the LSE gave a central estimate of about 600,000. We looked at that and thought that a million was probably closer, but almost by definition it is impossible to be accurate. The conclusion to be drawn from those numbers is that it is absolutely inconceivable that the Government would introduce measures that removed a million people from the country by force. It cannot be done, would not be done and nobody would support it. That is why measures, including some of those in the Bill, are essential if we are to persuade people to make up their own minds and go home when they should.

It is worth mentioning in that context that the sheer scale of movement is not really widely understood. In any one year—I will take 2014—7.5 million tourist visas were issued. Clearly, some of those will be tempted to overstay. Business visitors: 1.7 million. Students and student visitors: 270,000 in one year. So you are looking at an enormous flow of people and no way in which you can forcibly remove them if you need to. Indeed, we do not even know who they are, or even if they are here. As you probably know, exit checks were abandoned by the Conservatives to the EU in ’94 and by Labour to the rest of the world in ’98. So for nearly 20 years, nobody— the Government, the Home Office—has the slightest idea who has gone home and who has not. We are starting from an appallingly difficult situation and, as I said, the only way to approach it is to improve the likelihood of people deciding for themselves. Also, it is necessary to tackle the difficulties that have arisen in the removal process. In my view, they are not very widely understood, and when I first heard them, I was rather surprised.

It is the case, surely, that an effective removal capability is at the basis of the credibility of the whole system. If people think that they can stay indefinitely and not be removed, of course they will do that if it is to their advantage. I am afraid that successive Governments have sort of concealed the weakness of the system by conflating various figures, but if you look at the number of immigration offenders who have been removed, in the last six years the average has been fewer than 5,000 every year compared to the numbers that I have just given you for the inflow. It will be obvious to you that work is required on this front, and I hope obvious to you that this Bill will help with that.

[Sarah Champion]

Q 102 To expand on that, at a practical level, you rightly said that there are 11 Acts of Parliament, and that we still do not know who is coming in and who is going out. Groups have said that if support to asylum seekers is withdrawn, there is concern that they might abscond from the system. On a practical level, what do you believe the Bill will add to existing legislation, so that we can deal with the problem? From my casework, I know that the biggest problem is that once the Home Office team has gone through the process to recognise that someone needs to be deported, it does not have the resources to deport them. On a practical level, I cannot see how the legislation will make that process more straightforward. Are there specific proposals in the Bill that will do so?

Lord Green of Deddington: Yes, and that is a very good question if I may say so. There is a huge amount to do, but I would pick out the appeal process, which has been leading to significant sources of delay, and is sometimes quite ruthlessly exploited by a bogus applicant, and is more likely to be so, and by some of the lawyers. The first-tier tribunal has considered 850,000 cases in the past seven years, so the provisions in the Bill that will provide for removal first and appeals later will be very important. Equally, it will be important that that provision is not applied when it should not be, and I am sure that you will be focused on that as a Committee. The reality, however, is that the legal system has been exploited to the disadvantage of the community as a whole.

So far, as I am sure that you know, the Government have reduced the number of kinds of appeal that you can make from 17 to four. When they applied the “removal first, appeals later” provision to foreign national offenders, they found that only 25% bothered to appeal and of the total, only 1% succeeded. Of course, foreign national offenders are likely to have a much less convincing case than many others, but if we can find a way, consistent with human rights of course, to shift the burden of appeals, we can get the whole system moving more rapidly than it has in the past. And as I said at the beginning of my evidence, now is the time to do it, because we must have a system. The Government keep talking, and rightly so, about breaking the link between people getting to Britain and believing that they can stay here indefinitely. That amounts to the fact that we must have an effective way both of differentiating between economic migrants and asylum seekers and of swiftly removing the first of those two. There is a lot to be done, and I think that the Bill will help.

[Sarah Champion]

My final question—

[The Chair]

Very briefly.

[Sarah Champion]

In that case, I will let other people have a go.

[James Brokenshire]

Q 103 Lord Green, there has been some questioning during the course of this session about the introduction of offences relating to illegal working, in particular the creation of an illegal working offence against employees. Could you share any thoughts and comments on how we can have a firm response and crack down on illegal working in all its different forms, as well as some of the draws that entice people into migration? How would you respond to the challenge that this may somehow prevent people from coming forward who may be victims of exploitation or trafficking, for example?

Lord Green of Deddington: I will keep my answers shorter in future, Mr Chairman, but I wanted to set out some of the basic considerations.

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[Chloe Smith]

Q 137 Mr Leenders, any reflections?

Eric Leenders: I think we can identify 123 million instant access accounts. If we were to apply the experience from the Immigration Act of roughly 1% of searches being referred to the Home Office, that would potentially lead to a working assumption of about 1 million or 1.2 million searches being referred to the Home Office. That, in itself, surfaces an operational point about the readiness of the Home Office to deal with that volume in the initial wave of searches in the first quarter of the implementation of the Act. That is just one of those technical issues that we would like to work through. We might be able to find mitigants to that. For example, we might be able to strip out those who currently hold UK passports, but that is detail that we can work through in secondary legislation. I would not see that as a primary legislative point at all.

[Sarah Champion]

Q 138 I have two small, mopping-up questions. Mr Leenders, you went through the customer service and administrative burdens that the legislation puts on you, but are you largely in favour of it? Are there any unintended consequences of the legislation that we should be aware of?

Eric Leenders: We do not have a policy position on the Bill, nor did we on the Immigration Act 2014. There are some customer service points that give a little cause for concern. Referring customers with a seven-day service level agreement to the Home Office leaves them, effectively, in limbo for a period, and that customer might, quite justifiably, be entitled to an account. We do not feel that is the best experience, so we would want to work through one or two details like that. We would certainly want to have a period of testing—we are already encouraged by the Treasury giving some consideration to its own pilot exercise—presumably during the formulation of the secondary legislation, such that the customer impacts are minimised so far as possible.

[Sarah Champion]

Q 139 Mr Smith and Mr Lambert, I was surprised by how small the sample size was in the west midlands pilot results. Of the 67 respondents who are tenants, 60 are students. My assumption is that students are much more likely to have passports and letters of authority from their institutions. Do you believe that this is a skewed sample?

Richard Lambert: The evaluation period could have been better. It could have been a lot longer. We would have said, ideally, a year to 18 months because most tenancies last more than six months. In order to understand how this process works, you have to give it that length of time so you can see tenancies coming to an end, and limited right to remain coming to an end and you can see how that renews. It also took place at what is probably the slowest time of the year so, inevitably, there were not going to be a lot of tenancies turning over. Then there were the difficulties of contacting the population. It is interesting that in a university area, most responses to the request for tenant respondents came from students who are possibly more likely to be active in some of the social issues and more aware of these things going on.

David Smith: Students are also, to a large extent, exempt from checks. Students are nominated into accommodation by their educational institutions so any student in a hall of residence is effectively exempt from checks anyway. Given that areas around Dudley and West Bromwich are not substantial student areas—parts of my family come from the area—it is a shame that there was such a high student sample. I would have liked to have seen a sample that more adequately represented a wider spectrum of social demographic groups. We remain concerned about the effects, not so much on, for example, Members of Parliament renting homes, but on people in the lower social demographics who increasingly are coming into the private rented sector, will have difficulty with this legislation and are often driven into the arms of less salubrious landlords.

[Gavin Newlands]

Q 140 I know from your written evidence that you call for a clearly understood and properly resourced helpline for landlords. Will you share your members’ experiences of the helpline during the pilot? A recent written answer from the Minister, for which I am very grateful, revealed that there were two full-time equivalent staff for the helpline. Was that sufficient for your members?

David Smith: We have not had any particular feedback. We have certainly had calls to our member helpline from members. I do not know whether that means that they were not happy with what they got. We are concerned about whether the helpline will continue to be resourced as a helpline once we are talking about all of England. That is not clear yet—I am looking at the Minister to see whether he nods or shakes his head. I can tell you that we run a member helpline and that more than two people staff it. It is that simple. Two people will not be enough to cover all of England, but I am not clear about the plans for widening the helpline.

If the helpline is not adequately staffed, there is little point in having it, I suspect. We would like more online resource. I note that, in the evaluation—the guide that was published today—the Government have highlighted the European PRADO database, but it covers only EU documents, not EEA documents. My members are not familiar with Liechtenstein passports, not that they would necessarily see a great many of those. However, many members are likely to believe that countries such as Ukraine are in the EEA, which they are not. We are therefore concerned about people both ignoring countries of which they should take account, and thinking that countries that they have seen in the news recently, which are around the fringes of the EU, must be in the EU.

We are also concerned about the potential for forgery that is opened up on list B. Several documents on there are potentially prone to forgery with a laser printer and we are very worried about the risk our members run of prosecution for not being the most adept spotters of forgeries. Immigration officers frequently examine passport documents and they are highly trained in that. My members are not equipped with UV scanning lights or skilled watermark detection systems, and I am afraid that many of them would not know a watermark if you asked them about it anyway. I am therefore concerned about how they will detect the more sophisticated forgeries, and what the break point is for what they should detect. I am not worried about sellotape.

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[The Chair]

No, you have not, but please be brief.

Chief Superintendent David Snelling: We have been involved in discussions with the Home Office that have proposed this power, but to the question whether we approached the Home Office, the answer is no.

[Sarah Champion]

Q 149 Mr Gabriel, do you believe the provisions in the Bill covering landlords and the new responsibility of landlords to effectively become immigration experts are going to put a strain on community relations and perhaps lead to more discrimination?

Stephen Gabriel: We speak to landlords on a daily basis. Some of the landlords are not saying that they feel it is an extra burden. The point was made earlier that some landlords have already been looking for and taking information such as copies of people’s passports or other forms of identification, so the good landlords would have been doing checks anyway. Also, some landlords have said that where they felt a bit nervous about asking for proof, the pilot gave them a legitimate reason to ask for and get that information before they could move further with any contracts.

A point was raised earlier about the indigenous population having access to identification, and that could be a challenge. As we know, migrants or asylum seekers who are looking for accommodation will normally come with the relevant documentation. I think there is a point around the indigenous population having the right documentation. As was raised earlier, if two people come along at the same time and one has the documentation but the other does not, the landlord is likely to go with the one who does.

[Sarah Champion]

Q 150 As you said, good landlords are going to welcome this because it gives them more support to ask for documents to prove legitimacy and protect their tenancy. The group that I am concerned about are the accidental landlords, who just see this as another burden when they did not particularly want to be in this situation, and who may withdraw themselves from the market. I am concerned about the potential for bad landlords to fill that gap, offering substandard accommodation and not asking for the right documents, so that people could fall off the radar and people who choose to fall off the radar could go even further off.

Stephen Gabriel: Bad landlords have always been out there. Even with the introduction of this legislation, in the area that I cover in Sandwell, we are still picking up landlords who are not fulfilling their obligations. I talk about the grey economy of landlords, and I think there is still a lot of work to do to identify those landlords. In Sandwell, we have undertaken a proactive approach for one of our neighbourhoods that we know has a high turnover of newcomers. We are finding some real challenges in relation to the quality of properties that people are living in, particularly properties above shops. We have tried to go there with colleagues from environmental health and housing to take a holistic approach to those buildings, so we can get up and see what is happening above the shops. We found on one occasion two elderly people aged over 80 living in a property that I would describe as—well, not very nice.

[Sarah Champion]

Q 151 Unfortunately, I have areas like that with private landlords, and those properties tends to be occupied by migrant workers but also trafficked people coming over. What could be in this Bill that is not there already to target those bad landlords?

Stephen Gabriel: From my perspective, it is about what we do on the ground operationally and how we work with our enforcement colleagues. We have now opened up the channels of communication with the Home Office and the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. We have undertaken one joint enforcement activity in Sandwell, and other enforcement activities are coming through now. I am also aware that across the other authorities affected by the pilot, the increase in that relationship in sharing information, sharing data and going out on joint enforcement visits has really raised the profile of the work that we are doing among landlords.

Another thing is how we raise the profile among tenants. One of the things that we have done in the region is recently to launch a mobile app, which is called “Check Before You Rent”. One of the questions in the app is: is your landlord accredited, and have they asked you for any information about the immigration checks?

[Mims Davies]

Q 152 I must declare an interest in the road safety aspect, because that is an area I have worked in previously. Chief Superintendent Snelling, in terms of people killed or seriously injured, have you identified communities where there is a difference in the culture regarding drink or drug-driving? Have the police identified that as a concern?

Chief Superintendent David Snelling: In wider issues such as drink and domestic abuse and domestic violence, we have identified some communities that are more prone to that. That would be the remit of a local police chief superintendent. I am Sutton borough commander, so I have a good idea of the make-up of my communities within the area that I police. Were there to be specific community concerns or tensions, we would seek to look into it either through education or through enforcement.

On the road safety side, in Sutton we are working closely with Transport for London to raise awareness of safety among schoolchildren. For the wider population, we would hope that the provisions of the Bill would be widely publicised. As I have highlighted with the scenario for stopping, we have run certain operations nationally with the immigration service and we have worked with them to target areas of concern. They, like us, would be feeding into their community representatives to ensure that they would have an understanding of why we have exercised those powers.

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[The Chair]

Good afternoon. We will now hear oral evidence from the Children’s Society, Coram Children’s Legal Centre and the Office of the Children’s Commissioner. As I indicated, this is the final panel, and we can go up to 5 pm. May I ask the witnesses to introduce themselves for the record?

Ilona Pinter: I am Ilona Pinter. I am policy adviser at the Children’s Society and co-chair of the Refugee Children’s Consortium.

Kamena Dorling: I am Kamena Dorling. I am head of policy and programmes at Coram Children’s Legal Centre and co-chair of the Refugee Children’s Consortium.

Adrian Matthews: I am Adrian Matthews. I am the policy adviser to the Children’s Commissioner for England on immigration and asylum-related matters.

[Sarah Champion]

Q 165 To all of you, please—if you could answer briefly—what do you perceive to be the risks for children’s welfare of the provision to remove support from families who have been refused asylum under clause 34? May I start with Ms Pinter?

Ilona Pinter: We think the risks for children from this provision are very serious indeed. Essentially, it would see families becoming destitute—they would no longer have accommodation and financial support under asylum support. That obviously brings with it a whole range of risks, from families being street homeless to families having to move around, potentially for short periods of time, to stay in potentially unsafe accommodation. The research broadly, including the Children’s Society’s research, shows that children who are currently destitute are at a heightened risk of being exploited, as well as at risk of remaining in circumstances where they are facing domestic violence. Obviously, some of the evidence that currently exists from serious case reviews highlights the real child protection risks for children of having no support.

Adrian Matthews: Could I add that some families will no doubt go into the woodwork? That actually creates all sorts of problems, because parents will then, in order to feed their children, resort to very unsafe practices—unsafe childcare practices and unsafe working environments, and so on and so forth. The other effect is very clear: a lot of families will turn to local authorities for support, and whether they are given that support or not I think is almost immaterial in the end. The fact is that it will massively increase the burden on local authorities in terms of processing applications and claims from families who are destitute and street homeless.

Kamena Dorling: I would echo what both Ilona and Adrian have said. A key concern is, as Adrian has mentioned, this shift of the burden on to local authorities. We are already seeing local authorities struggling to support the number of families currently in the UK with no recourse to public funds. This would look to increase that pressure, and one of the results we are seeing of that pressure is very low levels of support for families that are turning to local authorities, if they are getting anything at all, but also quite high levels of gatekeeping, where often families are turned away anyway. Then we are just going to see either children visibly destitute and homeless or going missing entirely from services, and that will presumably have a knock-on effect on their access to education, access to healthcare and all the problems that we are already seeing for children in families who are undocumented at the moment.

[Sarah Champion]

Q 166 Looking at current practice, from your experience, how are children’s best interests currently being assessed by the Home Office? How would this play a role in a decision to deport a family under the clause?

Ilona Pinter: The first thing to say is that there is currently no mechanism by which children’s best interests are decided, considered or assessed. That has implications not only for support, but for how families’ substantive decisions within the asylum process are taken into account. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees did a piece of research in 2013 that highlighted a lot of failings where children’s best interests under the protection claim were not considered, which has consequences down the line. The Home Office’s own evaluation of the family returns process highlights that most families involved in the process feared returning home. Reasons include families fearing what will happen to them and their children if they are returned. We believe that the provision to end support for families to encourage them to go home will not work, because they still have those remaining fears about the consequences.

Adrian Matthews: The current practice of Home Office decision makers in taking into account the best interests of children is patchy, to say the least. We had a good example last year that we were involved in as the Children’s Commissioner, in which the Home Office had removed a mentally ill Nigerian mother with a six-year-old who had been born here. She did not survive in Nigeria. She only survived through the foster parents, who had been fostering the child for six months and supporting her while the legal process was going on in the UK. Eventually, the upper tribunal decided that the Home Office had acted unlawfully in not taking into account the child’s best interests and returned the family to the UK.

[Sarah Champion]

Q 167 So building on that, the potential in the Bill to deport before appeal presumably raises concerns.

Adrian Matthews: Yes, exactly.

Kamena Dorling: I was going to say that when we look at a range of provisions within the Bill, there appears to be an assumption that children’s interests will be considered as a matter of course. From our day-to-day practice and at Coram Children’s Legal Centre, where we represent children and families in such situations, at best we get lip service paid to children’s interests. Quite often, there is no detailed analysis of how any immigration decision would affect a child in a family or on their own, which is really concerning. There is a huge absence here both when we are talking about changes to support for families in the asylum system and when we are talking about the extension of the deport-first appeal. Children are absent from later provisions. There is no consideration of the impact on children.

Adrian Matthews: I would very much like to echo that. One of the most serious aspects of the appeal provisions is the test of “serious and irreversible harm” but that is applied to the person who is to be removed, excluded or refused entry, depriving the child a voice in proceedings. Under the current arrangements, in an in-country appeal under article 8 human rights grounds there is at least the potential for the child’s voice to be heard. The change specifically excludes children who are settled or who are UK citizens from having a voice in the proceedings about how they will be affected by the removal or exclusion of a parent. That is a serious concern that engages the UK’s obligations under the United Nations convention on the rights of the child, particularly article 12, which requires the state party to allow the child to have a voice in such proceedings.

[Sarah Champion]

Q 168 The Government believe that they are compliant with the European convention on human rights and that there is no conflict with any children’s legislation. You would disagree with that.

Adrian Matthews: I would not agree with that.

[Sarah Champion]

Okay. To the rest of the panel, do you think that the legislation complies?

Ilona Pinter: It is notable that on the provision to withdraw asylum support, for instance, there is no mention of the section 55 duty on the Home Secretary to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in relation to all of the functions, including asylum support. There is no mention of how many children would be affected specifically by that provision.

Kamena Dorling: If we look broadly at the UN convention on the rights of the child, as has been already mentioned, article 12, which is about the voice of the child, is key, but so is article 3, which requires us to take the best interests of the child as a primary consideration. We have had a number of cases go to the Supreme Court on that, and we have got very good guidance from the Supreme Court about how the interests of children should be examined.

One of the findings of the Supreme Court is that children should not be blamed for the actions of their parents. Again, what we seem to see in this Bill is this idea that any immigration behaviour that is deemed undesirable can result in a policy of forced destitution, for example, which seems to me a very stark means of punishing children for the action of their parents. So there are a number of concerns.

[Sarah Champion]

To reassure the panel, I will point out that we are blessed with a Minister who has always been a child advocate and campaigner, so I am sure he will look very closely at these matters.

[The Chair]

I am sure that was put on the record.

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[The Chair]

We will just take Sarah and Kelly, and then we will try to get some responses in two minutes, I am afraid.

[Sarah Champion]

The panel responded to all the questions by talking about families. Does the Bill have any implications for unaccompanied children?

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I represent a constituency in Kent, where the issue of unaccompanied minors has caused great pressures over the past 12 months. It is already a burden on the local authorities and the local people. I wonder whether you think there are any measures that are not in the Bill that would discourage families from allowing their young people to travel here on their own?

draft Modern Slavery Act 2015 (Transparency in supply chains) Regulations 2015

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Monday 19th October 2015 General Committees

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

It is a huge pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I have been very proud to serve with you on the Benches and know that you will be very able in your guidance of the Committee. It is also a pleasure to speak on these regulations, because the Minister took a different approach with the Modern Slavery Act 2015: a cross-party Committee worked on the drafts and we then went forward in a collaborative manner. The Act is much stronger for that.

We have no objections to the regulations. We like the fact that they were consulted on and that 79% of those who responded agree with the level set, to follow the Companies Act 2006. Nevertheless, I would like some assurances. Throughout the lifetime of the 2015 Act, we have had concerns that companies are being asked to supply the information that “may” be included. The Government argue that that gives businesses the flexibility to choose what works best for them to tackle slavery, but the fundamental issue with the Act is that there is no information on what businesses must include. That allows businesses to pick and choose what to include, which prevents direct comparison between business reports, and allows companies to highlight strong and, potentially, very weak points. Ultimately, that takes away the teeth from the Act.

There is also a danger of slavery and human trafficking in the supply chains of smaller companies. I appreciate that that is difficult to legislate on, as smaller companies lack the resources to conduct due diligence, but the issue demands highlighting. How does the Minister plan to address the smaller companies that might flout the legislation?

Oral Answers to Questions

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Monday 12th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley]

I attended the launch event of that excellent Citizens Advice campaign, which has already helped me with a case in my own constituency, in which I was able to refer someone to the citizens advice bureau to get the specialist and expert support that they needed.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Reports of domestic and sexual violence are increasing across the country. However, in an attempt to deal with the relentless Government cuts, local authorities and the police are stopping specialist abuse support to victims and instead providing generic services or no services at all. Will the Minister commit to ensuring that everyone, regardless of gender, sexuality or ethnicity, feels safe and supported in their home?

[Karen Bradley]

I welcome the hon. Lady to her place on the Front Bench and I look forward to working with her. We have worked together on a number of previous campaigns and I know that she will be excellent in her new role. As I have said, the Home Office is refreshing its violence against women and girls strategy, and part of that involves looking at commissioning and local commissioning to ensure that those specialist services, which she rightly says victims need to get the support that they require, get the funding that they need.

Child Sexual Exploitation (Rotherham)

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Exactly six months ago to the day, the report commissioned by Rotherham borough council into child sexual exploitation in the town was published. Professor Alexis Jay’s damning report catalogued failings of both the police and the council over 16 years, which resulted in at least 1,400 victims of child sexual exploitation. Still worse, most of those alleging the crimes received no support, no recognition and in many cases were dismissed, belittled or told that it was basically their fault. There has been only one major prosecution.

I believe that what happened in Rotherham was predominantly the result of a culture that refused to countenance “troublesome” teenagers as victims and one that was prepared to tolerate the existence of sexual abuse—a culture where targets were more important than protecting children. The Jay report stunned me, the country and, to be fair, the world. How could such barbaric abuse occur, let alone go on uninvestigated? I simply do not have the answer to that question, and I doubt that I ever will: it simply should not have happened in a civilised society.

When I managed to get my head around the enormity of the failings, my next thought was to get help from the Government. If there had been a natural disaster in Rotherham that had affected 1,400 people and the council and police had insufficient resources to deal with it, the Government would of course have intervened. I would expect a visit from the Prime Minister, national co-ordination of charities, Government experts to arrive and, as a priority, resources and support for the victims and survivors to be provided. To date, we have had nothing.

In this Chamber on 2 September, I asked the Home Secretary for resources for the victims and survivors. She subsequently met me, and I discussed in detail what was needed nationally and, more specifically, locally—but no cash followed. On the same date, I asked the Chancellor for additional funding, and met a Treasury Minister on 10 September, when I handed over a proposal for emergency funding that I had worked up with my colleagues, the two other MPs representing Rotherham, the police, the council and clinical commissioning groups. To date, I have not had as much as a reply to that request, although after much chasing, I did get a holding letter dated “December”, telling me that the Treasury was looking into it.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case, so I hope the Minister is listening. To be fair, one small step has been taken today, linked to the announcement by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government of £250,000 for the commissioners for Rotherham council over two years, to reintroduce an outreach youth work project—a Risky Business-style project. Does she recognise, as I do, that that is merely 0.5% of the budget cut that the council must make in April, so it is simply not enough? Should not the Communities Secretary now release the troubled families and transformation award funds that have been withheld from Rotherham, because the council and other agencies need them to deal with the problems highlighted in the Jay and Casey reports?

[Sarah Champion]

I agree absolutely with my right hon. Friend about the situation in which Rotherham finds itself. It is unsustainable. Like him, I welcome this donation—[Interruption.]—or drop in the ocean, as my right hon. Friend says. It does not go anywhere near far enough. I shall come on to discuss what resources we need as I progress.

On 3 September and 19 November, I raised the issue of support for the victims and survivors of Rotherham abuse with the Prime Minister. I met him on 4 February, and he subsequently pledged support on “BBC Look North”, for which I am hugely grateful. I am delighted that, as my right hon. Friend has said, the Communities Secretary announced £125,000 a year for two years to reform Risky Business. Without wanting to sound ungrateful, however, it is indeed a drop in the ocean in comparison with the resources we need to allow the young people of my constituency to rebuild their lives.

I ask the Minister to recognise that Rotherham’s police force must pay for the intervention of the National Crime Agency from Rotherham’s policing budget, and that Rotherham council must pay for the Casey report and the commissioners from Rotherham’s resources. That is taking more money away from a town that needs more resources, not less, at a time when the Government have already reduced the police budget by 20% and the local authority budget by 40%. How, realistically, are we meant to cope? Why are the Government compounding the horror that we already endure?

Let me make some suggestions about the sort of support that we need. There are currently only two child sexual exploitation workers dedicated to the victims in Rotherham. One is employed by me, and I am eternally grateful to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority for giving me emergency funding to pay for that worker. However, that funding will run out on 7 May. The other is employed by Barnardo’s. She works only with people under the age of 18, and her work load consists of only 12 people. There are social workers, counsellors and police officers working in the field of child sexual exploitation, but there are only two people who are dedicated to supporting at least 1,400 victims and survivors. It should be borne in mind that 30% of the Rotherham abuse victims covered by the Jay report are over the age of 25, and most are over 18. There is only one worker to deal with the majority, and her role will end in two months.

I want the Government to recognise that Rotherham needs specific intervention to allow us to move forward. We need a fully independent unit whose sole purpose would be to support victims and survivors of child sexual exploitation. It should have charitable status, and a board of trustees that should include representatives of the Crown Prosecution Service, the council, the police, survivors, parents and the voluntary sector. The money that has been pledged today could provide a seed fund.

The unit would work in three ways. First, it would provide early intervention and prevention through a team of youth workers, survivor volunteers, family support workers, parent workers and health workers. They would deliver education and training to professionals and parents, carry out early prevention work with young people in educational and community settings, and provide awareness sessions for the community at large. Secondly, it would provide support and intervention for young people who were at risk and involved in grooming and sexual exploitation. That support and intervention would be delivered by a team of youth workers, social workers, police—police constables, and police and young people’s partnership officers—survivor volunteers and trained counsellors. Thirdly, the unit would offer one-to-one support, help with intelligence sharing and gathering, strategy meetings, and section 47 investigations. There would also need to be interpreters, policy writers and crèche workers. I see that as a model that could be replicated across the country.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on making this case and on all the work that she has done in Rotherham, although I am afraid that the problem of the lack of support for survivors who might come forward is not limited to Rotherham. What does she think about the negotiations which, I gather, are currently taking place between Rotherham council and Ofsted? In its “improvement offer”, Ofsted suggests that it should provide advice and support, although it failed to recognise the problem earlier, and something might have been done about it sooner if Ofsted had been rather better at its job.

[Sarah Champion]

It would take a great deal for me to have faith in Ofsted and trust it to investigate and, indeed, support Rotherham council, given the failings that it has demonstrated not just in Rotherham but throughout the country. Ofsted needs to be much more aware when it is assessing councils and individual organisations in the context of child sexual exploitation and child abuse in general.

In the short term, there also needs to be a Rotherham-specific organisation that is dedicated to co-ordinating the witness statements that victims and survivors are asked to give. We currently have a ludicrous arrangement whereby the same young victim is asked to give evidence to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, the National Crime Agency, and South Yorkshire police. That is hugely invasive, logistically demanding, and overwhelming for young people who are still trying to rebuild their lives.

We need a centre that can co-ordinate all of the interviews and questions so the victim needs only to speak to one person in a safe and supportive space. To facilitate this, I ask that the Minister funds a remote video link to enable a victim who is involved in a court hearing to give evidence from a remote location. That would help serve the needs of victims in Rotherham, enabling them to link into court proceedings without the trauma of attending court. This fact was highlighted as an issue for victims in the Jay report. There are challenges associated with delivering the initiative and the provision of defined funding to progress technological solutions would be beneficial.

To state the obvious, if we look after the victims and survivors we will get prosecutions. If we keep being demanding of their time as is happening currently, they will withdraw their good will and the case will be lost.

Another short-term Rotherham specific request is a dedicated Crown Prosecution Service team to provide timely pre-charge advice and progress cases. That would be a team of four or five CPS lawyers plus additional admin support to manage current and future cases effectively. Initial discussions have taken place and the suggested team size and cost has been provided by the CPS.

I also recommend that an additional independent sexual violence adviser, or ISVA, should be recruited, to be co-located with the public protection unit in Rotherham to offer support and advocacy for victims as they are identified. Alternatively, the ISVA could be community-based. The ISVA would need to be trained as a child ISVA and therefore be able to support child victims in both current and historical cases.

[Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a very good case. On her point about the CPS, I dealt with a case in 2003-04 that is still being investigated. It was with the CPS at that time, and they are a distance away from the borough. To echo another point, within the past hour, I spoke to the father of one of the victims who I have been in touch with for many years now who had a meeting this week with the police and crime commissioner, but setting up regular meetings to try to sort something out is hindered by the lack of income because of budget cuts for the PCC and Rotherham borough council. May I tell the Minister that we need help to sort this situation out?

[Sarah Champion]

I echo what my right hon. Friend says. In the CPS for South Yorkshire and the Humber, the Sheffield CPS has seven lawyers, each carrying a caseload of at least 100 individuals.

Finally, in Rotherham we have three voluntary counselling services trying to support all our survivors: Apna Haq, GROW and the women’s counselling service. Although it was welcome that Rotherham council gave each organisation £20,000 to fast-track child sexual exploitation cases, that is only until the end of the financial year. What is needed is long-term investment to enable them to work with victims and survivors in an intensive way and at the pace that the victims and survivors want.

In discussions with the police and crime commissioner, he has offered to be the fundholder for all the schemes I have outlined, as I am aware the Prime Minister was nervous about giving additional funding to the police or council.

I would now like to focus on what needs to happen nationally. We know that Rotherham is not an isolated case; it already follows high-profile cases of widespread sexual abuse in other towns and cities. The sexual exploitation of vulnerable teenagers is happening across the country. It is of grave concern that our statutory services are not in a fit position to respond consistently and convincingly. In addition, there is a serious shortfall, and inconsistencies, in the support provided to victims of child sexual abuse and exploitation that must be urgently addressed, from disclosure, through the criminal justice system and into therapeutic support for those who need it.

Research conducted in 2009, currently being updated by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, found there was a shortfall in therapeutic support for victims of sexual abuse of more than 50,000 places a year, a huge gap between need and service provision. Victims are subject to a postcode lottery with only one support programme for every 25,000 children in the UK. The 508 services that are available are so overstretched they are now being forced to stop taking on new cases.

On Monday, the shadow Home Secretary committed a Labour Government to creating a dedicated child protection unit. I urge the Government to do the same. This topic should be not about politics but about doing the best for our children. I would like to propose a five-point plan to tackle child sexual exploitation nationally. The first is the establishment of a national taskforce for organised child sexual exploitation, based on a similar model to the forced marriage unit or the modern day slavery commissioner. That would be a small, dedicated team of experts in policing, prosecuting and psychological support that can be used as a resource by police forces, councils and the voluntary sector if they suspect organised child sexual exploitation. If that taskforce had existed when the Jay report came out six months ago, the police and the council could have immediately had specialist support on how to work with the victims; best practice in securing prosecutions; setting up a dedicated investigation team; and how to manage communications.

In reality, the police and the council have been left to flounder for six months, learning by their mistakes rather than being supported through an intensely difficult time. When the Jay report clearly identified failings with the police and the council, why did the Government not offer immediate support? I welcome the intervention of commissioners now, but why could they not have been brought in much earlier, avoiding some of the mistakes that have been allowed to happen?

My second point is that we should introduce mandatory personal, social, health and economic education for key stage 1 children. This is about teaching children not about sex, but about what is, and is not, a healthy relationship. We need to give our children the tools to arm themselves against abuse, not leave them to discover the horrors of the internet and, in the absence of proper education, be forced to consider what they see there to be normal.

I would also like the Government to make it mandatory for anyone employed to work with children to have training in spotting the signs of child abuse and how to report concerns.

Fourthly, I am tired of professionals being more concerned about protecting data than about protecting the child. The Government need to send out a clear signal that there will be penalties if health and education services, local authorities and the police do not share information to prevent child abuse.

Finally, we need a culture where victims of child abuse are believed. In Rotherham, victims were trying to report their abuse for decades. They repeatedly had doors shut in their faces and were branded prostitutes, worthless or complicit. I say to the Minister that that culture has to change. It is slowly changing in cases of rape and domestic violence; it needs to quickly change in the case of child abuse.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lynne Featherstone]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We need that kind of hands-on experience in both Departments as well as co-ordination between them, because we do not want anyone falling through the holes or not recognising what needs to be done.

Louise Casey’s report also describes how a small youth project, Risky Business, had developed a ground-breaking approach to reaching out to victims of sexual exploitation and to collecting evidence about perpetrators. Unfortunately, misguided and inappropriate decisions made by the council resulted in the closure of the service. The report concludes:

“The critical work they undertook is now missing from RMBC.”

That situation should not continue, and the victims of historical child sexual exploitation should be given the help they need. Accordingly, subject to being provided with an appropriate business case demonstrating value for money, I am prepared to make available £250,000 over the next two financial years for a Risky Business-style service to be established.

[Sarah Champion]

As I said in my speech, I am extremely grateful for that, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) and I have both pointed out, £125,000 a year is a drop in the ocean. It will pay for four workers and an office. I am really hoping, therefore, that the Minister is about to tell us that she will make available more Government support for the victims and survivors.

[Lynne Featherstone]

I understand the hon. Lady’s anxiety and need. When someone knows a situation as closely as she knows this one, they can see all the answers and they want something right now, and a lot of it—[Interruption.] Indeed, it would be for the victims.

The Home Secretary has led a series of meetings with her Secretary of State colleagues to consider what more we as a Government can do to help to prevent these failures from happening again. Those meetings have focused on the issues highlighted in Rotherham: the complete failure of local leadership; the culture of inaction and denial in the police and the council; the failure of local agencies to work together to protect children; and the lack of support for survivors. A report on the action to address each of those issues will be published shortly. A key part of that response will recognise the need for further support for victims from statutory and non-statutory support services, and for their engagement with the criminal justice system.

Effective, timely support for victims of child sexual abuse is a matter of national importance and it is one that this Government have prioritised. We have put rape support centres on a secure financial footing, by providing more than £4.4 million a year to 86 organisations across England and Wales that provide support to women and girl victims of rape and sexual violence. That funding is targeted at women and teenage girls who have been the victim of rape or sexual abuse; whether as a result of a recent attack or of historical abuse. We have funded a further 15 new rape support centres in areas that were lacking specialised support—13 centres were brought into existence by June 2014, and the final two centres, located in Grantham and Crawley, were commissioned by the Ministry of Justice in September 2014 and will be open during 2015.

[Sarah Champion]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Lynne Featherstone]

I will but I may not get to the end of the list of support we are giving.

[Sarah Champion]

I hope that the Minister realises that rape is a completely different crime from child sexual exploitation and grooming.

[Lynne Featherstone]

I do recognise that, but these services all relate to sexual violence. On rape and sexual violence, young women may come to those clinics as a result of what has happened to them, so there is some overlap between child sexual exploitation and sexual violence against teenage girls.

We recognised the gap in services supporting men and boys and, as a result, launched a fund dedicated to supporting male victims of rape and sexual violence of more than £600,000 over two years. We have awarded a further £400,000 over two years to Survivors UK to help it create the first ever national website to provide an online support service for male survivors of rape and sexual abuse. We have funded a network of independent sexual violence advisers at a cost £1.7 million per year to part-fund 87 ISVAs to provide appropriate and independent support for victims. We have funded a network of 13 young people’s advocates, at a cost of £400,000 per year, who provide direct and dedicated support to young people who have been victims of, or are at risk of, sexual and domestic violence and/or sexual exploitation.

We do, however, recognise that there is a need for an uplift to these services. In the past two years a 40% increase in child sexual offences has been recorded by the police, leading to significant increases in the demand for support for survivors. The large increase in the number of victims reporting child sexual abuse and exploitation to the police, and other bodies, has resulted in a significant demand. That is why we agreed in December an immediate uplift in non-statutory sector support to victims of child sexual abuse of £7 million. That fund was split between an immediate uplift of £2.15 million to the 84 existing rape support centres; a £2 million fund to non-statutory organisations, which are reporting an increase in demand as a direct result of the announcement of the child sexual abuse inquiry; and a £2.85 million fund for non-statutory organisations providing support across England and Wales to help meet the increased demand on those services. Tragically, this is happening right across the country, although Rotherham’s is the case that we all know best and that was so shocking. We will ensure that this funding is available to organisations supporting victims and survivors in areas where there is a high prevalence of child sexual abuse and exploitation, such as Rotherham. As the hon. Lady will know, the funds are being administered by the police and crime commissioner for Norfolk, because the chief constable there, Simon Bailey, is the national policing lead for child protection and abuse investigation. The Home Office is also supporting that work, and bidding for both funds will close on 2 March. We would expect successful bidders to be notified by the end of next month.

Let me deal with some of the specific points the hon. Lady raised. On the need for a remote link for vulnerable victims and witnesses to give evidence, the Ministry of Justice has committed to set up at least one remote, non-court video link in each Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service area by the end of next month. Although specific locations cannot yet be confirmed, there will be a site in the north-east region, which covers Rotherham, as well as in other locations in England and Wales. In addition, vulnerable and intimidated witnesses can give evidence using a live link from any other Crown court and most magistrates courts away from the trial court. It is recognised that that has to be available.

I am way off Government message on PSHE, as everyone well knows. I totally agree that it does need to come forward but as we are very near to the ending of this Parliament, I hope that all three parties will come back with a recommendation for that. I have particularly to agree with the hon. Lady on data sharing. Like her, I started with an issue in my area, with baby Peter being the issue in my constituency, and in my experience and in all the serious case reviews I have read since then, the lack of data sharing at every point has allowed a gap for a child to fall through. As I say, I will report all her requests to the Home Secretary.

Child sexual abuse is a despicable crime and this Government are absolutely determined to eradicate it. In the past, all too often these horrific crimes were ignored, but now child sexual abuse is rightly centre stage as an issue and we must work together to tackle it. I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate, and on all the passion and commitment she brings to this issue.

Question put and agreed to.

Child Abuse Inquiry

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Thursday 22nd January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I am afraid that this whole inquiry has now become a farce. It is very frustrating that my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary has had to call the right hon. Lady to come to the House, because we need transparency and clear communication. We also need not just an inquiry but a national taskforce, because this is a national issue and the regional forces do not have the capacity to deal with it.

[Mrs May]

I commend the hon. Lady once again for the work she has done, particularly on the child sexual exploitation that has taken place in Rotherham, but also for the way in which she is using that experience to inform others to try to ensure that we put in place the necessary support mechanism and that the terrible things that happened in Rotherham do not happen elsewhere.

I made it clear in my statement that I will come to this House once a decision about the chairmanship has been taken, and I was very clear in the letter I wrote to the panel inquiry members in December that that decision would be taken by the end of January. It is fully my intention to come to the House when that decision has been taken, as I indicated to the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), to set the whole package before the House and for the House to be able to look at that.

The hon. Lady also raised a point that is not just about the work of the panel inquiry. I am also chairing a group of Secretaries of State who are looking more specifically at the allegations that arose in the Rotherham case, and which have, sadly, been replicated elsewhere, and particularly those from the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey), who did important work with Greater Manchester Police on what happened in Greater Manchester. We are looking at the issue of support, and work is being done with local authorities to look at the support that is available and how they can identify and make sure these things are not happening.

Serious Crime Bill [Lords]

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Monday 5th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I am sure my right hon. Friend and the Home Secretary are aware that one of the reasons for the delays is that the search engines are charging between £50 and £80 for the information and the police simply do not have the resources for that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I am very pleased that I will be serving on the Bill Committee. In it, I will focus on issues relating to child protection, and I would like to raise the key issues in this debate.

A number of Members have spoken about the cross-party inquiry I chaired with Barnardo’s. It started this time last year and looked specifically at whether there were gaps in the law on child sexual exploitation that we could challenge, and indeed there were. There were two key recommendations. I am very pleased that the Government have taken on board the recommendation on grooming children, and I hope that the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill will finally complete its ping-ponging and come into law.

The second matter I would like to raise relates to putting breaches of child abduction warning notices on a statutory footing, for which I have argued strongly. The right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice) has already mentioned this, as has my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey). Rather than going into the legal arguments, I should like to describe the reality of what happens when a child is being groomed, and to explain how, although child abduction warning notices could help, they are not at present doing the job they were designed to do.

Let us imagine that the parent of a 14-year-old girl becomes aware that she is seeing a much older man. They speak to the child and try to dissuade her from seeing him, but she is adamant that he is her boyfriend and that she is going to continue to do so. They try locking her in her bedroom, but she climbs out of the window. At that point, the parent speaks to social services or the police, but the only tool that the police have is a child abduction warning notice. They give the notice to the alleged perpetrator, but this effectively means nothing. If the perpetrator comes back the next day and takes the child away, all the police can do is issue another warning notice. If he comes back the following day, they can issue another notice. By the end of the week, the perpetrator might have seven such warning notices. He has no faith in the police, the child has no faith that anyone is there to protect her, and the parents are completely helpless. The only point at which the police can intervene is when the child has already been groomed and has agreed to meet the perpetrator for sex, or when the abuse has actually happened.

If we were to put the breach of abduction warning notices on a statutory footing, the police could prosecute the perpetrator or take the matter to the next level as soon as the first notice had been breached, before the grooming and abuse of the child had happened. This view was backed up by the witnesses who appeared before our inquiry. The witnesses ranged from children through to police officers, social workers, educationists and representatives of the Crown Prosecution Service, and they all said that if we could make just one change it should be to put the breach of abduction warning notices on a statutory footing. This matter is quite current, because Birmingham city council has recently had to go through the civil courts to prevent a group of men from meeting a young girl. When I spoke to representatives of the council, they said that if the breach of abduction warning notices had been on a statutory footing, it would have provided a much more effective tool for them to use.

When the Bill had its Second Reading in the other place, Baroness Smith took up this recommendation and suggested that the question of child abduction warning notices should be explored in Committee. In Committee in the other place, Baroness Butler-Sloss tabled an amendment, supported by Baroness Walmsley, Baroness Howarth and Lord Rosser. Lord Taylor, speaking for the Government, committed to looking into child abduction warning notices. On Report in the other place, Baroness Butler-Sloss re-tabled the amendment to continue the debate. Lord Rosser again put his name to it, and Baroness Walmsley again spoke in support of it. The amendment was withdrawn following a Government commitment to hold a meeting between officials and interested peers. Baroness Butler-Sloss concluded by requesting that the Minister consider a two-stage process with an initial non-statutory notice, which in case of subsequent breach could be followed by application to a magistrates court for a statutory notice. I have spoken directly to the Home Secretary about the importance of putting the breach of a child abduction warning notice on a statutory footing, and I really hope that the Government will use this Bill to do the right thing.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Karen Bradley)]

I look forward to working with the hon. Lady in Committee, just as I worked with her on the Modern Slavery Bill Committee. She is making a specific point about child abduction warning notices, and I want to tell her that we are looking very carefully at the matter. As she knows, the key question is whether the police have the necessary powers to place restrictions or prohibitions on persons who pose a risk to vulnerable children. We will continue to examine that point, and I expect to make an announcement shortly. We will also deal with the matter during the later stages of the Bill, on which I look forward to working with her.

[Sarah Champion]

I am not sure whether a “Whoopee” is appropriate, but—“Whoopee!” I look forward to working with the Minister.

I would like to move on to other elements that I will be arguing for in the Bill, all of which have been successfully debated in the Lords. The first relates to the lack of protection for 16 and 17-year-olds under the law. The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) has already mentioned this point. While most English law treats anyone under 18 as a child, the criminal law on child cruelty, which dates back 80 years, protects children from neglect or ill treatment only until their 16th birthday. This makes it much harder to protect 16 and 17-year-olds from cruelty and sends a message that they are less at risk of abuse or neglect than younger children. In 2013-2014, local authorities issued 40 serious incident notifications to Ofsted relating to 16 and 17-year-olds. Some of them resulted in serious case reviews that highlighted the vulnerability of 16 and 17-year-olds. They showed the seriousness of the neglect and the cruelty to those children, which often had tragic consequences for the child but resulted in no punishment for those responsible.

As the Home Secretary has stated, the current law is outdated and reflects what life was like when the legislation was passed in 1933. The school leaving age at that time was 14, and in 1931, 88.5% of males and 75.6% of females aged 16 and 17 were in work. In 2014, 85% of 16 and 17-year-olds were in full-time education or training and in 2012, 90% of all 16 and 17-year-olds lived with their families. These children are much more dependent on their parents now then when the law was introduced, making them much more vulnerable to abuse or neglect.

I have already mentioned child abduction warning notices, but a gap in the law means that such notices cannot be used to protect 16 and 17-year-olds unless they are in local authority care. I am grateful for the research that the Government carried out in this area when I first raised this anomaly in the Criminal Courts and Justice Bill earlier this year, but I would like them to revisit it as it is a matter of considerable concern. Unfortunately, I am finding a considerable amount of exploitation in this area.

Finally, I want to raise the issue of female genital mutilation and part 5 of the Serious Crime Bill. I acknowledge that awareness of this horrendous and debilitating crime has been greatly heightened in recent years, but eliminating FGM requires a change in culture. Work to achieve this change is being disrupted by those who promote the religious or cultural justifications for carrying out FGM and, in doing so, place parents under huge social pressure to conform. Legislation is, unfortunately, needed to prevent people from encouraging FGM, thereby preventing its perpetuation at source. The Bill presents an excellent opportunity publicly to condemn this act and prevent it from occurring, rather than having to wait until the abuse has been committed before prosecuting.

Modern Slavery Bill

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I am listening to the Secretary of State with interest. I am pleased to hear that she is putting victims at the very centre of the Bill. Why, then, did the Government turn down Labour’s amendment to make child exploitation part of the Bill?

[Mrs May]

I say to the hon. Lady, who was, I believe, a member of the Bill Committee and has obviously been working on this with others, that we looked at the issue of child exploitation and took a lot of advice on it. The worry was that if it were referenced in the Bill in the way suggested, that could lead to certain actions and activities falling within the description of child exploitation that were never intended to be part of the Bill. In short, I am afraid that the law of unintended consequences would have kicked in and a disbenefit would have resulted from having that aspect in the Bill.

However, as the hon. Lady knows, we have brought together various offences and made some changes to them in order to clarify some of the issues. There has been genuine debate, in Committee and throughout the stages in this Chamber, on the various issues in the Bill, and I think it is, in a number of aspects, a better Bill as a result. We have responded on the issue of supply chains. We have added the new provision on the statutory defence for victims of modern slavery who are compelled to commit crimes. That includes substantial safeguards against abuse but would not apply to a number of serious offences—mainly violent and sexual offences, as set out in the Bill.

The Bill extends to all modern slavery victims existing provisions that help victims of trafficking to gain access to special measures in court. I hope that that will give victims the confidence to come forward and give evidence.

Child Sex Abuse (Rotherham)

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that issue. We have to send a very clear message to everyone involved in the protection of children that there can be no excuse for failing to protect them or failing to bring perpetrators to justice. We need to send a clear message that it is completely and utterly unacceptable for children not to be protected as a result of a fear that stating particular communities were involved in a particular activity could lead to accusations of racism. We also need to deal with the cultural problem that lay behind what happened in Rotherham. Frankly, it was a culture that failed to believe young girls because of the background and the families that they came from. More than that, according to Professor Jay’s report, it was as though people felt that this was the sort of thing that happened to girls from those sorts of backgrounds. That is appalling and we must reject that view across the House and send that message loud and clear.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I am exceptionally angry on so many levels. I am angry that the people paid to take care of those children let them down so appallingly. I am angry that the abusers are still out on the streets. And I am most angry that at least 1,400 young people have not got the justice or the support that they deserve. Will the Home Secretary work with me to ensure that the necessary resources are in place so that they can get the resolution that they so desperately need?

[Mrs May]

Yes. I commend the hon. Lady for the careful and thoughtful way in which she has responded to this appalling report and these appalling revelations. We will certainly work with her. As I have said, I have already spoken to the chief constable of South Yorkshire police about the ongoing investigations there. Sadly, we must recognise that similar investigations are also taking place in other parts of the country. We are beginning to unveil the extent of the problem across the country, and in so doing we can now start to get to grips with it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Monday 28th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I can tell my hon. Friend that there is excellent co-operation between the UK and the Republic of Ireland to prevent abuse of the common travel area by strengthening the external border. The joint UK-Ireland programme of work focuses on aligned visa policy and processes, investment in border procedures, increased data sharing and unified passenger data systems to achieve the end results my hon. Friend is calling for.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

21. What assessment she has made of the effectiveness of existing legislation for tackling child sexual exploitation.

[The Minister for Crime Prevention (Norman Baker)]

The coalition Government remains committed to ensuring that all necessary legislation is in place to tackle child sexual abuse. I welcome the hon. Member’s recent inquiry into this issue. I am reassured by the inquiry’s conclusion that there was no evidence to show that justice could not be served owing to the lack of a specific child sexual exploitation offence. The inquiry report made a number of wider recommendations which are now being actively considered.

[Sarah Champion]

There are currently 16 pieces of legislation that use the term “child prostitute”. I have spoken to young people who have been victims of child sexual exploitation, and they say the expression makes them feel dirty and complicit. Will the Minister commit to introducing a process to remove this term from the law?

[Norman Baker]

I am very sympathetic to that suggestion. Children who are sexually exploited, whether for commercial or other reasons, should not be referred to as prostitutes. They are victims. We will consider references in all legislation and guidance as opportunities arise, as well as considering carefully the wording used in any new legislation or guidance.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Monday 15th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Damian Green)]

I am aware that many PCCs have innovative ideas on how to handle low-level complaints, in particular, against the police, and I see this as a positive way for them to engage with their local community. I am giving careful consideration to the role that PCCs can play in the new arrangements because I think they could play a valuable role in improving the area of police complaints.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

T3. Multi-agency safeguarding hubs—MASHs—are acknowledged as a key approach to tackling child sexual exploitation. Can the Minister please state how many MASHs have been established across the country? Will an evaluation be done on their effectiveness?

[Damian Green]

MASHs are being established literally by the week so I cannot give the hon. Lady an exact figure, but I completely agree that the early successes in some areas of the multi-agency safeguarding hubs suggest that that is an extremely important way of improving our response to child sexual exploitation. I will be visiting one over the next few days and intend to see for myself exactly how they can be most effective.