Change of Name by Registered Sex Offenders

Debate between Sarah Champion and Tim Loughton

Thursday 2nd March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion]

I support my hon. Friend’s recommendation. Anything we can do to try to close this loophole I support, because the scale of it and the fact that the systems we have in place are not working mean that we need—Minister, we need—urgent attention and urgent reforms.

BBC research found that more than 2,000 criminal record checks carried out by the DBS in the past three years flagged that the applicants had cautions or convictions, and that they had supplied incorrect or missed out personal details, such as their past names. Those figures are shocking. It is a relief that the DBS found so many of those cases but, if even a few slip through the gaps in the system, the consequences are devastating.

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

I pay tribute to the hon. Lady and I hope my name was added in support of this debate. It is breathtaking. I raised the issue over six years ago when we had the case of Ben Lewis, who changed his name after being convicted and put on the sex offenders register. He then turned up in Spain, working with children. It was only found out about accidentally, I think through the Australian police. The Home Office acknowledged that this was a problem and said it was taking it on board. There are 67,000 sex offenders on the register in this country and 16,000 have changed their names. This is not just a tip of the iceberg—it is deliberately being used as a cover for their identity and potential future criminal activity. Does she agree that, frankly, other than in exceptional circumstances, people on the sex offenders register should not be allowed to change their name while they are on the sex offenders register and that, secondly, there is absolutely no reason that somebody in prison should be able to change their name while they are serving a prison sentence? It is not necessary and it is clearly for ulterior motives that cannot be good.

[Sarah Champion]

My personal position is that when someone carries out such heinous crimes, some of their liberties will be taken away. We need the Minister to look very closely at what those liberties are, particularly when there is an incredibly apparent safeguarding risk from names being changed, as the hon. Member outlined. I will come to Ben Lewis, because his case outlines a number of flaws in the system.

Let me say to the Minister that our systems are not joined up. People are actively looking for those weaknesses and exploiting them. I urge her to do all she can to close them as quickly as possible.

Child Sexual Exploitation by Organised Networks

Debate between Sarah Champion and Tim Loughton

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Champion]

My hon. Friend raises a very pertinent point, and I commend her for the work that she has done to try and prevent this hideous crime. She is right that the initial stages of grooming are now almost exclusively happening online. Today I was with the Minister for School Standards talking about that, because the Department for Education’s teaching around grooming still features someone going up to a child in a park with a bottle of alcohol and does not tackle social media. My hon. Friend is right to raise that and the online harms Bill must reflect it.

The inquiry took thousands of hours, costing millions of pounds and effectively reached the same recommendations that I and others have been raising in Parliament for years—and that relate to what survivors have been saying for decades. However, in that time, little has actually changed. CSE is still flourishing, and abusers still seem to flout the law with impunity. The Government must now take decisive action to empower local authorities and law enforcement to protect children from exploitation.

The report makes six key recommendations that provide clear actions for Government to take. I urge the Minister to act urgently to implement them in full to prevent further horrific abuse. First, the criminal justice system’s response to CSE by organised gangs must be strengthened. The law must recognise the particular nature of sexual offences where a child is exploited by two or more people. The Government must swiftly amend the Sentencing Act 2020 to provide a mandatory aggravating factor in the sentencing of such cases. Secondly, the Minister should publish an enhanced version of the child exploitation disruption toolkit as soon as possible. The Government recognised the need to do that in their tackling child sexual exploitation and abuse strategy over a year ago, but the updated toolkit is yet to be published.

The toolkit needs to make clear that the core element of the definition of child sexual exploitation is that a child was controlled, coerced, manipulated or deceived into sexual activity. Currently, English statutory guidance defines child sexual exploitation as requiring some sort of “exchange” between the perpetrator and the victim. Barnardo’s and the IICSA report agree that exploitation does not necessarily involve exchange, financial advantage or an increase in status, not least because it implies collaboration by that child. The toolkit must reflect the fact that, both to recognise the true nature of the crime and to shift from victim-blaming, the definition must be updated.

The Government must also give agencies clear guidance on building effective problem profiles for CSE that are separate from other forms of exploitation. Problem profiling draws information about child sexual exploitation from different agencies together in one place. That process should enable agencies to understand fully the nature and the extent of CSE, and to commission services, train staff and prioritise action.

Clearer guidance on the types of data that agencies should use, and on how frequently profiles should be updated, will lead to a more accurate picture of the full scale and nature of CSE. That would enable more effective action to be taken to prevent harm and to stop organisations from protecting their data rather than protecting the child.

The third recommendation is that the Department for Education should update its guidance on CSE. It needs to reflect accurately what constitutes exploitation, the significant online threats faced by children today and the prevalence of networks of offenders.

Fourthly, all updated national guidance must make it clear that signs that a child is being sexually exploited must never be treated as an indication that a child is only at risk of experiencing that harm. Local authorities must ensure that assessments of risk and harm clearly differentiate between potential harm and actual harm. Too often, victims are already being sexually exploited, but they are incorrectly categorised as merely being at risk so little action is taken to protect them.

Fifthly, police force and local authorities must collect data on all cases of known or suspected child sexual exploitation. Accurate data about CSE cases, including the sex, ethnicity and disability of both the victims and the perpetrators, will help to identify patterns of CSE offending, particularly where those offences are committed by organised networks. That data also helps police forces to take more offensive action to disrupt and investigate offenders.

Finally, the Department for Education must ban the placement in unregulated care homes of all children who have experienced or who are at heightened risk of experiencing sexual exploitation. The evidence before the inquiry identified grave concerns about the capacity of unregulated care homes to safeguard properly children placed in their care. Sixteen and 17-year-olds should never be left in B&Bs where perpetrators have 24-hour access to them. All children are inherently vulnerable and must be protected from abusers who seek to take advantage.

Although I am pleased that many of my recommendations were included in the final report, it is disappointing to see that some of the key ones were not included.

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

I declare my interest as recorded in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I congratulate the hon. Lady on all the work that she has done over so many years and I am sure that she shares with me a sense of déjà vu that a problem that we were talking about five years ago or 10 years ago persists. I remember launching the child sexual exploitation action plan back in 2011 and many of the things in that plan are things that she repeats now. Why does she think that despite the hugely enhanced awareness of CSE, which went on in the shadows before, and better training for and awareness among the police and other professionals, it is still going on, and that people still think they can get away with it and do get away with it?

[Sarah Champion]

I am blessed to be in a Chamber with people who have campaigned for decades on the issue and made changes; the hon. Gentleman is certainly one of them. To be quite blunt, I think the reason it still goes on is that it is too expensive to deal with, and too endemic, and people have just washed their hands of it. I cannot express how much it upsets me to say that, but it is the only conclusion that I can draw, namely that it is too expensive to look after these children properly.

I made recommendations that the inquiry did not take up. One was that local authorities must take urgent steps to improve the access to CSE support systems for children from ethnic minority communities. That requires the Government to mandate that institutions dealing with CSE incorporate an understanding of the range of cultural or ethnic backgrounds into the services they offer. It is deeply disappointing that the IICSA report made no recommendations on the specific issue of CSE among ethnic minority communities, despite that and the lack of cultural-specific services being a major and systemic problem.

Next, the Government cannot accept that the court proceedings must, by their nature, further brutalise victims of abuse, by forcing them to relive their trauma in repeated interactions with the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and again in court. Of course, justice must be served, but how is justice served if victims and survivors are too afraid of the legal system to come forward or give evidence? I hope that the upcoming victims Bill will provide the desperately needed changes in those areas. I strongly encourage Ministers to continue to engage with me, MPs and organisations that work in the sector, to finally get this right.

Children’s Social Care: Rotherham

Debate between Sarah Champion and Tim Loughton

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words, and I completely agree with the points he makes. We are storing up a national disaster if we do not support these children, ideally with early intervention, or with whatever help they need throughout their lives. I ask the Minister: please will he agree to invest additional resources in supporting looked-after children and care leavers—yes, in Rotherham, but also across the country—so that they can get the proper support they need to repair their lives?

Rotherham council is doing the very best it can. Ofsted gave Rotherham high praise in its 2018 inspection report, which I would like to quote. It said:

“Improved identification of risk and continued focus on uncovering and tackling complex abuse have led to increased demands on social care. A recent increase in the numbers of children looked after has placed additional demands on placements. Some of this increase is due to improvements in identifying risk, and to the local authority’s complex abuse work.”

It went on to say that the council had plans in place to address the demand:

“They are not complacent in the approach they take in order to better understand, continue to identify, and address the large-scale serious abuse suffered by children and young people. Managers, leaders and partners are diligent in their ongoing efforts to expose both current and historic exploitation. This is seen in the number of successful prosecutions and ongoing court trials of perpetrators. Support to encourage children and young people who have suffered abuse helps them to feel safe enough to disclose their experiences and continues to develop. This includes services for those who are now adults. The stringent efforts of the local authority and partners to confront large-scale exploitation and abuse will continue to have its challenges, as victims continue to be identified.”

I agree with the Ofsted report.

The council has committed to implementing successful evidence-based programmes and has invested nearly £1 million of its own funding in innovative programmes alone. Recent analysis found that its expenditure on children’s social care has increased 90% between 2010 and 2016, compared with an average of 30% for other English local authorities. But the flip side of providing the level of care needed is the amount of extra funding for children’s social care services that the council has had to find to meet escalating demand. The council increased the children’s services budget by £20 million in 2016-17, but as demand continues to increase further, Rotherham borough council forecasts an overall £16 million overspend for children and young people’s services for the current financial year. That leaves the council yet again in the position of having to find even more funding from its own resources, and it is further increasing the children’s social care budget in 2019-20 by a net £7 million, making a total annual investment of £27 million over and above the 2015-16 budget.

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

I congratulate the hon. Lady not only on this debate but on the enormous amount of work that she has done in this area. Does she agree that the most expensive thing is getting it wrong? That has been borne out in Rotherham and in other high-profile cases. The fear is that the money now going in to mop up the problems after getting it wrong—the intensive care for sexual-predator victims historically—is now taking up all the resources, so that there is a shortage of resources for the preventive work needed to make sure that children do not get into such dangers in the future. It is a false economy to take our eye off that ball while mopping up the problems of the past.

[Sarah Champion]

The hon. Gentleman is right: it is short-term and does not address the underlying problems that the early intervention of good social work can do to prevent such escalation and the costs associated with it—not only the financial costs, but the costs to the individual.

With the exception of £3.4 million of one-off support from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government in 2015-16 and the £500,000 of annual funding provided for Stovewood, the council has had to fund these increased costs by making savings on other services and prioritising resources for children’s services. The additional funding announced for social care in the autumn Budget and earlier today is insufficient to support the extraordinary levels of demand on councils across the country.

The Chancellor’s recent announcement of an £85 million fund to assist councils with rising numbers of children in care is welcome, but the Department for Education has indicated that this money is likely to go to local authorities that Ofsted deems to be requiring improvement. Rotherham, which has worked so hard to improve itself, now has a service deemed good. Because of its success, it is being punished and is unlikely to get Government support. That simply is not fair. The current funding system rewards failure, not levels of need. Will the Minister clarify if any of the £85 million will go to councils which have good or outstanding Ofsted ratings? If not, will he justify the rationale for denying support to those councils, regardless of the number of children they have in care?

Rotherham council has worked so hard to make its service a success, even in the light of drastic cuts, but how long can it and other councils be expected to maintain standards in such a difficult climate? Rotherham council has studied the reasons behind the rise in numbers of children in receipt of social work services, and in particular the numbers of children in care. It has found that when early intervention is not available or not properly co-ordinated, children do not receive the right intervention at the right time. Consequently, concerns have then escalated to the point where children have been taken into care, which is costly to the state and devastating to the child.

As funding has dried up, councils have found themselves in a double bind. Required under statute to deliver services to children most at risk of harm and children in care, resources have been concentrated to the extent that the Local Government Association finds that 73% of children’s social care funding is now spent in just those areas. Of course, providing funding for the most vulnerable is the right thing to do. However, the reduction has driven a reduction in council spending on universal services such as Sure Start and early help, which so often provide the light-touch early intervention that can identify concerns and support families before crisis point is reached. I therefore beseech the Minister to recognise the value in children’s care services and recognise that every child in this country deserves an opportunity to thrive, and that that takes persistent sustained and ambitious intervention from Government to achieve. Councils will be £3 billion short by 2025 if they maintain current service levels. Will the Minister agree today to ask the Chancellor to meet this shortfall in the spending review?

I am also concerned that there is insufficient support for teenagers and young adults as they transition out of social care, often without the support of parents or carers. In Rotherham, girls who were sexually abused as children have previously fallen through the gaps as they reach the age of maturity and statutory support falls away. Despite exploitation continuing beyond their 18th birthday, society turns its back and instead blames the victim and accuses them of making damaging lifestyle choices, rather than seeing them as vulnerable people in need of support.

Support for 16 and 17-year-olds and care leavers must be improved. Children’s Society research has unsurprisingly found that vulnerabilities in childhood can intensify into early adulthood if left unchecked. The Department for Education’s own research shows that children receiving statutory support from children’s services do less well at school and are the most likely group to end up NEET—not in education, employment or training—in early adulthood. Will the Minister therefore commit to reviewing the support available for 16 and 17-year-old children in need as they make the difficult move into adulthood?

The Minister knows that excellent social work practice occurs in local authorities across the country on a daily basis. Families receive a service that helps them to get their lives back on the right track: dads get support to quit drinking, mums get the mental health treatment required, parents re-enter work, and children get to school on time. If MPs query what the extra money I am requesting is actually needed for, then I beg them to visit their local children’s social care teams and listen to what social workers say.

More resources result in a less stretched service and more time for professionals to spend with families providing the support they need at the earliest possible moment. More resources result in that little bit extra in the social worker’s budget: a pram for the destitute mum; a burger for a teenager running away from home; or a taxi to get dad across town for his mental health assessment. Why is that important? Because social workers want and need to give every opportunity they can to keep children at home with their families.

In November last year, the UN rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights concluded that poverty in the UK has been a political choice. Well, the Government have before them another political choice: whether to fund services that protect vulnerable children from harm and provide high-quality care for children in the state system, or to choose to ignore the crisis and pretend that their funding for innovation and transformation is anything more than a drop in the ocean. Let us not be in any doubt: this is also a political choice. Will the Minister please make the right choice tonight and commit to provide the core funding that Rotherham so desperately needs?

Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Sarah Champion and Tim Loughton

Monday 13th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion]

Once again, my hon. Friend is right. That is why there needs to be a national licensing scheme for which the Government have responsibility.

The Government have been good at making promises about tackling child sexual exploitation, but not so good at following them up with action. Will the Minister make some commitments on taxi licensing? I would appreciate a steer on the contents of the guidance, although I realise that they will be the subject of consultation. The Minister may want to write to me on that point.

Councils continue to report a lack of intelligence sharing by the police on issues crucial to deciding the suitability of applicants for taxi licences. Although the new common-law disclosure policy should allow for information sharing, the interpretation varies and many police forces do not share data. Guidance to councils alone will not resolve the problem. Will the Home Office take steps to ensure that the police co-operate fully with councils so that applicants for taxi licences can be screened effectively?

Finally, will the Minister confirm the status of the guidance? Government new clause 56 states that licensing authorities “must have regard” to it. I hope the Minister will clarify that the guidance must be followed, not just looked at and put in a drawer. If the Minister can provide confirmation on those questions, we are minded to withdraw our new clause and support the Government’s.

New clause 41 would make it explicit in the law that local safeguarding children boards have an obligation to prevent child sexual exploitation and other forms of child abuse. Such boards should bring together professionals in education, law enforcement, social care and the voluntary sector to help protect children. They are collaborative bodies, established by the Labour Government, which have the potential to ensure that the focus of every organisation on the board is the protection and welfare of children. Local safeguarding children boards have the potential to act as the canary to child sexual exploitation and abuse, bringing together professionals who can develop a full picture of the harm being perpetrated against a child. But far more emphasis must be given to the prevention of child sexual exploitation and child abuse.

Chief Constable Simon Bailey has said that in 2015 more than £1 billion was spent on investigating child abuse allegations. Sadly, by the time the police are involved, it is likely that children have already been harmed and will be living with the trauma for the rest of their lives. The Prime Minister has given child sexual exploitation the status of a “national threat” in the strategic policing requirement. I therefore hope that the Minister will support our new clause to explicitly broaden the objectives of local safeguarding children boards to include a focus on the prevention of sexual exploitation.

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Lady is making some good points, but it was my understanding when I was responsible for the child sexual exploitation action plan introduced nationally in 2011 that each local safeguarding children board was responsible for developing its own localised version of that CSE plan. The problem is not so much the plan as the unwillingness of some partners within an LSCB to pull their weight. Does the hon. Lady agree that the recent review undertaken for the Department for Education may need to lead to the introduction of some statutory duties on those partners to do their bit, in partnership with everybody else?

[Sarah Champion]

As ever, the hon. Gentleman is superb on this subject, and he is ahead of me by a line of my speech. I completely agree. The problem with the safeguarding boards as they stand at present is that they are very dependent on the skill, determination and bloody-mindedness of the chair. The hon. Gentleman is right. I do not want things to come down to the luck of whether there is a good chair who can implement a good plan. What I want is for every child across the country to be safe and safeguarded in the same way, so I look to the Government to move on that.

I support new clauses 13 and 14. I praise my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey), who works tirelessly for the protection of children in her constituency and across the country. She has been a role model and a mentor to me, and I want to put on record my gratitude to her for all the help she has given to me and to all the children in this country. She has been tireless, and I am very grateful for that.

My hon. Friend’s new clauses, which deal with the grooming of children for criminal behaviour, raise an important issue that the House must tackle. Children are not just at risk of grooming for sex. They face exploitation by criminals for terrorism, trafficking and drug-related offences, for instance—we have heard other examples. The Government must take the issue seriously and offer a holistic approach to tackling child grooming and exploitation. Will the Minister work closely with my hon. Friend to turn her new clauses 13 and 14 into legislation?

New clauses 46, 47, 61 and 62 were tabled by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael). Through my campaigning work to prevent violence, exploitation and harm against children, I have seen the most dramatic and shocking increase in the proliferation of sexual images, often taken and shared by children. The right hon. Gentleman will appreciate that the current legislation has been in effect for only a year. I hope he will support my call on the Government to conduct a thorough review of the effectiveness of the legislation, the number of prosecutions and convictions, and the suitability of the sentences given.

I welcome Government new clause 55, which will create lifetime anonymity for victims of forced marriage. The crime of forced marriage is another form of domestic violence. The victims, mostly women, suffer violence, threats of violence, coercion, manipulation, psychological trauma and economic control. As with every other form of domestic violence, victims have their right to determine their own lives forcibly removed from them by their abusers. Anonymity will encourage victims to come forward and seek help from the police. It will give a survivor of this form of domestic violence a chance to regain control and rebuild their life. Now that the Government recognise the benefit of anonymity for victims of forced marriage, female genital mutilation and sexual abuse, I hope they will consider extending anonymity to victims of other forms of domestic and sexual violence and do more to raise awareness of these awful crimes.

I would like briefly to comment on a number of the provisions tabled by the shadow Home Office team, led by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer). It is unfortunate but true that our criminal justice system does not always place support for the victim at its core. I know from my work with victims of domestic and sexual violence that they often feel totally unsupported when reporting a crime or after a prosecution. Many victims face the most horrendous ordeal in court, where they are forced to relive their trauma over and over again. Yet there is no statutory framework in the criminal justice system for the provision of services for victims—there is no legal regime promoting and protecting victims’ rights from the beginning to the end of their engagement with the criminal justice system. Similarly, the role of the Victim’s Commissioner has great potential, but the position is under-resourced and exists without significant powers. Victims’ rights will be taken seriously only if and when they are enshrined in law. I hope the Government will hear our calls today and make that a reality.

I wish to end by commenting on new clause 2, which would devolve responsibility for policing to the Welsh Assembly. I have had the pleasure of working with the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) on other clauses in the Bill relating to child protection, so I have no doubt that the convictions she has expressed in this new clause are heartfelt and sincere and need to be taken seriously. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) has outlined, Labour believes that the people of Wales should have a greater say over the policing of Wales, and that should be pursued through the Wales Bill.

Child Sexual Exploitation (Rotherham)

Debate between Sarah Champion and Tim Loughton

Thursday 26th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[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.