Child Sexual Exploitation

Tessa Munt Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend was involved in bringing that about. It was difficult to define what amounted to child sexual exploitation. Although technology is a wonderful enabling tool, its emergence also enables people such as groomers to do evil things by it. We have to keep up with such people. On my visits to CEOP and Scotland Yard, I saw police officers trawling through all sorts of extraordinary, horrific imagery on their computers. It is often the case that paedophiles and traders in extreme pornography who take advantage of children are technologically one step ahead of law enforcers. We must never shirk from making sure that, technologically, our law-enforcement agencies are up to speed in doing their job, because paedophiles are really clever at using technology to peddle their vile trade.

Are we safer in 2012? I believe that we are, but we still have a long way to go. I believe that the modern equivalent of the abuse that took place in north Wales children’s homes in the ’70s and ’80s, and other similar events that are now being revisited, is child sexual exploitation gangs. Most of those that have come to light so far happen to involve British Pakistani men, but we will also see other gangs with different cultural backgrounds around the country. It is child sexual exploitation of a different sort from, but on a similarly serious scale to what happened in those children’s homes. It is not happening in children’s homes any more—we have well-regulated, well-inspected, better-equipped people—but it is happening outside children’s homes in too many cases. That is why we must be absolutely vigilant and make sure that we learn the lessons of Rochdale, Derby, Bradford and all the cases that have and are still to come to light. The knowledge that my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon has of the cases that may come to light in her own part of the world will bring further gasps at the fact that such savagery can actually take place. This will continue to happen.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

I would caution against ever making an assumption that children are safe in any environment, even if we set up safeguards for them. We should never assume that sexual abuse cannot take place in a children’s home from now on. It is the power relationship that creates safety for perpetrators of sexual abuse. Would the hon. Gentleman like to comment on that?

[Tim Loughton]

I entirely agree. I used the word, “safer.” No child can be guaranteed to be absolutely safe and I would not be surprised if further stories come out of sexual exploitation of children in care homes. That is why the work that I commissioned in July to set up working parties to look at the quality of children’s residential homes, the safety of children who are increasingly being placed well away from their own homes, and better data-sharing between the police and the local children’s services department about homes, is vital. No child can be deemed to be absolutely safe—I hope that I have made that absolutely clear.

Is what happened in a north Wales children’s home less likely to happen in our children’s homes now? I believe it is, but we cannot guarantee that it will never happen. That is the comparison that I wanted to make.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

The hon. Lady makes a valid point. It is important that young people should have that confidence, which perhaps plays into the one observation that I want to make: an assault on childhood innocence, particularly that of young girls, is widespread in our country. It can be found on television, advertising and, overwhelmingly, in magazines that are on sale at eye level—not our eye level, but children’s eye level—in every supermarket in the land.

In 1996, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff) promoted a private Member’s Bill to require these girly magazines to place on their front page their target age audience. Unfortunately, the Bill fell, but I salute my hon. Friend for his work. I tried to follow it up when I came back to the House in 1997. I had a meeting with the editors of magazines such as More! and various others. Some of those magazines had features such as “position of the month”. It was sexually mechanical and devoid of moral content. I told the editors, who were overwhelmingly female, that I had a young daughter—she was young at the time but is rather older now, although I do have a young granddaughter—and when I asked them whether they would like their daughters to see such things, they all shuffled uncomfortably in their seats.

I will pay them this tribute: they have improved. I had a look around Sainsbury’s in Farnborough to check out what the magazines were up to and I think that they have got better, but they are still overwhelmingly sex-obsessed. What are young girls to think—what are young men supposed to think—except that this is the way of life and that if they are not behaving like that or like celebrities, they are old-fashioned, fuddy-duddies, not cool and behind the times?

Even this week’s OK! magazine has a headline with somebody called Harry Styles—I am afraid that he has passed my attention, but he seems a reasonably good-looking young lad—saying, “I jumped into bed with my mate’s mum”. The story is not what one might imagine it to be—it is rather more boring and less dramatic than it might appear—but it is on the front page and designed to titillate. The obsession with exploiting the vulnerability of young people—predominantly young girls—leads to situations, examples of which have been provided by so many hon. Members today, whereby they can be exploited by men. We all know—certainly us blokes here—what men are like. That is the atmosphere in which the kind of events that were happening in Keighley go on. I salute my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins) for being so bold in what he said—I am sure that Ann Cryer would have approved thoroughly.

I submit—this is the essence of the argument that I am putting to the House—that one cannot look at the things that have gone on in north Wales and Rochdale without putting them in the wider national context. We must not just blame those whom we pay to look after these young people or the leaders of the local authorities, but must look at ourselves, the adults who buy this lurid dross and the people who produce it. We must ask ourselves what sort of society we are creating for our young people. It is hardly surprising that in our society young people, and young girls in particular, are vulnerable.

[Tessa Munt]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the problem goes beyond the magazine racks of supermarkets and other shops on our high streets? Anyone can see the early sexualisation of young people in the sort of clothes that are on sale. It is possible to find bras and bikini sets for young girls of seven or eight. That is equally inappropriate.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I do not think that I will find many opportunities to agree with her, but I am delighted to have done so on our first encounter. Of course, mothers are under pressure and may not themselves have had the benefit of being brought up in loving families.

Family life is important in this debate. Mention has been made of the abuse that goes on in families. When I was chairman of the Lords and Commons family and child protection group, we produced an excellent report on the cost of family breakdown entitled, “Does your mother know?” The evidence shows overwhelmingly that children who are brought up in loving families and married households tend to thrive more than those who are brought up in other family units.

In conclusion, I have been delighted to listen to so many Members from all parts of the House make common cause on a matter of great importance to the people of our country. I hope that Parliament will continue to do whatever it can to protect young people. However, let us be absolutely clear that criticising state agents in the form of local authority employees and others is not sufficient; the root cause of this problem lies at the heart of our society and the way in which we behave as a nation, and it must be tackled.