Young Runaways (Sexual Exploitation)

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

I welcome our Chair—he appears to have lost some hair since the beginning of the debate. We have had a very good debate with well-informed contributions, a great consensus about the importance of the matter and a determination to pick up the baton and ensure that we bring about effective action.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey), not just on her excellent in-depth and well-informed speech—one would expect it to be so—but on the enormous amount of work she has been doing on the subject, raising its profile in this place and beyond, including in the national media, well beyond the confines of her constituency. I am sure that she, too would pay tribute to the work of Helen Southworth, her predecessor in the all-party group on child protection, who started that work. The hon. Lady is genuinely passionate about making a different to the lives of young runaways, as am I, and I am particularly concerned about the preponderance of children in the care system who fall into these dangers, and I have been working on the issue for some time. I hope that we can continue that work and step it up a gear in the future. I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for her constructive arguments, and for her communications on this and related subjects.

I will respond to the hon. Lady’s detailed points about data collection, and about the roles of local authorities and local safeguarding children boards in particular, in a few minutes, and I will also pick up as many as possible of the points made by other Members before I make what is a fairly lengthy speech but which I might have time to get through.

I want to say at the outset that I absolutely share the hon. Lady’s view that young runaways and missing children are a very vulnerable group of people who desperately need and deserve our protection. As she has said, the figures are alarming, with an estimated 100,000 children going missing every year—and that is just the ones we know about. That is one child under the age of 16 every 10 minutes, one in five of whom is likely to be at serious risk of being hurt or harmed by sleeping rough or staying with someone they have just met. The figures are stark. The experiences and alarming figures that the hon. Lady draws on from her own constituency are perhaps a result of her local children’s services department and the police being more savvy about the problem and therefore better at detecting it, thus artificially inflating the figures. I do not underestimate the importance of the problem in her constituency but, as she knows, I spent a week there on the front line with social workers last year, and I know that they are aware of the problem and are determined to do something about it.

We also know that young runaways are often affected by other problems, and surveys have suggested that about one third of them have reported problems with substance misuse or involvement in crime, and we have heard about other difficulties, including mental health issues and domestic violence. Although many missing children fortunately return safely, many suffer harm and exploitation while they are missing and some, of course, never return. Once they are on the streets, children can find themselves with few options and no one safe to turn to, leaving them very vulnerable to exploitation by those who would harm them or seek to gain from their misfortune. In some cases—too many cases—that includes sexual exploitation, the profile of which, I am very pleased to say, has been raised.

As the hon. Lady points out, there is a strong link between children going missing and children suffering from sexual exploitation, and I can confirm, as she requested that I do, that the Government’s action plan on sexual exploitation will take full account of that linkage. As she indicated, the connection works in both directions: children who go missing are at risk of sexual exploitation and children who are being exploited are more likely to run away from home or care. That is a Catch-22 situation, which the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) also mentioned, and I absolutely agree that that is the case. Ever since the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire) and I really tried to take a grip of this subject earlier in the year, I have been very clear that the problem is much bigger than we appreciate. The more work we do, the more alarmed people will be by the scale of the problem and by how widespread it is.

My hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) said that the problem was not exclusively urban, but existed in market towns and rural areas, as she knows from her own experience—I have met with her and her local police. The problem is also classless, affecting many middle-class, apparently stable families, with children running away from home for all sorts of reasons. We must open our eyes to the extent and range of the problem.

Understanding what young people in such situations go through is absolutely essential to learning lessons and improving our responses to the problem in future. The hon. Member for Stockport has arranged for the all-party group for runaway and missing children and adults to meet later today to hear the voices of former young runaways. I will attend that meeting, as will the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins). I was going to say that I am looking forward to hearing young people’s stories, but that is not quite the phrase to use, given how harrowing such stories are. It is important, however, to hear those real-life experiences.

I will now take up a few of the points made, before returning to my substantive speech. The hon. Member for Stockport made a telling point when she said that removing the protection of parents or carers is part of the grooming process—she is absolutely right. I pay tribute to the BBC and the “Eastenders” programme for the storyline run a few months ago—very harrowing, realistic and “in your face”, involving the character Whitney Dean and how she was enticed away from her family by someone who she thought cared for her but in fact was exploiting her, benefiting and profiting in a most nasty way from her misfortune. The wedge driven between her and what stability she might have had with family and friends was key to the exploitation taking place.

The hon. Lady also mentioned the importance of interviews with returning runaways. Absolutely—we need to know the reasons why they run away because, hopefully, we can then support that particular home, family or care establishment, as well as learn lessons for other children and young people in a similar situation.

The right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) asked a substantial range of questions, all pertinent and many born of his considerable experience, not least as police Minister in the previous Government. His point about cross-border and cross-departmental considerations was fair. I am the lead Minister on the subject in the Westminster Government, liaising particularly closely with the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup, as well as with the Department of Health and beyond.

This crime, however, does not respect borders and I am aware of some unjoined-up gaps in our links with the devolved parts of the United Kingdom, which I aim to plug. Once we have a grip on the action plan that we are developing and will publish later this year, I will also have conversations with colleagues in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. The problem also goes beyond the borders of the United Kingdom. I am only too well aware of problems we had in West Sussex, with young girls being brought in as unaccompanied asylum seekers from west Africa—Nigeria and Sierra Leone, in particular—only to be trafficked out of the country and ending up in the sex trade in north Italy.

[Mr Hanson]

May I ask that, as part of the development of the action plan, the Minister formally consults with the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly before publication, to see if there are areas in which joined-up government can operate effectively to tackle the issue?

[Tim Loughton]

I think that is essential. In the same way, the inter-ministerial group on trafficking, which the Minister for Immigration chairs and on which I represent the Department for Education, has provided links. Our meetings have included counterparts from the other parts of the United Kingdom, physically and by video conference. Such discussions are essential, and officials are already having them, but I want to have them at a ministerial level as well, and that input is needed for the action plan. That is absolutely right. Of course, organisations such as the NSPCC and ChildLine, which we have funded, are UK-wide as well. It is important that we learn from that experience throughout the UK, too.

The right hon. Gentleman also asked about funding and how the new arrangements from 1 July would work. I am not the relevant Home Office Minister, but some of the services that CEOP will provide in the future are currently provided by the National Policing Improvement Agency missing persons bureau, and associated funds will therefore be reallocated from the NPIA to CEOP to reflect those new responsibilities. The new set-up will add to the provision of educational resources and training for the police, supporting police operations through targeted research and analysis, providing operational support for forces dealing with missing children by extending the CEOP one-stop shop to include online missing children resources, and ensuring that co-ordination arrangements and capability are in place to manage complex or high-profile missing children cases.

A lot of preparation has gone into this work, and as the hon. Member for Stockport saw on her visit, CEOP is very well placed to deal with these issues. It has very competent people, including Peter Davies at its head, who really understand this problem and are very keen to take it on.

The hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) mentioned the action plan—the fact that it needs to be a plan that results in action. The right hon. Member for Delyn cast a slightly difficult googly about how I would assess whether it had worked or not. Good guidance was published as part of “Working Together to Safeguard Children” back in 2009. The problem was that there was not an associated action plan. It is a very good piece of guidance—on a shelf, in a manual. I am absolutely determined in this area, as in many other areas of child protection, that we should not just write something down but pick it up and run with it and ensure that everyone is doing their bit towards it. That is why, through the Munro review and associated activity, I want to ensure that all the players in this are being monitored and are contributing, to make sure that the action plan produces results. That is essential.

We do need to get the statistics right. I think that it was the hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea) who made the point that I am thinking of in this regard. All colleagues present from Northern Ireland contributed and all made very good points, so I apologise if I get confused about which hon. Member made which point. With regard to the problems in relation to data, several hon. Members—I will come on to this in more detail—have slightly confused apples and pears. The data count different things. We have referred to different aspects of the data. They are not comparable, as they are different. The nationally collected data are specific to children missing from care for over 24 hours and do not include, for example, repeat disappearances by the same child, whereas local data do and may include children who have only just gone missing. There is no attempt to cover up, but we do have different sets of data. That reinforces to me the need to ensure that we know which sort of data we are applying to which problem. That is a problem, and one of the things that must come out of the action plan is all of us knowing where we are coming from on that.

I think that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned the problems with residential homes. Of course, only a small proportion of children in care are in residential homes, but we do need to do much better in terms of how they liaise with local police in particular. I know that from personal experience. I think that in Worthing, which is partly in my constituency, there are now no fewer than 10 independent children’s homes, and there have been a lot of problems with children running away and the police getting involved.

Many points were made about data collection, and CEOP was also mentioned by the hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones), who is no longer here. It is very good to see the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) here again, contributing in a debate on children’s issues, as she and I did for many years in opposition. She made a lot of well informed and sensible points. She was right to start by saying that the politician’s job is never finished. We have to keep at this. It is not just a question of producing the booklet, producing the glossy brochure, producing the action plan and ticking the boxes. We have to keep people’s feet to the fire—one of my hon. Friends would always use that phrase. Practice is patchy, and I want to ensure that every local authority and agency is working to the standard of the best and using the same rulebook and manual so that we all know what we are talking about and the precise problem that we are trying to tackle.

I mentioned the problem of recognition of data. Part of the difficulty is lack of recognition of the problem, so that it is not a priority in certain areas. That must stop.

The hon. Lady mentioned another point that she and others have made before, about the duty to co-operate. We could have a whole debate just on that subject—and indeed that debate is happening on the Education Bill currently going through Parliament. However, under other education legislation—I think, from memory, the Education Act 1996 and the Education Act 2002—schools of all types have a duty to safeguard, watch, maintain and promote the welfare of the children in them. Schools are an important part of local safeguarding children boards. I want the groups in question to come together not because they must, but because they want to in the best interests of the children they are responsible for, and because they can get the best results by sitting at the same table, and acting and talking together.

On the hon. Lady’s other point about children over the age of 18, the transition issue is a particular one for children in care, those with learning difficulties and those who are just not grown up enough, who are more likely to be exploited. With children in care, of course, “staying put” pilots are going on. They are a good thing, and will inform the process by which we can better look after children who happen to hit their 18th birthday; their problems and vulnerability do not suddenly disappear when they become adult. The hon. Lady makes a good point again, but it is a problem across the piece.

I shall return to my speech and try to whizz through it in the remaining nine minutes, Mr Havard. I want to say a little about how the Government’s approach to the problem of runaways and missing children will pan out. Most missing children cases are dealt with well at local level by police forces, who see such cases as a clear priority. However, the Government recognise that there is a case for national capability to add value by ensuring that police are trained and equipped with the right understanding to identify and respond when children go missing. That is why the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup, announced last month that from 1 July the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre would assume national responsibility for missing children’s services. I was very pleased to hear the hon. Member for Stockport welcome that. As I mentioned, she visited CEOP recently, and I am sure that she will have been as impressed by its work as I was on my recent visit.

Making CEOP responsible for missing children’s services is an extremely important development. It means that for the first time in this country there will be a dedicated team of experts at national level focused solely on missing children issues. The fact that that capability will exist within CEOP means that they can bring their considerable child protection expertise to bear on this problem. However, of course, as the hon. Lady made clear, the problem of young runaways, and missing children more generally, is not something that the police or CEOP can solve alone. There must be a multi-agency, partnership approach, involving local authority children’s services, the police and the important charity and local voluntary sector—as well as, of course, families and parents. Local safeguarding children boards have a key role to play in co-ordinating and ensuring the effectiveness of the work of their members. That needs to cover raising awareness to try to prevent child sexual exploitation taking place—because, as the hon. Lady observed, prevention is better than cure—but also responding to it when it does.

Before going further, I should perhaps respond to the hon. Lady’s points about the collection and evaluation of data, building on the reference that I made just now. Knowing the extent of the problem is an important step in being able to address it. The hon. Lady referred to the differences between my Department’s statistics on children missing from care and local police data. The fact is that those statistics will be different because different things are being counted. In addition—the hon. Lady alluded to this—many children are reported missing from care as soon as their absence is noted, and, fortunately, are located within 24 hours. The Department’s figures record only children who are missing from their placements for more than 24 hours. Of course, that is not to say that any of them may not be a risk to themselves or others during the period that they are absent.

To complicate the matter still further, the local authority that is responsible for a particular child’s care is the one that reports their absence in the statistics of the Department for Education. The fact that an authority is shown as having only a small number of missing children is not the same as saying that only that number went missing from care in that authority, because some authorities have many looked-after children placed from other authorities within their boundaries. That is a particular problem in Kent. The result is that if a child from, say, Southwark, goes missing from a care placement in Kent and is reported to the Kent police, the child will appear under Southwark and not Kent in the Department’s data. There are thus some problems; but we need to sort that out to make sure we know exactly the extent of the problem.

I appreciate that those technical considerations do not make it easy to form a clear and consistent picture of the extent of the problem. However, it is not a question of either the police data or the Department’s statistics being wrong. They are just counting different things. The important thing is that local police forces and local authorities work together to form the clearest possible picture of the number of young runaways and missing children in their area, whether from care or from home. That data is not collected centrally.

The hon. Lady also expressed concern about some local authorities not adhering to the “Statutory guidance on children who run away or go missing from home or care”. I can tell her that my Department is currently reviewing a range of guidance with the aim of reducing unnecessary bureaucracy. We will look at the guidance she mentioned as part of that wider review. We want—as I know she wants—guidance to be easily accessible and, most importantly, helpful for schools, local authorities and children’s services.

On the specific issue of child sexual exploitation, we know that the great majority of missing children incidents are repeat cases, with the same children going missing— running away from, or towards, something. Such children are vulnerable. They face serious risks while they are missing, and we know that there are clear links with child sexual exploitation. As I have said before, the sexual exploitation of children is a truly appalling crime, which can of course affect children whether or not they have ever run away from home. It is an extremely serious form of child sexual abuse. The sorts of experiences to which some children and young people are subjected are unspeakably shocking, involving rape, severe sexual assault and, often, chilling intimidation. We have heard of many such cases from hon. Members who have spoken today. Anyone perpetrating such crimes must be brought to justice. I am glad to say there have been some high-profile cases recently—some still going on—where that sort of justice is being brought to bear. However, as I have said, it is the tip of the iceberg.

The victims of sexual exploitation—and their families—need understanding and support. Support may be needed over many years, involving a range of expertise from across the statutory and voluntary sectors. Let us be in no doubt: the victims of such sexual exploitation are vulnerable children. As with any other vulnerable children, all our instincts should be to protect and support them.

The hon. Lady referred to Barnardo’s “Puppet on a string” report, as did other hon. Members. I want to place on the record my praise for Barnardo’s hard-hitting report. It made it uncomfortably clear to us that child sexual exploitation is a much bigger problem than many people ever imagined. It is not exclusive to any single culture, community, race or religion. It happens in all areas of the country. Stereotyping offenders or victims is quite simply a red herring and unhelpful. It is important, therefore, that every local authority and every local safeguarding children board in town and country, city and rural areas, assumes that sexual exploitation is a problem in their area and that they take action to address it.

The hon. Lady referred to research by the university of Bedfordshire, early findings from which suggest that many local authorities are not following the “Safeguarding children and young people from sexual exploitation” statutory guidance, which was issued in 2009. I know that many professionals are, like her, concerned that some local authority areas have yet to develop a satisfactory response to child sexual exploitation. I share that concern; it must improve.

As lead Minister, I have been urgently considering, within Government and working with national and local partners, what further action needs to be taken to safeguard children and young people from sexual exploitation. In April, I chaired a round-table meeting with senior representatives from a range of organisations. At that meeting, we identified a wide range of issues to be addressed, from awareness-raising and understanding to effective prevention and early detection, the challenges of securing prosecutions and the need to support victims and their families. We are committed to working with partners to develop over the summer an action plan to safeguard children and young people from sexual exploitation. The hon. Lady said that she welcomed this work and I am grateful for her support, which I am sure will be ongoing.

We are still in the early stages of developing the action plan so I cannot announce details today. However, I can say that it will build on existing guidance and our developing understanding of this dreadful abuse, including through local agencies’ work around the country. It will include work on effective prevention strategies, identifying those at risk of sexual exploitation, supporting victims and taking robust action against perpetrators. A key element of the action plan will be ensuring that the wide range of work currently taking place on child sexual exploitation is complementary and comprehensive. The action plan will take account of CEOP’s thematic assessment of on-street grooming, which will be published shortly. It will also reflect the recently announced two-year enquiry into child sexual exploitation to begin later this year, which will be conducted by the office of the Children’s Commissioner.

There is also the university of Bedfordshire two-year research project, which I just mentioned, funded by Comic Relief—a worthwhile use of its funds—and due to be published in October, on preventing the sexual exploitation of children and young people. I expect there to be a good deal of learning in each of those projects, and in others taking place around the country, such as the Safe and Sound project in Derby—I pay tribute to Sheila Taylor MBE who is now chairman of the National Working Group on sexual exploitation—Barnardo’s 22 sexual exploitation services, and the work being carried out by the Coalition for the Removal of Pimping.

Underpinning much of this is the Munro review of child protection on which we had a very good debate in the House only the other week, in which the hon. Lady took part. I was pleased that Professor Munro specifically mentioned in her report the issue of child sexual exploitation, and the important role of local safeguarding children boards. The report stresses the importance of re-focusing the child protection system on the needs and experiences of children and young people. Professor Munro’s fundamental analysis is that the system has become too focused on compliance with unnecessary rules and procedures, and professionals have spent less time actually helping—

[Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)]

Order. That was breathless, Minister, if not breathtaking. I am sure that you will write with any important information that has not been covered. We will now move on to the next debate.