Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

The strongest protection for victims continues to be through police investigations, and of course the police have full powers to pursue investigations wheresoever they may be found. A series of local inquiries have been held in different ways. The inspector investigation into Rotherham, where Baroness Casey was the lead inspector, did have powers to get to the truth, whereas the Telford inquiry did not have those powers but still managed to uncover serious problems and make serious recommendations.

There are different ways in which to do this. We have made it clear that we want to strengthen accountability powers and the ability to ensure that answers are given to local areas, and that is alongside the work we already have under way as part of the Hillsborough law on the duty of candour that we need to implement across the board.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I thank the Home Secretary for the really important steps that she has announced today. Nothing must come in the way of victims getting justice or being listened to, or of us learning all that we can about how we protect future victims. If lessons come out of the individual local inquiries repeated across the country that would enable us to better protect victims in the future, how will we co-ordinate that? Turning to the previous question, will she explain why she believes that the statutory footing is not the right way to go and that the localised way will ensure that we get to the truth?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right that we need to ensure proper follow-up where there are recommendations. There have been over 500 different recommendations, predominantly around child sexual exploitation, with many more around child sexual abuse much more widely. There is currently not a proper process to be able to follow them up. That is one of the reasons why the independent inquiry talked about strengthening child protection arrangements through, for example, a child protection authority and having stronger arrangements in that way. It is also one of the reasons why we have said that we need a new performance framework for policing to be able to have proper follow-up.

Obviously, we have already had a statutory seven-year inquiry into child sexual abuse and a statutory two-year investigation into child sexual exploitation and grooming gangs. Those reports came out with really important recommendations, but one of the things that they identified was that there simply was not enough evidence or data on the gangs in particular to be able to do further work and further investigations. That is why the next step must be to have the rapid national audit that we have asked Baroness Casey to undertake to get a much more extensive assessment of the prevalence and nature of child sexual exploitation across the country.