Sexual Exploitation: Newcastle

Victoria Atkins Excerpts

Tuesday 12th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)]

I thank the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) for securing the debate. She talked not only about the need for support, but about the long-term effects of such disgraceful and unacceptable behaviour to a fellow human being. She has represented her constituency this evening with passion and understanding, but also with a clear determination to ensure that her great city does not see a repetition of these terrible episodes.

I know that this subject is enormously important to Members in all parts of the House. I was glad that the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) intervened on her hon. Friend’s speech, because I have received parliamentary questions from both Members. I will start with an observation that they made, quite properly, about the responses that they had received to questions about the Spicer review and the fact that answers had tended to focus on child sexual exploitation. I very much take that on board, and I apologise. They are right that, sadly, the abuse in Newcastle not only concerned children, which is appalling enough; these defendants appear to have targeted vulnerable people, some of them with learning disabilities. The ruthlessness of the exploitation is almost too much to comprehend. I am therefore grateful to both Members for speaking up tonight.

The details are shocking and we know that vulnerable people were let down by a range of services in Newcastle over many years. I am pleased that the serious case review concluded that local practice has improved tremendously since 2014, but of course the victims and survivors still bear the terrible scars of their abuse.

The Government welcome David Spicer’s comprehensive serious case review. Although it is clear that significant improvements have been made locally, it shows us that Government still have more to do. His recommendations are already informing the way Government work with local commissioners, and we will certainly look at how best to provide advice on supporting vulnerable adult victims of sexual exploitation in addition to child victims. His recommendation that further research be carried out into the perpetrators of this awful abuse will be taken forward through the work of our centre of expertise, which I will discuss in more detail later. It will assess UK and international impacts and evidence for both victims and perpetrators. The report makes many recommendations for central Government action, all of which will be considered as part of our ongoing work.

I will not be able to deal with all of the questions the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central has raised, but I will respond in writing on those I do not respond to tonight. She wishes the Government to respond officially to the report, and I commit to writing to her covering the national recommendations in the review. As she knows, the Government do not usually respond to serious case reviews, but the details of this review are significant enough for me certainly to write to her about it. On the funding of Changing Lives, unfortunately I do not get to make funding decisions, but I will make inquiries about the application that charity made. I am pleased to hear of the work the hub is doing, and I understand that the police and crime commissioner has received £1.56 million plus £116,000 for victims of child sexual abuse. The Ministry of Justice is reviewing long-term funding not just for the hub but for all local and national provision, because we do take on board the point that the victims of these terrible crimes live with the consequences if not forever for very many years and decades.

The Government want to ensure that all victims of sexual exploitation feel that they can come forward to report abuse and that they can get the support they need. Whether a victim is a child or an adult, the same principle must apply.

This Government have empowered PCCs to deliver services for victims. So in the first instance PCCs must make an assessment of the support needs of all victims in their force area, including children and vulnerable adults alike, and commission services to meet those needs. We are allocating around £68 million to PCCs this year to provide emotional and practical support services for victims of crime, and we have increased the overall victims’ support services budget from around £50 million in 2012-13 to around £96 million in the current financial year.

As I have said, the PCC in Northumbria has been allocated more than £1.5 million of core victim grant to provide support to victims, and additional money to the tune of £116,000 has been allocated to services for victims of child sexual abuse. Of course, the PCC has her own budget from the main grant, and central Government say to PCCs, “You know the needs of your local area and we trust you to make these decisions.” We therefore hope is that if she feels that more funding needs to be allocated, she will be able to do that from the main grant.

We have also provided £250,000 this year to support four rape support centres in Northumbria, including the Grace Project in Newcastle. The Grace Project is one of 15 rape support centres that have opened since 2010 with Government funding. We now support 98 centres directly, helping women, men, boys and girls to begin to recover from the effect of these appalling crimes, and we have committed to maintaining funding for rape support services at the current level until at least 2020.

Our ambition is to support victims and survivors, whoever they are and wherever they are. That is why we have invested £100 million in this spending review period to support our commitment to tackling violence against women and girls, and it is why NHS England has now commissioned 47 sexual assault referral centres in England at a cost of £27 million, including the Teesside SARC, which provides support for victims of sexual violence across the north-east. It is also why we have recently launched the £13 million trusted relationships fund, protecting vulnerable people from sexual exploitation, gang exploitation and peer abuse.

We want to do more, so we are investing £7.5 million in the centre of expertise on child sexual abuse, which will tell us far more about what works, where gaps exist and what more support we can give to professionals and commissioners. It has already published research into local commissioning practice, which will form the basis for a framework for commissioners. The Home Office will publish that framework later this year. It will share good practice and help commissioners to assess need and provide support. We are also piloting the child house model, based on international best practice. In a child house, child victims can receive all the support they need in a single, comfortable environment. We have invested more than £4 million in the first house, which will open its doors in London in the autumn.

Despite all that has been achieved in recent years, we must continue to challenge ourselves to improve the support we provide for victims, not only because the needs of victims change over time but because the nature of crime itself is continually evolving. That is why we are developing a new cross-Government victims strategy, which will comprehensively review how crime has changed and ensure that our response still meets the needs of victims. The strategy will provide a framework for future work and national cross-Government direction. For example, as part of the strategy, we are developing a more sustainable funding model for sexual violence support services, so that victims can access the support they need immediately after the crime and throughout every stage of their recovery.

The strategy will consider how we might improve provision of the services that victims are entitled to receive under the victims code. It will also continue to drive improvement in victims’ experience of the criminal justice process. The hon. Lady’s description of the ordeal of victims having to give evidence at trial summed up the need for that very strongly. We must ensure that criminal justice agencies provide victims with a service that is appropriate to their needs and respectful of them as individuals. Victims want cases to be well managed and dealt with swiftly, so that they can deal with the experience and, hopefully, put it behind them. We will consider how the agencies responsible for delivery of those services might be better held to account.

I know the interest of the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North, so I would value a meeting with them and my officials to discuss any thoughts that they may have on how the victims strategy can be improved to cover the points raised in tonight’s debate.

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the Minister for giving way, for the tone of her comments and for the way in which she recognises the importance of the issues that I have tried to raise on the behalf of my constituents. I have listened carefully to what she says, and I appreciate the offer of a meeting and the commitment to some sort of response to the Spicer review. However, I get the impression that funding for the hub and the multi-agency approach will come from the police and crime commissioner and potentially the sexual violence support grant as part of any future strategy, or is that something that we can discuss in detail in a meeting?

[Victoria Atkins]

Could we discuss that in the meeting? We have always tried to ensure that local commissioners are commissioning the services that they feel are needed in their area, but I am happy to hear the hon. Lady’s thoughts on that in the meeting that we will have with my officials.

In conclusion, I thank the hon. Lady once more for securing this important debate. Victims and survivors of the most appalling crimes rely on us, both in government and on both sides of this House, to represent their needs and to ensure that they receive the support to which they are entitled. It will be a privilege to continue to work with colleagues across the Government and across the House, and with representatives locally, to ensure that victims in Newcastle and in all areas of England and Wales are heard, are supported and are able to recover.

Question put and agreed to.