Child Protection

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Tim Loughton

Thursday 27th February 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I welcome these inspections, but the results are alarming. According to the NSPCC, a child is abused in this country every seven minutes. The report includes comments such as

“The police do not recognise or evaluate risk to children well enough… the police often carry out more complex investigations badly… Too often, the focus is on the incident, missing the bigger picture.”

This is not about better police investigation; this is about a change of mindset. The situation is particularly disappointing given the first comprehensive child sexual exploitation action plan was launched back in 2011. What the Minister is proposing is not the first plan, and we also had the recent Operation Augusta review into the failings of Greater Manchester Police.

When the report refers to the

“opportunity to use new statutory local safeguarding arrangements”

as a successor to local safeguarding children’s boards, what opportunities does she think the police will take?

Finally, the primary recommendation of the report is that the Home Office should consider

“the development of a new national early help and prevention strategy”

but that was key a recommendation of the Munro review, which I commissioned in 2011. Why is that still just a recommendation?

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my hon. Friend for his questions, and I know he has great expertise and interest in this area. With this early intervention we are not just setting strategies but implementing work across the country through the targeted funds we have set up, including the youth endowment fund, which is deliberately designed to take place over a 10-year period so that the investment rolls through various spending reviews. It has been protected so that we can invest to learn and discover which projects work and which do not. It is fair to say that there have previously been misunderstandings about what works, and we want to learn more so that local authorities and other commissioners invest wisely.

I take my hon. Friend’s point and thank him for his information about an earlier iteration of the child sexual abuse strategy. We are looking across all the typologies of child sexual abuse. There are many typologies, particularly nowadays, sadly, with the prevalence of online abuse and exploitation, which I am afraid can take place with just an ordinary mobile phone and can have devastating consequences for the child who is targeted, not just in the immediate circumstances of the photo or video being taken but, of course, for many years thereafter, as we are discovering through our work with WePROTECT.

I am very conscious of my hon. Friend’s observations, and I am happy to meet him to discuss them further, because we want to get this right.