Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report

Warinder Juss Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I welcome the hon. Member’s points. Baroness Casey’s review identifies that sexual exploitation is a central part of trafficking, and modern slavery as well. I agree with him about the importance of sharing information. Time and again on these basic things, everybody says the right words and then it does not happen in practice. We need the law to change, but we also need systems to change to make it easier to share that information. We will take that forward both in policing and as part of the work that my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary is doing so that it is much easier to share that information.

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that there has been no vote on whether to have a national inquiry into grooming gangs—the vote was about the safeguards of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill—and that following the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse and the 200 pages that dealt specifically with grooming gangs, the Government were right to have the local inquiries and the rapid national audit? Now that Baroness Casey has recommended a national inquiry into grooming gangs, the Conservative party should be working with us for the sake of the victims rather than attempting to score political points, as the Leader of the Opposition did.

[Yvette Cooper]

Baroness Casey’s audit was conducted in just four months but looked at some of the issues in considerable detail. It also sets out the fact that we have had 16 years of different reports and inquiries—that includes some of the issues around the 200-page report that my hon. Friend refers to, and other reports as well. The crucial thing is that we need action. Victims and survivors need answers, and we need to pursue serious failings wherever they are found, but we must also ensure that when recommendations are made, they are implemented.