Child Abuse

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary to make a statement about child abuse.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

The sexual abuse of children is an abhorrent crime which the Government are absolutely committed to stamping out.

In my statement to the House last week, I addressed two important public concerns: first, that in the 1980s, the Home Office failed to act on allegations of child sex abuse and, secondly, that public bodies and other important institutions have failed to take seriously their duty of care towards children. As I informed the House on 7 July, the whole Government take the allegations very seriously. That is why I announced two inquiries last week.

The first is a review led by Peter Wanless, the chief executive of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, with the support of Richard Whittam, QC, of the original investigations that Mark Sedwill, the permanent secretary at the Home Office, commissioned last year into suggestions that the Home Office failed to act on allegations of child sex abuse in the early 1980s. Peter Wanless and Richard Whittam will also look at how the police and prosecutors handled any related information that was handed to them, and examine another recent review into allegations that the Home Office provided funding to an organisation called the Paedophile Information Exchange. Mr Wanless and Mr Whittam are in post and work on the review has begun. Its terms of reference were placed in the Library of the House last week, and I expect the review to conclude within eight to 10 weeks.

Last week, I also announced a wider independent panel inquiry to consider whether public bodies and non-state institutions have taken seriously their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse. The Home Office has appointed the head of the secretariat to the panel, which will begin its work as soon as possible after the appointment of the chairman.

As the House will know, I asked Baroness Butler-Sloss to act as chairman of the panel and she agreed to do so. However, having listened to the concerns that were raised by victim and survivor groups and by Members of this House, Lady Butler-Sloss subsequently came to the conclusion that she should not chair the inquiry. I was deeply saddened by her decision to withdraw, but I understand and respect her reasons. She is a woman of the highest integrity and compassion, and she continues to have an enormous contribution to make to public life.

Work is ongoing to find the right chairman and members of the panel, and an announcement will be made as soon as possible so that this important work can move forward. I am sure that hon. Members will agree that it is important that the terms of reference for the inquiry are considered carefully. That is why it is right that we should wait until we have appointed a new chairman and a panel, and discuss the terms with them.

I want this inquiry to leave no stone unturned in getting to the truth of what happened and ensuring that we learn the necessary lessons to protect children and vulnerable people in the future. As I said, child abuse is an abhorrent crime that can scar people for life, and the Government are determined to stamp it out. We are working across Government to ensure that victims of historic child abuse who come forward in response to our overarching inquiry get the support and help they need. Our message is clear: the Government will do everything they can to allow the full investigation of child abuse whenever and wherever it occurred, to support victims of it, and to bring the perpetrators of this disgusting crime to justice.

As Members will be aware from the announcement we heard yesterday about the outcome of the National Crime Agency’s operation, which was reported in the media, child abuse is a crime that continues today. I think that that operation shows our relentless commitment to pursue those engaged in online child sexual exploitation, and it was unprecedented in its degree of co-ordination, with the NCA leading and co-ordinating law enforcement efforts that involved 45 police forces across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It has been ongoing for the past six months. People from all walks of life have been indentified, including those in positions of trust, and 660 arrests have been made and more than 400 children safeguarded or protected.

Crucial in investigations of online sexual abuse, and matters of this kind more generally, is the question of access to communications data. The Government are committed to tackling the threat to children online, which is why the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill, which was passed by this House on Tuesday and is currently before the other place, is important. It will ensure that law enforcement agencies continue to have access to another vital tool of communications data. Without access to communications data, the investigative capabilities of public authorities in relation to online child abuse would be significantly damaged, and vital evidence would be inaccessible. If companies do not retain that data and we cannot access it, it will become impossible in future to carry out such operations.

In other areas, the Government are also looking at what actions we can take in relation to this reprehensible crime. That is why in April last year, the Government established a national group to tackle sexual violence against children and vulnerable people, led by the Minister for Crime Prevention, my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Norman Baker). The cross-Government group was established to learn the lessons from some of the recent cases that have emerged and the resulting reviews and inquiries, and as a result of its work we now have better guidance for police and prosecutors, new powers for the police to get information from hotels that are used for child sexual exploitation, and better identification of children at risk of exploitation through the use of local multi-agency safeguarding hubs.

The Home Office will do everything it can to allow the full investigation of child abuse and the prosecution of its perpetrators. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre command of the National Crime Agency works with police forces to investigate child sexual abuse, and has access to specialist officers who could be called on to assist in complex cases. CEOP is already providing support to forces in the robust investigation of child sexual abuse.

For some time, this House has been considering issues arising from historic cases of child abuse. The news yesterday of more than 600 arrests by the NCA, and ongoing investigations into current incidents of child abuse, show that this is not just a problem of the past but is with us today. The Government will do everything they can to work to stamp out child abuse, but there is a wider question for us as a society about how and why these appalling crimes are still taking place today.

[Yvette Cooper]

I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement and the update she has given the House. She is right to condemn this vile crime that hits vulnerable children and can wreck lives. I also welcome the announcement that the National Crime Agency has safeguarded 400 children and arrested 660 people for child abuse offences as part of a major operation involving many police forces. The House will want to commend the police for that work, and recognise the role of online intelligence and communications data that we discussed earlier this week.

However, The Times reports today that the same investigation has in fact identified more than 10,000 suspects who are not currently being arrested or pursued through the criminal justice system. It appears that those are in addition to today’s crime statistics, which also show a 20% increase in reported sex offences, a 65% increase in reported child abuse images, and a 27% increase in reported rape. While car crime may be falling, the reports of these serious, often hidden, crimes are going up, and people will be deeply shocked by the scale of online crime that is growing alongside the internet. At the same time, there has been a 9% drop in prosecutions for child sex offences and a 75% drop in the number of convicted criminals who are barred from working with children as a result of the Government’s policy changes. There are real concerns about chaos at the Disclosure and Barring Service, which is not providing consistent information about the number of people being barred.

Let me ask the Home Secretary the following questions. Can she confirm that the National Crime Agency has identified more than 10,000 suspects as part of its investigation? What is happening to those 10,000 suspects now? Is it true that the police have decided that they do not have the capacity to pursue them? How many of them does she think pose a direct risk to children? Will they be barred from working with children? Can she confirm that there has indeed been a 75% drop in the number of convicted sex offenders who are being barred from working with children? Does she believe that the police and the NCA have the capacity to deal with the scale of this growing crime? Will any of these issues be covered by the child abuse inquiry, which currently has no chair and no terms of reference?

The Home Secretary will know that I have raised concerns with her over the past few years that the child protection system is currently not strong enough to deal with the scale of the problem that we face. Will she now urgently review Government policy and resources, particularly around online abuse, as well as on the wider issues around child abuse, and rethink the barring system approach? Will she agree to come back to this House in September with an urgent action plan to deal with this very serious crime?

[Mrs May]

First, may I say that the right hon. Lady is absolutely right to commend the work of police forces, the National Crime Agency and CEOP command? This work is not easy for police officers to undertake. It is very difficult for those who have to look at the evidence of child abuse images. We should recognise the valuable and important work they do, and the work that goes on around them to ensure that perpetrators and others involved in this horrendous crime are brought to justice.

I have made it clear that the work of NCA investigations is ongoing. I am therefore not in a position to indicate anything in relation to how many suspects they might be looking at or the action I might take against those suspects. Those are operational matters and decisions for the NCA to take in consideration with the various police forces involved, but I can assure Members that this is an ongoing investigation.

The right hon. Lady referred to a number of matters, for example the increase in the number of sex offences being reported. That is indeed the case, but what I think we are seeing in the figures is a number of people coming forward with historic cases of sex offences. While that does have an impact on the figures, I think we would all welcome the fact that there are more people now who feel comfortable in being able to come forward with allegations of these sorts of offences. For too long, people have felt that they would not be believed, and have been hiding their own experiences and keeping them to themselves, rather than surfacing them. It is important that they are coming forward. In some of the historic cases that have gone to trial, some perpetrators have been brought to justice. They have been charged and prosecuted as a result of people coming forward.

We are, of course, making sure that resources are available. In my response to the right hon. Lady’s question, I indicated that CEOP resources, which are specialist and expertise resources, are being made available to other police forces. The child abuse inquiry is being set up to ensure that we can learn the lessons from the various reviews that have taken place into historic cases. As part of that, I expect it will want to look at what is happening today: whether the lessons from the past are already being dealt with, or whether there are still gaps in what we need to do. Obviously, one of the areas that has increased in recent times is online abuse.

At the Prime Minister’s summit in November last year, we made it absolutely clear that we are determined to stamp out online child sexual abuse. That is why we have worked with industry to ensure that search engines block images, videos and pathways to child abuse from blacklist search terms used by paedophiles. We are developing a child abuse image database, which will help officers to work more effectively together to close the net on paedophiles and ensure that internet companies can better identify, block and remove illegal images. We have also established the UK-US taskforce to counter online child exploitation. Through that, we are drawing on the brightest and best minds in the industry, law enforcement and academia to stop the internet being used to abuse children. We saw from the National Crime Agency’s operations yesterday the value of setting it up as a strong crime-fighting organisation that has already shown its ability to root out perpetrators of this sort of crime, to deal with them and ultimately to bring them to justice.