Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what plans she has to update the Missing Children and Adults Strategy 2011.

People who go missing include some of the most vulnerable people in our society and the Government will do all it can to ensure those people are protected from harm.

The 2011 Missing Children and Adults Strategy provided a framework for local and national action to protect children and vulnerable adults who go missing. The Government has made significant progress in meeting the objectives of the strategy including by issuing new statutory guidance on missing children, placing new requirements on local authorities on the reporting of missing incidents, working with the College of Policing to develop new risk-based professional practice for police, and funding support for missing people and their families through charities like Missing People.

While plans to update the 2011 strategy are under consideration, we can and will go further to protect and support people who go missing. The Department for Education is working with the police, local authorities and the voluntary sector to consider how its statutory guidance is supporting local authorities and their partners to prevent children from going missing from home or care, and the Home Office is working with the national policing lead for Missing Persons and the NCA’s UK Missing Persons Unit to deliver a National Register for Missing Persons (NRMP) which will provide new functionality around the reporting of missing and associated found incidents across police force boundaries.

Protecting and supporting vulnerable missing people is also a key element of our action to tackle exploitation and abuse, including sexual abuse and county lines exploitation, given the clear links between people who go missing and these broader harms. This includes funding Missing People’s SafeCall service, a specialist 24/7 helpline which provides advice and support to children, young people and parents/carers concerned about county lines exploitation.