Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking with police forces across England to protect children from sexual exploitation.

The Government has prioritised child sexual abuse as a national threat to empower police forces to maximise specialist skills and expertise. We have provided millions of pounds of extra investment through the Police Transformation Fund to transform policing’s response to changing crimes and threats including crimes against vulnerable people such as child sexual abuse. This includes awarding £1.9 million to the College of Policing to develop comprehensive training for first responders, and pilot a new licence to practise which will ensure that only those officers who are qualified to carry out specialist investigations in high risk areas like child protection are able to do so.

We have also funded a network of police regional child sexual exploitation coordinators and analysts, who identify organised child sexual abuse across police force boundaries, and prevention officers who work with the coordinators and analysts to implement early preventative approaches in child sexual exploitation hotspots.

We have also introduced new powers for the police to tackle offenders including new Sexual Harm Prevention Orders and Sexual Risk Orders in the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act, 2014 (amending the Sexual Offences Act 2003).