Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to prevent grooming by gangs.

In April the Prime Minister and Home Secretary announced a package of measures to improve our response to child sexual exploitation, including a new Child Sexual Exploitation Police Taskforce. The Police Taskforce will help improve how the police investigate child sexual exploitation, providing practical, expert, on the ground support for forces on all forms of child sexual abuse, with a particular focus on complex and organised child sexual exploitation, including grooming gangs.

Through the Government’s Drug Strategy, we are bolstering our flagship County Lines Programme, investing up to £145m over three years to tackle the most violent and exploitive distribution model yet seen.

To strengthen the policing response and prevent grooming by gangs, we fund several national programmes to develop and deliver an effective and victim-focused response to these crimes. This includes the Prevention Programme, delivered by The Children’s Society, which works with a range of partners across the statutory, charitable and private sectors, to tackle and prevent child sexual exploitation, child criminal exploitation, child financial exploitation and modern slavery, both nationally and regionally.

The Government also funds the Vulnerability Knowledge and Practice Programme which identifies and shares best practice across police forces, the Tackling Organised Exploitation Programme which helps police to uncover more of this offending, as well as a range of officer training programmes across all ranks to improve their confidence and capability to investigate these crimes. The Government’s Child Exploitation Disruption Toolkit was also re-developed and updated in September 2022 to provide frontline agencies and all those who engage with children further knowledge on how these abhorrent crimes can be disrupted.