Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what oversight mechanisms she has put in place to help ensure 100% recording of the (a) ethnicity, (b) nationality and (c) number of perpetrators in all group based child exploitation and abuse cases; and what steps she is taking to ensure compliance across all police forces.

On 16 June the Government accepted all 12 recommendations made to Government in Baroness Casey’s National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in England and Wales. We will announce further details on implementation of these measures in due course.

In January, the Government announced an additional £2.5 million funding for the Child Sexual Exploitation Police Taskforce to bolster its efforts to provide practical, expert, on the ground support for all 43 police forces in England and Wales. We also asked all 43 police forces to work with the Taskforce to re-open grooming gangs cases where no further action was taken. Since January, more than 800 cases have been re-opened thanks to this work.