Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what the Minister for Preventing Abuse and Exploitation’s responsibilities include in relation to preventing child neglect.

Tackling all forms of abuse and exploitation of children is a priority for this Government. We will continue the urgent work of overhauling how our police, social care and other agencies work together to protect vulnerable children, including from the kind of organised grooming and sexual exploitation that has come to light in Rotherham, Rochdale and other towns and cities across the UK.

On 3 March, the previous Government published a report into the response to the failures in Rotherham, which were identified by Professor Alexis Jay and Louise Casey in their reviews. The report includes tough new measures to tackle child sexual exploitation and sets out a comprehensive, targeted set of actions, bringing together healthcare, social care, education, law enforcement, criminal justice agencies, and local and national government.

The Home Office’s Minister for Preventing Abuse and Exploitation leads and coordinates work to tackle child sexual exploitation, as well as missing children and adults, child sexual abuse online, violence against women and girls, and modern slavery including child trafficking. The Department for Education is responsible for Child Protection issues including child neglect.

The Home Office and the Department for Education work closely on these issues with other Government departments, to ensure cross-Government policy coherence for children in England. Ministers and officials meet regularly to oversee the important work on child sexual abuse and have established a cross- Government programme board to oversee the development and implementation of this work. Government Departments represented at this board include the Home Office, Department for Education, Department for Communities and Local Government, Department of Health, Ministry of Justice and the Attorney General’s Office.