Rape
Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts(9 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Bates
My Lords, it is indeed a top priority of this Government to tackle child exploitation, particularly on the internet. That is why Operation Notarise is under way, and it has resulted in convictions. More needs to be done, particularly in engaging with the industry and finding technical solutions to the problems so that we get the evidence to ensure that people are brought to justice for these serious crimes.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, pressure on the police is also seen when they try to deal with human trafficking and young girls caught up in prostitution whose career was started by continuous rape. I wonder what the Minister might like to say about that and about what we might do when we come to the legislation.
Lord Bates
In fact, that was one of the things highlighted in an excellent report into rape carried out by the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, back in 2010. She also made the point that, as well as focusing on increasing the conviction rate, which it is absolutely right to do, we also needed to make sure that we provided enough support and care to the victims of crime. That is one reason why we have ring-fenced £40 million to provide that kind of care to the victims of crime.
Child Abuse
Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I could not agree more with the premise of my noble friend’s questions; it is important to support charities. I also agree that viewing images of children online is not a harmless pursuit. It is damaging to those who have been involved in sexual abuse to provide those images, but it also leads individuals on to sexual abuse. That is why we are right to take this view. We have open minds about how the Government should deal with this over time, but I agree with my noble friend that the numbers coming forward suggest that this problem has been made worse by people’s ability to view these images online.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, it is quite clear that the Government intend not only to look at historical abuse during this inquiry but to ensure that what is happening here and now is firmly within the sights. I hope that the Minister can reassure me on that point. The police officer who dealt with the issues yesterday said clearly that we cannot arrest our way out of this situation. It is absolutely crucial that we get the right programmes in place, as the noble Baroness opposite said, with the present and well defined research that is going on, rather than looking back and getting it wrong.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
The noble Baroness is quite right. What is the use of the study of history if it does not help us deal with the here and now and the future?
Serious Crime Bill [HL]
Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Durham
I rise to support the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, on behalf of myself and my colleague, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro, who chairs the Children’s Society. The Serious Crime Bill rightly seeks to update the law on neglect of children. We welcome the Bill and the Government’s commitment to seeking to improve the response to victims of emotional neglect. The current law is outdated and inadequate. We also support the amendment tabled by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss.
The UK is one of the only countries in the world that fails to recognise emotional neglect as the crime it is. It is to the Government’s credit that they seek to address that through the Bill. However, I believe that the Bill should go further and increase the age a child can be defined as a victim of cruelty and neglect from under 16 to under 18, which the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, seeks to do through his amendment. By changing the law in this way we can, for the first time, offer protection to all children from cruelty and neglect.
I, too, am grateful to the Children’s Society for its briefing, and I shall offer a story that it gives of Jessica. Jessica was known to social services because of the neglect and abuse she experienced in her family. When she was 16 the relationship between her and her family deteriorated and she was forced to move out of her family home. In the next year and a half she experienced unsuccessful placements in a hostel and bed and breakfast accommodation. Experiences of neglect at home made it difficult for her to form meaningful relationships. During that time, starting with her first unsuccessful placement in a hostel, Jessica became a victim of sexual exploitation, started using drugs and developed mental health problems. Stories such as Jessica’s mean that we need to ensure that this measure applies to all children under 18.
This definition is the one enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is in the Children Act 1989, which governs what safeguarding responses children should receive if there are concerns about their well-being. The PACE codes of conduct for the police were amended last year so that all under-18s are treated as children. From a safeguarding point of view, children should be viewed as being under 18. Sixteen and 17 year-olds can be very vulnerable. The statistics mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, showed that. Yet they do not always get access to the services that younger children can receive. Professionals often see 16 and 17 year-old children as more resilient than younger children. They are often seen as more able to avoid abuse, or more grown-up and therefore more able to cope. It does not help that the criminal law aiming to deal with the perpetrators of child neglect does not cover 16 and 17 year-olds. This sends all the wrong signals that they are not as vulnerable as younger children.
The Government’s other reforms increasingly recognise that 16 and 17 year-olds are children. For example, they are not normally treated as adults under the benefits system. The position has recently been reinforced through the rules of the new universal credit system—a basic condition of entitlement for which is that the claimant is at least 18. That was debated in this House when the Welfare Reform Act 2012 went through Parliament. I would like to hear from the Minister why children aged 16 or over cannot be considered at risk of neglect and why the new law on emotional neglect should not apply to them.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, I shall speak very briefly as I hope that the Minister will take these amendments away and come back with a combination. I support the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and her companions in their amendment, but I am absolutely with the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, in relation to the age of these children.
Some years ago the Social Research Unit at Dartington produced a compendium of all the research about emotional abuse in children. It showed that the development of children who had been emotionally abused was more severely impeded in the long term than the development of those who had been physically abused. This is different from sexual abuse, which is another thing. Children who had experienced physical abuse were more likely to be able to survive and grow through it than those who had been emotionally abused. Those children whose parents had never made a proper emotional contact with them were unlikely to make relationships later. So, in terms of mental health and the economics of the situation, looking after these children, and doing so until they are 18, makes really good sense.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I rise to make two small points on Amendment 40BZB, so ably introduced by my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss. First, I congratulate the Government on clarifying in Clause 62 that psychological effects on children have equal importance to physical effects. As my noble friend has just said, it is also my professional and personal experience that psychological damage to children is often more serious than physical injury—although, of course, it depends on the severity of both. This is an important step forward, albeit not an entirely new one. I know that the legislation has always alluded to psychological or psychological-type abuse. I strongly support Amendment 40BZB and hope very much that the Government will be able to support it, or something very like it. It seems to me that the clarification is altogether helpful.
I welcome proposed subsection (6)(b), which defines the term “wilfully”, and have no worries about it. Further elaboration will no doubt come in regulations. I should be grateful if the Minister would assure the Committee that in those regulations the Government will clarify that a parent with a drug addiction will be regarded as not having the competence to foresee that an act or omission regarding a child would be likely to result in harm, but nonetheless as unreasonably taking that risk. Clearly, if a drug-dependent parent is causing physical or psychological harm to a child, the matter must be dealt with. Again, I hope that regulations will be put in place to ensure that resources for the treatment of the addiction will be put in place and that the parent will be expected to make good use of them in order to avoid continuing damage to a child.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 40BZE, which follows on from it. These amendments support much of the debate we had on the previous group but move us into the practical arena rather than the one of legislative definitions. In the past year, the NSPCC helpline dealt with 8,000 contacts about emotional neglect and abuse, and 5,500 cases were so serious that they were referred to local authorities for further action. This was a substantial increase on previous years. I am glad that the Minister recognised that clarity is required on this difficult issue of defining emotional, social, psychological or behavioural neglect.
Alongside these statistics, new evidence shows that child protection professionals do not have a clear sense of the law in relation to neglect and that the law is sometimes not being applied consistently. My concern in these amendments is to ensure that there are mechanisms in place for the moment a potential offence of child cruelty has been reported, whether to police or local authorities. In essence, there must be a case conference with all the relevant stakeholders from all the different departments and, crucially, the child concerned should have access to child and adolescent mental health services. The reason for this is that two years ago the NSPCC carried out an online survey which showed that only 7% of social work professionals believed that timely action was taken in response to neglect and only 4% thought that it was likely or very likely that timely action would be taken to respond to emotional abuse. That 4% is a shocking statistic and exactly why we are having this debate about being more specific in the legislation on this. That contrasts with 75% of respondents to the survey who said that they were very confident that timely action would be taken in response to physical and sexual abuse.
That is the point of these amendments, which may or may not be appropriate in this legislation, as I mentioned in my Second Reading speech. I would be very grateful to hear from the Minister that there is some cross-departmental discussion about how we ensure that this is framed in guidance to social workers, health professionals—whether doctors, school nurses or district nurses—and anybody else involved in a child’s life, such as at sports clubs and certainly including teachers in schools. We need to make sure that the victims of this are as well covered as the offence and the offender.
That brings me to my final point. This will be effective only if professionals in this area have adequate training to recognise and understand the very particular problems of emotional and psychological abuse. I am reminded of a debate we had during the passage of the Children and Families Bill when my noble friend Lady Walmsley and I tabled some amendments about exorcism and the emotional trauma that some children face, particularly when exorcism is carried out with them present. The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, said at the time that we did not need a specific law on this, and she was absolutely right because there is some legislation within the current framework—the problem was that it was not being carried out by the professionals. That is why these amendments have been proposed. I will not repeat the points that were made in the previous group, but this supports all those made by noble friends and other colleagues. I beg to move.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
My Lords, I briefly want to support—and not support—the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I support her obvious wish that proper liaison between authorities should take place in terms of safeguarding. All of the codes and practices are already there, but what is not there is the available time. It is not that social workers are not trained, although they could do with more training—certainly around the issues of satanic and witchcraft abuse, although that concerns a tiny proportion of the cases. However, on the matter of broader emotional abuse, social workers are pretty keyed in to what is needed. The problem is that they know that they do not have the time to go in and do the work that is necessary to help families, and they have no wish in these circumstances to end up removing families through the courts.
The real answer—and I speak as a vice-president of the Local Government Association—is to look at how local authorities are using their resources and whether enough of those resources are going towards safeguarding children and their general protection and prevention from abuse. We need to look at whether we are asking the professions—social workers in particular, but also the police—to carry out a totally impossible task. If you are working day to day intervening in cases, you have very little time left to liaise with your colleagues. As a professional who has undertaken this work over many years, I know just how much time it takes to ring round, organise conferences, ensure that the appropriate information is available to everyone and pull all of that together.
So the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is absolutely right. We need to make sure that the safeguarding co-ordination works well. We need to make sure that the local authority designated officers, to whom these situations have to be reported, have enough time to think through what the action should be, and are able to take it.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I welcome this amendment. I would just like to highlight to your Lordships concerns about the availability of child and adolescent mental health services. In recent information, the mental health charity for young people Young Minds has drawn attention to the fact that,
“34 out of 51 … local authorities in England have reduced their CAMHS budget since 2010. Derby City Council reported a cut in its spending by 41% since 2010. … Overall, local authorities in London have cut their CAMHS budgets by 5% since 2010. 8 out of 12 councils … have reduced their CAMHS budgets”.
So there is a real concern that, although the principle is absolutely right here, the CAMHS services, which are so vital, have unfortunately often been cut. I was very pleased to meet, with members of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children, the honourable Mr Lamb MP, who is the Minister responsible for this area. It was very encouraging that he was aware that a lot of work needed to be done in this particular area. In addition, the Select Committee on Education in the other place is producing a report on child and adolescent mental health services, which I am sure many of us will look forward to—I believe it will be produced in October.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
My Lords, I feel some trepidation in challenging some of the issues about mandatory reporting, although I think that we need to find different language. I do not think there is any difference between me and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and the right reverend Prelate in what we want to find at the end of the day. However, I want to caution them and the Government to ensure that they look at this in great depth—I know that they are doing so in other places—and that there are no unintended consequences from the action that is taken.
I do not have a prepared speech, but I would like to make three points. Of course, it is wrong for anyone in a position of authority or in a church or neighbourhood community to turn a blind eye to known abuse. If abuse is clearly there, then that must be reported. If we have to have a law that says that there are circumstances in which people abused their position and did not come forward, the Government should look at that.
In the work that I am doing, the helpline for the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, in the Stop it Now! programme, has hundreds of people telephoning who are not sure about what they are seeing. I have talked to social workers who have great professional expertise about their not being certain what they are seeing. It is quite clear that we need to continue the professional development of staff in local authorities who work with the police, and also the community programmes which I have mentioned earlier, where children’s services, parents and schools have all been involved in the local community in developing understanding of these issues and therefore are clearer about what action they may or may not take.
I do not have a speech because I spent the morning chairing a conference that included people from Australia and the chair of an international protection of children organisation, looking at eradicating child sexual abuse. There were a lot of experts there. The message that they asked me to bring was that we should not simply bring in this sort of reporting without looking carefully at it. The statistics across the world vary according to whom you listen to. I ask the Minister to talk to some of the people I know as well as to those whom the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, knows, because they have different views. Presumably, the Government have it within their powers to get the information pretty clearly from Governments in other parts of the world. I am not making any judgment about the outcome, except to say that people tell me that it has really interfered with good preventive work, because resources have been diverted into investigating hundreds of cases that turned out not to be prosecutable.
I understand why there is a wish, particularly in the church, to get this sort of prosecution. I say to the right reverend Prelate that I have probably talked to more victims than most in my 50 years, many of them children; I know the victims’ groups and I know the pain that they have experienced. But it is crucial that we base whatever we do in the future on what is happening now, and that we prevent children being abused in the present, and learn from those people in the future. They have a lot to offer but sometimes it can be clouded by pain, which I understand.
What we want to do, particularly in churches and similar organisations, is to develop a culture of openness. We know of a recent investigation into a particular area in the Church of England where misogyny was rife and women’s views—never mind children’s—were not tolerated. I am a member of the Church of England, so I say this in all good heart but that is one institution that really has to look at it itself—as I know it is doing because the right reverend Prelate is the chair of the committee looking at the issues within the church. There are other organisations that need to look at their culture because we are not going to change these issues by the law, although I think in some areas it will help. We need to get a cultural change in organisations and our nation.
The NSPCC has got itself in a bit of a twist, I think. Talking to some of the staff today, there is a very mixed view because they had always been against mandatory reporting—I think that is a very funny term. They run two helplines. They know the implications of blanket mandatory reporting. I have to say that I did not understand proposed new subsections (4) and (5) of the amendment. It just shows how complex this issue is because we are talking about people going for exemptions. I tend to think that you need an opt-in rather than opt-out situation here, and we need to be precise about those people who might come to be prosecuted if reporting is mandatory rather than having to exempt those people who are trying to be helpful.
I am usually briefer than this but your Lordships can see that I feel as passionately as most—
Baroness Walmsley
Perhaps I might provide some clarification. When giving the Secretary of State the opportunity to exempt certain groups, I very specifically had in mind exactly those groups that the noble Baroness is worried about. Childline and Stop it Now! need to be exempted because they will have disclosures made to them and we cannot expect them to go to every local authority-designated officer throughout the country. Children need to be able to disclose to them but when they encourage the child to disclose also to a trusted adult, as they often do, the child needs to know that that trusted adult will do something about it and report it to the right people. I hope that clarification helps.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
I thank the noble Baroness but I think she knows that I know that pretty well. My point is that we need to be more precise the other way round and be clearer about those people who will be prosecuted rather than those who will be exempted. That is the way that I would rather see it because otherwise you are going to catch all sorts of groups. There are groups in the Catholic Church that listen. Without doubt, the helpline should be seeing a child through a referral. If they are going to have a referral, that helpline really should ensure—I know that the NSPCC does this with Childline—that at the end of the day someone takes action at that point.
The Lucy Faithfull helpline for Stop it Now! is more difficult because that is where men are coming forward about thoughts that they have had that they do not understand. I am very fearful that many of those men will not come forward if they think there is a likelihood that they are going to be reported even before they have committed an offence. Some people who have committed offences will come forward to us and we will help them to go to the next stage.
There could be a range of unintended consequences. However, I say what I said at the beginning, which is I think that we are all on the same page. What is important is that time is spent—not a lot of time; I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, is impatient—ensuring that we have it right in detail and that we listen to all the parties who have got evidence, because there is a lot of evidence. There is also new evidence about what works and it is not always the old patterns of intervention that work. The Government might do well to listen to some of the people I listened to this morning.
Baroness Bakewell (Lab)
My Lords, I would like to add my support for this amendment and perhaps add a story of my own. This is not a new issue. As long ago as the 1990s, I made a television programme exposing the practice of female genital mutilation, which went out in prime time on BBC television’s first channel, BBC1. It was quite explicit and voiced the alarm of Somali women themselves, who explained to me that the perpetuation of this practice resided with the grandmothers in their community who felt that what was good enough for them should be imposed on their children. It was the mothers who remembered their own experience who were eager to have that change for their children. It has not yet happened. Getting this accepted is a disgraceful slow process.
The explanation lies in the fact that, in the 1990s, we were very aware of multiculturalism and the need to respect other cultures. It beggars belief now, but at the time we felt that, if that was their culture and their tradition, then so be it; we felt that we were not in a position to feel superior. We have come a long way, but we have not come far enough. It is time to press forward with this and not to go on talking about it.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
I briefly add my voice to this. Again, if I had not had quite such a troubled week, I might have added my name to this amendment.
A couple of years ago I went, on behalf of the Lord Speaker, to a conference about this. In my lifetime, I have seen a great deal in terms of abuse, but seeing a film of this actually happening shook me to my core. We did not just hear the screams, but we actually saw the action that was happening to this young woman. When we talk about female genital mutilation, it gets a little sanitised at times. It is utterly appalling pain. Some young women in foreign countries die because of the follow-up, and certainly we know young women in this country are traumatised. I, too, hope that the Government will take this away.
Lord Rosser
My Lords, the purpose of our Amendment 40CA in this group is to provide anonymity for victims of female genital mutilation by providing for any offences under Sections 1 to 4 of the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 to come within the terms of Section 2 of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992, which for example provides anonymity for rape victims and victims of various other sexual offences to encourage more to come forward.
We recognise that protecting young girls and women from FGM requires action beyond legislation to tackle the social norms in which it operates, and implement a preventative approach. However, if progress is to be made in addressing and preventing what has already been described in this debate as the abhorrent practice of female genital mutilation, then cases will have to be successfully prosecuted through the courts. That means people who are victims of this practice being willing to come forward and give evidence. As we know, this is not some small, minority offence. It has been estimated that more than 20,000 girls under 15 are at high risk of female genital mutilation in England and Wales each year, with the risk being highest for primary school girls.
The Director of Public Prosecutions, who will surely know better than anyone the difficulties in persuading victims to come forward and give evidence in court, has called for victims to be given the right to anonymity to make it easier to bring charges against alleged perpetrators. She was quoted as saying recently:
“It is a very difficult injury to talk about. It is an abuse of their body and it is not a part of the body that people want to talk about in public”.
The Home Affairs Select Committee has also identified that a key difficulty in securing prosecutions is the ability to gather sufficient evidence and has said that,
“if victims had the protection of press and broadcast anonymity, this might encourage more to come forward. … we recommend the Government bring forward proposals to extend the right to anonymity under the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 to include victims of FGM”.
Our view is similar. Anonymity is granted to victims of rape, among other offences, because of the sensitivity and stigma attached to such an offence, and the sensitivity and stigma that surround female genital mutilation must be at least as intense. Victims should be protected in the way called for in our amendment. If anonymity would encourage more victims to come forward, it must surely be overwhelmingly in the public interest to go down this road, particularly taking into account the lack of prosecutions to date. Where cases of female genital mutilation go to court, victims should also be entitled to the same support and special measures to which other vulnerable victims are entitled. I sincerely hope that the Minister will be able to give a positive response.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I support both these amendments. I recently sat as a member of a Back-Bench inquiry into the legislation used to tackle sexual exploitation, which was supported very ably by Barnardo’s. We took oral evidence from a number of police forces. There was unanimous support for putting these child abduction notices on a statutory footing, which formed part of our recommendations. At present they form no more than an administrative procedure for the police—useful, I am told, for collecting evidence for the future, scaring perpetrators and letting them know that the police are watching them but, in and of themselves, pretty toothless.
Of course, there is existing legislation for child abduction offences. Sometimes, perpetrators who breach warning notices are prosecuted under this other legislation. But the current legislation is often not useful for cases of grooming, because it requires that the adult has taken or detained the child, implying physical control or restraint. We know that psychological and emotional manipulation are the main tools used by perpetrators to control and groom vulnerable children. The Crown Prosecution Service is therefore not always able to take prosecutions forward, due to the child seeming willingly to remain with the offender, when the offender makes no act physically to detain the child. Creating an offence of breaching a notice would address this issue and allow the police to intervene earlier, rather than having to wait for a more serious offence to occur when, of course, what we want is for them to be able to intervene early.
While the police find child abduction warning notices a valuable tool, their lack of a statutory basis leads to an unfortunate consequence. Police told the inquiry about occasions when they issued notices as a deterrent but were then unable to act once they were breached. If they are to have any power in these situations, all concerned need to know that the police will and can act when their instructions are clearly ignored. Instead, the current situation erodes victims’ confidence in the ability of the police to protect them— and they have told us that. Of course, perpetrators’ fear of consequences will diminish when they see police unable to act. So we need to put this on a statutory basis.
In relation to bringing the age into parity between children in and out of care, the point was made by the children who spoke to us that children’s vulnerability is not determined by their membership of a particular group or their legal status. There are many profoundly vulnerable children who are not in the care system and who need the protection of the law. We heard from some of those girls and boys. Indeed, there are many more victims of sexual exploitation who are not in care and have not been in care than there are within it. During the course of the inquiry, we met some children who have been through some appalling things who had never been in care. While it is too late for them, we need to make sure that other profoundly vulnerable young people who happen to be living with their parents have the same protection as those under the state’s care.
The Government have shown real engagement with the inquiry’s findings so far, and I am delighted that they have adopted one of the inquiry’s recommendations by tabling an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill on the topic of grooming. It is clear that these amendments on abduction would be another strong step towards giving the police the tools that they need to prevent some truly vile behaviour.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
My Lords, I was recently approached by a very senior ex-policeman with whom I had worked in the past, who was trying to help a number of children’s homes and hostels in the north of England. He found that there were men who came to the hostel and took older girls out, and the hostel was totally unable to do anything about it. They could simply go and fetch the girls back, but the girls were so emotionally engaged, as the noble and learned Baroness and the noble Baroness said, that they went out again. What the hostel desperately needed was the capacity to take stronger action against the men, and I believe that that is what would happen were we to accept the essence of these amendments.
Immigration Bill
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Baroness Williams of Crosby (LD)
My Lords, I also have a question before we conclude the debate on this issue. I add my warmest thanks to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, the noble Lord, Lord McColl, and the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, for the huge efforts which have gone into doing this, which I am sure the entire House appreciates.
My question is slightly different and relates to how the so-called “relevant child” is to be identified. Can the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, say anything about what instructions are likely to be given to the police and the border agency regarding determining whether a child is being trafficked? We are all well aware, not least within the European Union, that there is a very high level of child trafficking and that many of those children are not identified as being trafficked until it is too late and they have been handed on to another round of this ghastly trade. It may be too soon and he may have to wait for the modern slavery Bill, but it would be very helpful indeed if the Minister could say something about the operational effect on the police and border agency relating to how they deal with children who might, conceivably, be trafficked, but where it is not quite clear that they have been.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, I have one brief question. No one can doubt my commitment to this group of children and to the work of my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss and the noble Lord, Lord McColl. It is crucial that we move forward and I am particularly grateful that the Government have decided to do this with a pilot. The questions that have been asked during this short debate reflect the complexity of the issue. Having been the deputy chair and chair of CAFCASS for some eight years, I know how crucial it is to ask the question about the difference between advocacy and guardianship. I presume these issues can be worked through during the pilot.
I am concerned that the funding for the pilot, and for any future programme, should not come out of local government funding for child work generally or out of funding that would otherwise support children in the community. As a vice-president of the Local Government Association, I am quite clear that there are children who are, in many ways, equally vulnerable in their own homes—and some more so—who need equal support from social workers, who are extraordinarily pressed at the moment, as are the workers in CAFCASS. As the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition mentioned, there are financial questions, so I simply want the assurance that this money will not come out of mainstream childcare funding.
Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister very much for all his help and co-operation. He spotted three of us plotting in a corner of your Lordships’ House and, instead of avoiding us, he made a bee-line for us and was open and friendly. We are very grateful to him, especially on the about-to-be statutory basis of the role. In our amendment, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and I were concerned to ensure that the role of advocate met with international best practice, as well as taking advice from charities that have practical experience in supporting trafficked children.
Finally, I thank the Government for listening to us, obstinate and difficult though we were on some occasions. We are grateful that it has turned out well. Thank you.
Immigration Bill
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Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)
My Lords, I am proud and pleased to be a signatory to Amendments 55A and 62A, and I am grateful for the excellent briefing that we received from the many organisations working with children and young people that understand the need for child trafficking guardians. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord McColl, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, who have powerfully and graphically outlined the case for our amendments. They have done a huge amount of work on this and related issues, especially the noble Lord, Lord McColl, who has been absolutely dogged in his determination to get justice for trafficked children. More than 450 children were identified as possible victims of trafficking in the past year alone. In February 2012, I said that I was,
“certain that the noble Lord, Lord McColl, will pursue these issues doggedly until he is satisfied”.—[Official Report, 15/2/12; col. 849.]
My certainty continues.
As has been said, this is the fourth time that we have made the case in different Bills for child trafficking guardians, and our determination is undimmed. From all that we have read and heard, including in this House, the need for a systematic child trafficking guardian system is real and urgent; it is evidence-based and recommended by national and international experts. Indeed, the report commissioned by the Government when we first raised this issue during the passage of the Protection of Freedoms Bill in February 2012, entitled Still at Risk, identified that the care provided to trafficked children remains inconsistent and does not give adequate support or advocacy assistance. It recommended provision of an independent trusted adult who would ensure that,
“potential victims of trafficking are able to understand their rights, ensure that their voice is heard in decisions that affect them, and are supported effectively through the different legal processes that they are engaged in”.
The current, inadequate level of protection for trafficked children being offered by professionals and agencies, which are meant to be supporting them, leads to untold suffering and to some of them simply disappearing from the system. Some charities estimate that a shocking two-thirds of children who are rescued from traffickers then go missing again because the system to protect them simply is not strong enough. Most of these children come from countries outside the EU; they do not understand the language and they do not know where they are. Even when people try to assist them, the processes and web of contacts with which they are confronted are complex and confusing, and the fear must be intolerable.
Sometimes the decisions that are taken do more harm than good, compounding the situation. The Children’s Society brought to our attention the case of Charlotte. An orphan, Charlotte worked as a house girl in her country of origin before being brought to England, at the age of 13, by a relative of the family. She was made to work for the family and their children nearly 20 hours a day, seven days a week. She was extremely physically abused by the woman for whom she worked, and was eventually thrown out of the house. After sleeping rough, she was spotted by a member of the public who took her to the local social services. The social services took Charlotte to the police station, but she was terrified. The family who had exploited her had told her that, if she told anyone, particularly the police, that she was a child, she would get into trouble. She therefore gave the police the name and age that had been given to her by the traffickers. Her fear was compounded when the Home Office and her solicitor said that they did not believe her age, and she remained frightened that she would be sent back to her country of origin.
Charlotte needed a child trafficking guardian and the system failed her. Frankly, I do not understand why when, armed with the evidence of Still at Risk, the Government did not accept a similar amendment to the Children and Families Bill. The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, the Minister for that Bill, said then:
“We remain concerned that the introduction of guardians for trafficked children, alongside those persons who should already be working in the interests of the child, is not the most effective way to tackle the local problems”.—[Official Report, 9/12/13; col. 655.]
She said, as the noble Lord has said, that there would be new regulations accompanied by new guidance. Of course these are welcome, but they do not respond to the real, absolute need. That was not enough then and it is still not enough now, despite the fact that the Home Office issued a news release on 28 January which stated that child victims of slavery were to be given personal support by a network of specialist, independent advocates, acting as a single point of contact throughout the care and immigration process. However, as the noble and learned Baroness has said, there is very little detailed meat on the bones of the press release. There are clear anomalies, as she has pointed out.
Barnardo’s has welcomed the announcement of a pilot of specialist child trafficking advocates for trafficked children as a step in the right direction, but it believes that these advocates fall short of a legal guardian who would make decisions in the best interests of the child. Guardians would also have the legal power to hold agencies to account if they failed to support child victims of trafficking.
As an aside, I wonder why these proposed advocates—which are not enough—were not included in the draft modern slavery Bill which is now receiving its pre-legislative scrutiny. Most importantly, following our many debates and the research and evidence we have had, why were guardians not included in that Bill? Why water down the proposals that have been presented to the Government on numerous occasions? The poor substitutes that the Government keep giving us are simply not acceptable. I strongly urge the noble Lord to accept the excellent, well drafted amendment before us today, which meets the concerns of all those involved. Frankly, anything less than legal guardians will not be enough.
I freely admit that I am political, but this subject has nothing to do with politics. It is about humanity; it is about justice for some of our most vulnerable children, who, by foul means, have been trafficked into the country. They are suffering in ways in which no individual, let alone a child, should have to suffer. These defenceless young children have been subjected to horrific abuse, including domestic slavery and sexual exploitation. The current system is failing these children. They need someone to speak up for them to make sure that their best interests are at the heart of the decisions being made about them. We have a duty to act and to act now.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, I had not intended to speak on this amendment and I find myself in a curious position in so doing. Having worked in this field for many years, I am absolutely clear that you have to approach the needs of these children with your heart. Any noble Lords who have children or grandchildren can imagine what it would feel like to discover that they had disappeared from home—had been whipped away—and been forced into prostitution or other forms of slavery such as working as unpaid cleaners.
However, having reacted to the issue with one’s heart, one has to deal with it using one’s head. I say that because, having listened to the arguments, I am still not clear what a child trafficking guardian would do. I spoke against this concept during the passage of the then Children and Families Bill, and therefore feel that I should at least explain my position and establish where we go from here. At that point, I shared the view expressed by the Minister on behalf of the Government: namely, that we should make absolutely sure that staff in existing services had the necessary training to enable them to help these young people, particularly those who end up in children’s homes and subsequently disappear. Far too many young children go in and out of children’s homes, and I shall speak briefly on that.
As I say, I spoke against this concept at that point in the hope that we would be able to develop satisfactory services. Since then I have had conversations with people involved in social services. As many noble Lords will be aware, the stress on services at local level is at its highest at present. My own local authority has to find several millions of pounds more from its budget in the next few years. That money will come out of children’s services and care services as well as other areas and will reduce the services that we all strongly believe have to be provided. That makes me wonder how social workers, who are so incredibly hard pressed, will be able to develop the skills needed to help these young people.
Some local authorities are doing very well in this regard. I work with Children and Families Across Borders, and have met some of its workers. This organisation works with young people whose immigration, trafficked and care statuses are all in total confusion. Sometimes it takes four social workers and two local authorities working across local authority borders to track down and help these children. I am somewhat distressed in that two of the proposers of the amendment are two of my closest friends, whom I admire enormously, but, does the noble Lord, Lord McColl, really think that volunteers can work with these children?
Recently, I have undertaken work in the areas of safeguarding and witchcraft. Many noble Lords may know that trafficked young people are often told that a spirit will attack their families back home if they break the cycle in which they are trapped with their traffickers. They believe that this will happen and consequently they continually leave safe places to go back to the traffickers, not through perversity but because they believe that in so doing they are protecting their families. That is a complex concept for a social worker or, indeed, anyone to understand.
At this moment, I must say to my two colleagues that I am undecided about how I should vote. This is partly because I do not understand where the guardian would stand in the structure. Here I look to the Minister and to those proposing the amendment. Having worked for eight years in the children and family court service, as chair and vice-chair, I know all about guardians in that service. Where would these guardians stand? All workers need some sort of management. How would they relate to the local authority? What would the local authority’s role be? How do they differ from advocates? I have heard some examples, but still do not clearly understand the difference.
What I do know is that these young people desperately need someone who will understand them emotionally and who is hard-headed enough to understand the dangers. As we hear from many organisations working with these young people, the traffickers are dangerous not only to the children but to the workers, who must understand the danger of their work. The other issue is that without some sort of supervision for advocates or guardians, they cannot do the work. Everyone working with this sort of emotional stress needs a supervisor—I would never do it without a mentor. I leave these questions in the air before I shall decide where I stand on this issue this time around.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
The noble Baroness is perhaps right to chide me, but we are seeking to get this matter right. It is in the interests of the children to make sure that the public authorities that have to deal with this problem have a proper ground on which to do so. This is not an easy area. We are dealing with children whose situation is very different from that which we ourselves experienced as children or, indeed, our own children have experienced. These are very different terms and to get that right is important.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
I apologise for interrupting the Minister, but I happen to agree with him that the most important thing is to get this right. Having heard the arguments so far, I do not think any of these options have been properly thought through to their conclusion to ensure that we get this right. Looking at what is happening on the ground at the moment, we could actually have another difficult, disastrous situation. Therefore, I ask the Minister: did I mishear, or did he say that the advocates would be set up under some sort of statutory regulation? I think the thing that concerns the House is the authority by which the advocates would be able to operate.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
They would advocate in exactly the same way as they do currently in Scotland. There is no statutory scheme in Scotland but they are respected by the authorities there. What I am saying to the noble Baroness and, indeed, the House, is that setting them up under a statutory scheme is one of the matters that we will find out as a result of having these trials in place. This, to my mind, makes sense. Given what the noble Baroness is advocating, I sense that she is on my side because she can see the complexity of the issue.
I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, is on my side. She is perhaps right to chide me for not acting more promptly, but none the less there are limitations to these amendments, which do not provide, for example, for the involvement of UK-trafficked children. We want the trial to deal with children whose trafficking origin may be from crossing borders but may well be within the UK—they are equally vulnerable and can equally benefit from having an advocate operating on their behalf.
Let me perhaps deal with some questions, as I have talked a lot about how I feel and noble Lords will know that I feel quite strongly about this particular issue. I was asked by my noble friend Lord McColl whether the independent advocate would operate in the same way as the guardian. Our advocates will be allocated to children in the trial as soon as they can be identified, with no delay. Any provided for the purpose of this trial will provide 24-hour access to their service to ensure this. As I have said, the role of the advocate is almost entirely identical to the role that the noble Lord outlined. Under existing arrangements, the victim must be informed of their right to an independent advocate. The advocate will be available to all potential child trafficking victims participating in the trial whether or not they are in receipt of support from the local authority—that is, in the care system. Therefore, one does not have to be in the care system to be entitled to receive this support. Children will be allocated to the advocate automatically as soon as they are identified as potential victims.
Metropolitan Police
Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
Does the Minister share my disappointment about the way the police have been dealing recently with domestic violence? After all the work that has been carried out, what can be done to bring those forces that are clearly not meeting the needs of women up to the level of excellence of those forces that are?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
This is another area on which we have received a shocking report, and the Home Secretary commented on it this morning. Those noble Lords who listened to the “Today” programme will have heard a woman called Kimberley talk about her experience of the investigation made into her complaints. It is not good and the Home Secretary is determined to tackle this scourge. As she said this morning, she expects chief constables to respond to the report, and I would say that they owe it to the victims of these crimes to do so.
Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill
Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, I welcome this amendment very strongly. The Minister will remember that I introduced a debate to which he responded which covered a range of issues around child sexual abuse. Therefore, I know he is well aware of the range of attempts that these people will go through. “Evil” is an odd word to use because there are all sorts of corruptions to do with what has happened to those people. We have to remember that young people themselves sometimes are sexually abusing because of what is happening to them. The Minister saw that whole spectrum, and this is just one other step that can be taken to block those who intend to abuse children. I reinforce what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, about the use of the internet and virtual abuse. It will be on the increase if other avenues are closed down because we know this is an addiction—but not necessarily—with an evil outcome that we need to deal with in many ways. I thank the Minister for all his efforts.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
In response to the contributions by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth of Breckland, and my noble friend Lord Cormack, I realise that this is not the whole story. It is not the end of the story, but it is a step along the way. It is a building block that was not previously in place; I hope that it will now be put in place. I reassure both speakers that my colleagues in government are linked up on this. When this amendment was drafted, it was subject to the usual write-around in government, which is the procedure that now applies to more or less all government decision-making. If it reassures noble Lords, I will make sure that this debate is drawn to the attention of my colleagues with particular responsibility in this area. I hope noble Lords will understand that what is particularly helpful about this amendment is that it arose from a police and crime commissioner writing to the shadow Minister here, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, who raised it with me. It shows that the Government and Opposition facing difficult issues—not controversial issues, but issues that are difficult to handle—can work together to achieve something. I am grateful for the initiative that the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, showed and for the support of the House in moving this amendment.
Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill
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Lord Condon (CB)
My Lords, I declare my registered interest in policing. I support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, broadly for the reasons that he set out, reinforced by my noble friend Lord Blair.
We have 30 years of academic underpinning for this theory. It started with notions of defensible space by Oscar Newman. That was reinforced 10 years later by Wilson and Kelling, with their broken windows theory of maintaining property at the highest standards to prevent crime, and so on.
We have 20 years’ pragmatic experience of how Secured by Design has dramatically helped to reduce crime and in particular burglary and made neighbourhoods safer. In the ongoing environment of economic challenge to policing, I think the Secured by Design mark and all that it stands for as well as all the experience we have built up remain very valuable. Sadly, I fear it would be a step backwards if we are not allowed to bring forward this amendment successfully in the terms that the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, has set out. I hope the Government will find that they are able to give some way on this, because the Secured by Design legacy is a very important one.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, I shall speak briefly in support of this amendment and make three points. First, during my life, I have worked in some of London’s most insecure areas and seen insecure estates in the rest of the country. In north Brent and Brixton, crime was rife and burglary, in particular, was at a very high level. On a huge estate—I will not name it, because it has improved so much and I do not want to give it another bad name—I saw design improvements which removed some of the interconnecting corridors and looked at locks, considering the way in which the whole design process was put together so that it reduced crime substantially. If we start with design and local authorities have the option of putting design in place, we will ensure from the beginning that we do not create new estates where problems begin and residents suffer great dismay.
My second point is the localism argument, which has already been made very successfully. The third point is that anything that prevents burglary anywhere must be supported. Like other speakers, I do not understand how it is possible to assess where burglary is going to take place before an estate has gone up. In any case, people should be protected equally. Anyone who knows people who have been victims of burglaries, particularly some of the most vulnerable, will know that we should do everything in our power to prevent the emotional trauma—it is almost like rape—that they feel when they go into their homes and find tremendous damage. It is not just that things have been stolen; it is the feeling of intrusion into their lives.
There are very good reasons to support this amendment. The technical reasons have been put clearly by the noble Lord who moved the amendment and other speakers, and I support it on those grounds.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I have been enthusiastic about designing in security for as long as I have had any involvement in planning, not just for the protection of property, but for the protection of people.
Two things confuse me about the amendment. One is that the debate, both on the last occasion and to a large extent today, seems to be about products and materials. I have always thought that designing in security starts with things such as defensible space, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Condon, and lighting, sight lines and corridors, mentioned by the noble Baroness. I am puzzled why so much of the debate has been about the strength of locks and window locks which, if they are considered anywhere, seem to be more a matter of building control than development control of the planning area.
Like many other noble Lords, I am instinctively against topdown impositions of requirements which should come about bottom up, organically, by local authorities, police and others working in partnership. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, talked about localism and I of course support that, but I would like to ask the Minister some questions relating to this. Perhaps he can explain to the House, and flesh out a little, the extent to which the security issues which we have been discussing can be taken into account in the refusal or imposition of conditions on planning consent currently made by a planning authority. Are there material considerations? I am asking whether the planning authority can currently specify as a condition the sort of security issues that we are all concerned about.
What the amendment proposes is, in a sense, statutory guidelines that would be discretionary in their application. That takes me to the second area where I confess to being a bit puzzled. I am unclear what precludes a local authority drawing up guidelines without having legislation requiring the guidelines to be there and available for the local authority to adopt at its discretion. Do we actually need something in an Act of Parliament which says, “Let’s do some work on something very sensible, but we are not even going to require it to be implemented”?
Violence against Women and Girls
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Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
Would the Minister not acknowledge that, while we have campaigns, they are not a replacement for education? This is a cultural problem. We hear on the radio that women cyclists are being harassed by men, not only for being cyclists but for being women. We know that young men brought up in difficult households are more likely to see domestic abuse, and that those who see domestic abuse are, according to the research programme from Arnon Bentovim, more likely to be engaged in rape and the harm of women. Surely it goes back to the noble Baroness’s point that, unless we tackle this in the school curriculum at the educational level, no amount of campaigns will make any difference.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Again, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness’s commitment to making sure that professionals are properly oriented towards dealing with this. She rightly draws attention to an answer which I think that I gave to the noble Baroness, Lady Kingsmill, earlier, and I hope that she agrees that I recognise the important role of schools.
Children: Sexual Abuse
Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Howarth of Breckland
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to prevent child sex abuse, and what support they are giving to organisations involved in preventing such abuse.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, research suggests that at least one in 20 young adults in the UK experienced sexual abuse as a child, but most incidents are not reported to the police. Three-quarters of children who are abused do not tell anyone about it at the time, as has been so graphically illustrated by the Jimmy Savile scandal. Services for children and telephone helplines are a key part of the child protection framework, but it is for the Government to set that framework and to ensure that local authorities, working through their safeguarding programmes, together with the voluntary sector, carry this forward.
I therefore welcome the consultancy group established by Damian Green in the other place and I ask the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, to ensure that this debate is brought to his attention and to that of the chair of the group. My own assessment is that primary prevention remains a weak link in the plans, with emphasis on secondary and tertiary prevention. That means that we need more emphasis on ensuring that every effort is made to stop it before it happens—in the words of the campaign, “Stop it now”. In addition, there appears to be a gap in the work of the group relating to young people and children who abuse other children. Only if these two areas are placed at the centre of the work of the Home Office group will it come anywhere near its mission of:
“Reducing the vulnerability of victims”.
With this issue having such a high profile, I am indeed grateful to be given the opportunity for this debate, although in 10 minutes I can but scratch the surface. Good intervention will make all the difference to thousands of children, for the numbers, despite the progress that we have made, remain disturbing.
A recent NSPCC report looking at the disclosure of childhood abuse shows that one in 20 children being abused equates, in 2012-13, to 18,195 sexual crimes against children under l6 being recorded in England and Wales. It also says that, despite the recent high-profile celebrity cases, 90% of children are being abused by someone they know. This often happens in their own home, and that is something that we should not lose sight of. Around one-third of offences are perpetrated by other children and young people, as I have just mentioned.
The present system still leaves too much responsibility on the child victim when ultimately it is for adults to protect children from abuse. One of those adults who made a step change was Lucy Faithfull, and I declare an interest as a vice-chair of the Lucy Faithfull Foundation. As a Conservative Peer of some standing, she caused consternation to her Whips by leading mini-revolts on children’s issues. She was committed to her party but she was just more committed to children. As a children’s officer, she understood the issues around child sexual abuse well before many of her colleagues. Therefore, when asked to help the Gracewell Clinic, which later became the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, she took it to her heart. She deserves that the present Government support her legacy.
This year is the 20th anniversary of the foundation but the work has not been without its difficulties. Despite the skilled staff leading in the field of understanding the treatment of abusers and the highly successful clinic at Epsom, it was closed when the hospital was redeveloped. The then Government promised to fund an alternative site—indeed, to develop a range of similar facilities based on the knowledge and success of the clinic, but they never materialised. I am afraid that we had placards outside some of the facilities held by children saying, “Not on our doorstep”. One understands this, but during our whole time at Epsom we never had one incident when a man stepped outside the boundaries that he had been set in his programme. I wonder how much further we might be in the work had the clinic continued, and I ask the Minister what plans the Government have to give community residential programmes to men discharged from prison at a time when these men are most vulnerable to reoffending.
Before I move on, I acknowledge and commend the work of Circles of Support, a scheme developed by the Quakers, where volunteers provide a safe place for men who have offended and returned home. Most people shun these men for what they have done, which is understandable. It takes a very special volunteer to befriend them, but in doing so they are an essential part of protecting children, as well as giving these men new hope. We have to remember that whatever they have done they have to continue their lives, and unless they are helped they remain a danger to children.
When I collaborated with Lucy in the days before the foundation, I was chief executive of ChildLine. It was even more difficult then than now for children to be listened to and believed, and I congratulate all who have worked to shorten the time before children come forward. The changes in court procedures and safeguarding programmes have helped but there remains room for improvement. What work continues to ensure that courts are child-friendly while still quite properly ensuring a fair hearing for the defendant? We still hear of children being intimidated in court even when they are placed behind screens, and there should be more room for them to have advocates.
During the collaboration between ChildLine and the Lucy Faithfull Foundation in the early 2000s, it became apparent that there was a need for a helpline to give advice to adults concerned about their own thoughts and feelings towards children. ChildLine volunteers were trained to focus on children, so in 2003 the Stop it Now! confidential freephone service was launched by the foundation. It has grown from taking 1,000 calls in 2003 to just under 6,000 calls in 2012. The demand has grown despite limited publicity and no advertising. Calls are taken from adult abusers and those at risk of abusing. Time does not allow me to give too many examples, but they tell the story. The group for whom there is most concern if they fail to get help consists of abusers and those at risk of abuse. Paul, a window cleaner, was having sexual thoughts about children. He went to the police for help, but was told they could deal with him only if he committed an offence. They suggested that he talk to the probation service, which said that it could offer treatment only if he had been convicted of an offence, so he went to his GP who told him that everyone had these thoughts occasionally. Finally, he found the helpline and received advice on how to manage these thoughts and the terrible things that he felt tempted to do. Other groups calling for help include parents and young men accessing indecent images of children online.
Core funding for the helpline comes from a grant from the Ministry of Justice without which the service could not continue, so the foundation would like to acknowledge the wisdom of this support in difficult times. It is topped up by donations. Your Lordships can understand how difficult it is to raise money to help in this area, and demand has grown to a level which cannot be met. The helpline takes an average of 550 calls a month from 300 callers but has between 1,500 and 2,000 missed calls—missed opportunities to intervene in possible abuse. The work undertaken via a callback service that can provide vital face-to-face meetings is no longer funded, and men can receive that only if they are prepared to pay for it themselves.
We are of course all familiar with recent developments on the internet and the strong political drive to make the internet safer for children and to reduce the occurrence of online offending involving viewing, downloading, making and/or distributing indecent images of children. I recognise the outstanding work of the Internet Watch Foundation. No doubt this is a topic other noble Lords will cover as it needs more time, but I hope that the Government will continue to press the internet industry to play its part.
Parents and carers use the line. They are often ill equipped to prevent child sexual abuse of their own children. Research conducted as part of the work of the Lucy Faithfull Foundation with these groups showed that 59% of those questioned were not as confident as they would like to be when it came to protecting their own children. With 7.7 million families in the UK having dependent children, this could mean that 4.5 million families are lacking this confidence. Yet the foundation’s hugely successful Parents Plus programme, part of the Stop it Now! campaign ceased. Not only the groups but other parts of the programme will be closed down. Stop it Now! is fully supported by the Governments in Scotland and Wales but sadly not in England. I wonder whether the Minister can explain why the Government have removed their commitment to this programme.
Children also need the tools to protect themselves, and as part of this have the right to high quality sex and relationship education. The ChildLine Schools Service is an example of how one charity is trying to protect children from abuse by using preventive education in schools, and I am sure that the Minister is aware of the wide support given by professionals to the Daily Telegraph’s call to update the sex and relationship guidance to schools. Does the Department of Education have plans to update this guidance? What steps are being taken to complete the task?
I have spent a lifetime in this work and know that we could do more, and do it smarter, to prevent the continuing terrible scourge of child sexual abuse. Of course, the work is multifaceted and we should remind ourselves that some abusers are so dangerous that they must never return to the community. My experience has not made me soft but, like Lucy Faithfull, I know that the problem has to be dealt with at every level. I hope that the Government will listen to those calling for a public health model of prevention. This means deterrence, treatment and taking steps to prevent abuse ever taking place through community awareness and education programmes. The impact on victims is long-term and devastating. It costs money in repercussions on the mental health and penal services. We can and should do more to prevent it ever happening to any child in our society.