Graham Stuart
Main Page: Graham Stuart (Conservative - Beverley and Holderness)Department Debates - View all Graham Stuart's debates with the Home Office
Child Sexual Exploitation
Graham Stuart Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Nicola Blackwood
I hear two experts behind me, my hon. Friends the Members for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) and for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), commenting on the detail of that point, so I will allow them to comment further in their speeches. I have spoken at length to CEOP and other agencies since then and they have not given me any indication that ContactPoint would have improved their response.
Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that when a child is in the position she just described, although it is essential that the data are shared, we do not need a vast overwhelming database in which focus is lost and in which the victims can disappear? We need a better system than we have today, but not necessarily ContactPoint, which did not provide the focused, laser-like attention on victims that was and is required.
Nicola Blackwood
My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point—I can see this developing into a heated part of the debate—in that these enormous databases tend to lose focus on the specific point for which they were introduced. We had huge databases and the detail was being lost. A lot of information was being put into databases all over the county, but that information was not being shared or being taken out of the databases and carefully considered. Professionals need to share the information and understand the patterns, which was not happening. It was not the database that was important, but the communication between the professionals—and that did not happen.
The problem has partly been the symptom of an over-sensitive data protection culture in the NHS. I respect the culture of patient confidentiality, but it is a qualified concept and in this case it has got in the way of prosecutions for some really appalling crimes. There is a fear that if professionals share the information, it will be used inappropriately. I have had discussions with a number of professionals in the field and the solution proposed unanimously by the police, social services and others is to have co-located units based on an extraordinary principle that might be unfamiliar to some on the Opposition Front Bench: if people are put in a room and allowed to talk to each other, the outcome might possibly be better than if information dotted around a county is inputted into unrelated databases.
Putting professionals from relevant agencies who are trained to recognise CSE indicators all in the same room means they can build up the necessary trust effectively to share intelligence and work together seamlessly. That is exactly what has been recommended by CEOP and it has been proven to work in pockets of excellence in the UK. I am delighted that the Kingfisher unit, modelled on exactly those principles, will open in Oxford soon. I do not think that that principle is particularly controversial. In my opinion, unless there is conclusive evidence to prove that there is no risk of child sexual exploitation in the local authority area, every area should have such a unit because it will stop children’s lives being destroyed.
The best identification and investigation will be irrelevant if the CPS is reluctant to take up cases of child sexual exploitation. CSE victims are often perceived as unreliable witnesses because they struggle to express their experiences in court and might be unco-operative and difficult to engage with during the pre-trial period. Obviously, criminal allegations must be fully tested, but it cannot be right that under-age victims, who have been through appalling experiences and nevertheless had the courage to come forward, must face cross-examinations of their abuses that blame them, must face being called prostitutes or sex workers by people who remain unchallenged, must often face aggressive and intrusive questioning by multiple defence barristers, and must relive their experiences, often years after they have rebuilt their lives, because trial dates are set so far in advance. I have also heard stories of victims who have had to return day after day before giving evidence because of how the case has progressed. Others have had to face their abuser in open court or risk bumping into them in other parts of the court. One police officer said to me that the court process was so distressing for these victims even now that she would think twice before putting her own daughter through it.
I am pleased that the CPS is reviewing its response to CSE cases, but the serious concerns that have been raised about victim experience need a broader response. Progress has been made in this area. Special measures can make the court experience much more manageable for vulnerable victims but they are not yet applied consistently. Expert witnesses could be used in a better way and have a greater role in explaining the character, nature and consequences of sexual exploitation, as they have in cases of domestic abuse. Independent sexual violence advisers could offer significant support for vulnerable witnesses through court processes. ISVAs can not only provide direct support to the witness but ensure good practice is followed. If they can keep witnesses in the case and stop it collapsing, they will immediately provide good value for money. I hope that the Minister will raise that point with the relevant Department, because those problems are among the biggest barriers to prosecution.
If we are talking about investigations or prosecutions, it is already too late. Somewhere an under-age girl or boy will have been sexually exploited and with all the help in the world, they might never really recover. We must have better education and prevention. This is a hidden crime and many parents, carers and young people are simply unaware of the risks. There have been awareness campaigns, not to mention media coverage associated with the Derby, Rochdale and Rotherham cases, but general public and professional awareness of risk factors is still worryingly low.
In the current climate, many local authorities feel they do not have the capacity to deal with the problem. I appreciate that, but it does not have to be as cost-intensive as many feel. In Oxfordshire in the 1990s, it became apparent that domestic abuse victims were going to as many as 10 agencies before they got the help they needed, so domestic abuse champions were set up by the county council. The scheme offers volunteers from key services such as schools, housing associations, the NHS and churches—and me—two days of free training and updating networking sessions. There are now hundreds of trained volunteers in all those agencies who know how to identify, offer initial support to and signpost a domestic abuse victim. It is like a massive virtual safety net for domestic abuse victims. It is cost-effective, yes, but it is equally effective in raising awareness and reporting across the sectors. I believe that that would be a really good model to investigate for CSE networks and I hope the Minister will consider speaking to the relevant Department about how such a proposal could be implemented nationally.
Let me tell those who are getting desperate that I am beginning to approach the runway. I want first, however, to touch on calls for a public inquiry. It is vital that as we debate this matter we do not lose sight of the children experiencing exploitation and abuse in our communities. That is what we should be talking about. I appreciate that we might end up with an overarching inquiry and I understand the arguments, but we must also consider the risks. The procedures and processes, not the children we should be protecting, could become the focus of such an inquiry. Naming and shaming could take up the headlines, rather than prosecutions, which might be held up by the inquiry, being pursued. Local authorities, police forces and other agencies who are starting to set up CSE strategies might instead decide to wait two years until the inquiry finishes and makes its recommendations. Two years is a long time to wait for an 11-year-old who is being exploited.
We clearly need strong and visible leadership from the Government. We need to demonstrate to the public that this is an issue we could not take more seriously and we need to move faster with reforms so that that 11-year-old gets help now and so that we get more prosecutions now, not in two years’ time.
Mr Graham Stuart
I wonder whether my hon. Friend agrees that police forces everywhere, not only in north Wales but across England, should not wait until any inquiries reach their findings before looking again at any evidence that they do not think was fully pursued in the past. If their cold case units or others see evidence that needs to be followed up, they should do that immediately. Just as DNA evidence has opened up old cases in the past, if there is evidence that can be followed, it should be followed, and that should be done now.
Nicola Blackwood
I absolutely agree, and I think we should all be challenging our local police forces on this issue as much as we can. Although this is not entirely analogous, it is worth noting that when the Hillsborough victims gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee, they did not want another public inquiry into what had gone wrong; what they wanted was prosecutions. They wanted justice at last because they had been waiting far too long for it.
To make sure that we have a system that can deliver justice, we do need senior leadership to respond to the really significant amount of recent work done on this—the Education Committee’s work on child protection, the forthcoming Deputy Children’s Commissioner’s work on child sexual exploitation, the inquiry of the joint all-party parliamentary group on runaway and missing children and adults, which looks into children who go missing from care, the implementation of the child sexual exploitation strategy and all the other inquiries and serious case reviews that will come forward. We have a Minister who leads on this issue in Ed Timpson, but given the high-profile cross-departmental and serious issues that are emerging, I think we need to see the current situation as an opportunity to go forward. I hope consideration will be given to whether that needs to be re-looked at within the Department, and in particular to whether it would be appropriate to set up an inter-ministerial group led by a senior Education Minister, but including the Home Office, Justice, and Communities and Local Government to make sure that these reforms are driven forward. I know that Barnardo’s would support that, and I am sure that the Minister would welcome the opportunity to raise that with the relevant Department.
Now I really will give way so that others may speak, and I look forward to speeches that will be far more informed than my own. Finally, I simply reiterate that most children in this country do grow up safe from harm and do not need to fear, but the stories that I have heard of the very vulnerable children in our country who think that what family means is violence, rape and exploitation haunt me. They are in my constituency; they are in your constituency; and we need to run faster and jump higher so that we can overcome the barriers that are preventing us right now from protecting them.
Tim Loughton
My hon. Friend rightly made that point, as I have done on numerous occasions, including, I think, before the Home Affairs Committee on which she serves. It came out of the Rochdale inquiry, among others. The possibility that a 13 or 14-year-old girl who was being sexually abused by a 48 or 50-year-old man she did not know, plied with cigarettes and alcohol, and taken to strange places and passed around various different men could have been doing that as a result of a lifestyle choice is absolutely incredible. It also says something about how our society looks at the way in which our children grow up in this century and when they stop being children and start to become adults. As far as I am concerned, until people are 18 they are still children and young people; we have responsibilities and duties towards them, and they need looking out for. Any institution or professional who thinks that such a child could have made that decision of their own volition and in their own interests should be sacked and has no place whatsoever in any safeguarding role with children.
I will quickly make progress, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I remember your warning, and many others want to speak who are much better equipped than I am. The reason I suggest we need an overarching inquiry is that we now have a double-figure amount of inquiries—within the BBC, the health service, the police, and children’s homes, including in the Channel Islands. For the next three to six months—a year or so—we will incrementally have reports from these reviews and inquiries, and I am sure that we will have more of them. I know that various other investigations—responsible investigations—are going on within the media and other areas that will uncover a whole load of other aspects that we had not previously considered. Nothing should stand in the way of the police doing their work now—the most important thing is that these perpetrators are brought to book and past crimes are looked at—but we need to have an overarching inquiry by a group of well-respected, heavyweight professionals who can look at the whole history of this and give their recommendations, quite aside from the individual reviews that are being conducted. Indeed, the Australian Government have announced just that—in the past few days, the Prime Minister of Australia has announced a royal commission. She said:
“The allegations that have come to light recently about child sexual abuse”
in Australia
“have been heartbreaking. These are insidious, evil acts to which no child should be subject. The individuals concerned deserve the most thorough of investigations into the wrongs that have been committed against them. They deserve to have their voices heard and their claims investigated. I believe a Royal Commission is the best way to do this.”
That mirrors the situation in this country, which is why I think we should go ahead with an overarching inquiry.
Are the perpetrators still at large? As I have said, the police must be able to do their work. Are victims being deterred from coming forward? We must not put any barriers in their way and we must make sure that the damaging allegations of shoddy journalism over the past few days do not do that.
Are our children safer in 2012 than they were in the ’70s and ’80s, when many of the horrible things that we have been discussing in recent days happened? They are. We have much better child-protection policies now. They are still too bureaucratic and need streamlining, which is why the working together programme was seriously streamlined. That will allow the professionals to do their job much more effectively. We have better local safeguarding children boards, which were not taking the problem seriously. The study by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre and the university of Bedfordshire showed that 73% of safeguarding children boards did not have an up-to-speed policy on child sexual exploitation. That is now changing very quickly.
Local safeguarding children boards did not used to speak to each other, but I was keen to ensure that they did. They held their first national conference a year or so ago. I spoke at it and we had some very good people there who had not met each other before. It is obvious that sharing best practice among those LSCBs was the way to go and I secured some funding to ensure that a network of LSCBs get good advice and good practice from each other for common problems throughout the country.
Mr Stuart
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. Does he agree that a chair from one of the health and wellbeing boards should be appointed as a national lead on child protection, to ensure that their organisations have exactly the right focus and are linked to the safeguarding children boards?
Tim Loughton
There is merit in that idea. One of my concerns when I was in the Department was the weak link of safeguarding within the health service, and that has always been the case. LSCBs often say that health representatives are the weak link and the reluctant partners. I believe that is changing. I set up some cross-departmental protocols with my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Anne Milton), who was then a Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the Department of Health. It would be sensible to give a safeguarding role to the health and wellbeing boards. We have LSCBs, public health boards, safeguarding boards and overview and scrutiny committees in local authorities, but we desperately need to link them all up, because the problem of children being abused does not change. We need the right people to exchange the right information and for somebody to pick up the ball, run with it and act on it so that children are protected and safer.
Tim Loughton
I entirely agree. I used the word, “safer.” No child can be guaranteed to be absolutely safe and I would not be surprised if further stories come out of sexual exploitation of children in care homes. That is why the work that I commissioned in July to set up working parties to look at the quality of children’s residential homes, the safety of children who are increasingly being placed well away from their own homes, and better data-sharing between the police and the local children’s services department about homes, is vital. No child can be deemed to be absolutely safe—I hope that I have made that absolutely clear.
Is what happened in a north Wales children’s home less likely to happen in our children’s homes now? I believe it is, but we cannot guarantee that it will never happen. That is the comparison that I wanted to make.
Tim Loughton
I have spoken for quite a while and am almost coming to an end.
One of the most important pieces of work that was done in the Department for Education was the tackling child sexual exploitation action plan, which was launched a year ago. It brought together a whole range of different working groups. Sheila Taylor from the Safe and Sound charity was a pioneer in getting the police to realise the severity of the abuse that was going on in Derby and the midlands. The plan also brought together the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, CEOP and five Ministers from five different Departments, including the Attorney-General, to consider the problems involved in how to prosecute people without re-traumatising the victims who have to appear in court. Above all, Barnardo’s has done so much pioneering work in this area. I should also mention Andrew Norfolk of The Times, who over many years, when this was a very unfashionable, little understood issue that nobody really wanted to know about, ploughed away and uncovered some ghastly goings on, particularly in various northern cities, and he continues to do so. He must be given credit for bringing the issue to the attention of the wider public.
We brought together all those parties. The hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) was also part of our deliberations and made a fantastic contribution, as one would expect. It was not just a dusty document that then sat on a shelf. It needed to be acted on—it was an action plan and it needed to do what it said on the tin. When I published the action plan, I said:
“For too long now, the issue of child sexual exploitation has received too little attention. The system has not done enough to support victims and their families. The courts have not done enough to support traumatised young witnesses. And—perhaps most worryingly—too many local areas have failed to uncover the true extent of sexual exploitation in their communities.
This country has to now wake up to the fact that its children are being sexually abused in far greater numbers than was ever imagined.”
Those words are as true today as they were a year ago. Who would have believed, however, that the headlines across all the newspapers would be about child sexual exploitation or that it would dominate the media, albeit along the lines that it has gone down?
Why did we launch the action plan? It was the result of meeting many victims. I met many parents of victims as well. I met parents whose children were rescued from child abusers and whose houses were then firebombed by the abusers, who thought that it was a cheek that the daughter was not still at their disposal for abuse. The families go through horrendous experiences, not just the children.
I pay tribute to the BBC and Barnardo’s for the Whitney Dean storyline that they ran in EastEnders a couple of years ago. It was a lifelike, in-your-face, shocking, but effective story of how an ordinary girl was befriended by an extraordinary abuser and made to feel that she was part of the abuse. It showed how insidious and clever such abusers can be in inveigling themselves into the trust of vulnerable girls and boys. It was a good storyline that shocked the public into waking up to this issue. We needed to raise the profile of the issue and I think that that has been done, albeit not in the ways that we anticipated.
Secondly, the action plan was about better inter-agency working between all the different professionals, who were not sharing information or acting on it well. That is getting better. Thirdly, it was about how we rehabilitate the victims when we rescue them. This is not something that goes away the minute somebody is rescued from the perpetrator; there are mental scars that last for years. Fourthly, it was about better court practices, so that more children could go to court without being scared of giving evidence because they would be re-traumatised by a barrage of barristers operating for the gang of perpetrators.
In July last year, we produced the progress report, which contained serious practical measures that have been taken, such as the teenage rape prevention campaign, the Safe and Sound project, the BLAST project, the violence against women and girls action plan, the NHS film and social worker training. A lot is happening and a lot is improving. It needs to, because recent events have shown that this problem is still with us.
The Government need rapidly to assure the public that they are on top of this situation, that the professionals at the sharp end, whose job it is to look out for this issue, are looking out for it, and that children’s voices are being heard, taken seriously and acted on. I hope that Ministers who are not here today will hear that message and reassure the public that child protection in this country is taken far more seriously in 2012 than it was in the ’70s and ’80s, and that we will do everything we can to make our children safer.
Mr Allen
I will let my right hon. Friend make his own points about that. What is important is that Ministers do not act defensively or in a way that is intended to make tomorrow’s newspapers, but that they look at this matter strategically.
There is a plethora of inquiries that have taken place, are under way or are about to take place. The most important inquiry to have, which needs to be heavyweight and overarching, is one that backs off from specific incidents and looks at the steps that we could take immediately. It should ask why the extreme dysfunction of child sexual abuse takes place at all, how the cycle of sexual abuse can be broken, and what plans all public and private institutions must deploy to intervene pre-emptively to eradicate the sexual abuse of children over a generation and longer. It should be about long-termism and should set out a stall, hopefully on an all-party basis, so that we are not back here in 20 years’ time discussing these things. It should also include how we can change personal and family behaviours and social attitudes.
This matter is as significant as the Victorian elimination of cholera and typhoid through the provision of disease-free water. It is the public health issue of our time, and we need to step up and tackle it in a serious and strategic way. I would therefore go further than the former Minister who has just spoken, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham, and say that something on the scale of a royal commission is needed. Such a commission has just been announced in Australia. It should look not at particular cases or at how other inquiries went wrong, but at how we can combat the development of abusive behaviour within relationships and outside the family.
Mr Allen
Royal commissions have rarely been used in recent years, when inquiries have been used to put things into the long grass or to deal with specifics rather than the generic problem.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) on being so assiduous on this issue over many years, and the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) on helping to promote this debate. Perhaps I may also offer some friendly advice to the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood). A long time ago in 1989, when I had been in this House as long as she has—about two years—I asked questions of the then Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, and tabled early-day motions on the sexual abuse of children. I suggested—thankfully, this is still on the record—that the Home Office, and the Departments for Education and for Health should work together to figure out a strategic answer to the problem, and undertake serious, long-term research. I also suggested as part of that campaign that we should take video evidence from children in cases of child abuse. Thankfully that tiny bit of progress has been made.
I hope that success comes faster for the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon than any success that I may or may not have enjoyed. We must now look at this issue in the round, rather than at just those cases that affect us as constituency MPs. We must get to the heart of the matter, stop being reactive and start looking at the causes of the problem. There is a continuum. Abuse often begins in quite trivial ways; it escalates through violence; and it can go even further into sexual abuse—and we must start to understand how such relationships occur and how they degenerate, whether in the family or outside.
A tonne of evidence is available. I will not attempt to put it all on the record, although I will refer to a couple of points. Marcus Erooga has done a lot of work on this issue and writes about the
“high rates of convicted child abusers who have been themselves sexually abused as children”.
This is about breaking the cycle of abuse. In a horrendous case that took place 25 years ago in my constituency, children began to accept as normal some of the things that happened to them—I will not put those things on the record in Hansard—and they grew up thinking that that was part of normal sexual relations. As soon as the case was discovered, people went to great lengths to break those children away from the attitude that such things were normal. If they considered such things to be normal, it could happen again in the next generation.
I do not, of course, condemn anyone who has suffered sexual abuse as an offender in their own right—statistics do not bear that out and neither does common sense—but none the less, a very high proportion of people who perform such behaviour have had some experience of its being perpetrated on them by people they know. We can do something about that by helping people and ensuring that they have the social and emotional capability to make choices. As was mentioned earlier, people do not often choose to enter such relationships, and if we gave them the social and emotional armoury that most of us have, they would have a choice. They would be able to say no and to a greater degree resist grooming techniques.
Beckett, another source, states that abusers are
“typically, emotionally isolated individuals, lacking in self-confidence, under-assertive, poor at appreciating the perspective of others—”
in other words, no empathy—
“ill-equipped to deal with emotional distress. They characteristically denied or minimised the full extent of their sexual offending and problems. A significant proportion were found have little empathy for their victims; strong emotional attachments to children; and a range of distorted attitudes and beliefs, where they portrayed children as able to consent to, and hot be harmed by, sexual contact with adults.”
It goes on and on—personality characteristics and psychological well-being; parental histories and the cycle of abuse; substance abuse. Often, abuse is an inter-generational phenomenon that we can tackle by ensuring that people have some of the basic social and emotional capabilities that we all enjoy.
I was saddened that the case of baby P generated into finger-pointing and whether a particular social worker or person was responsible, and there was never a real analysis of why those individuals, who were allegedly care givers, treated baby P as they did. Why was no analysis done of where those people came from, why they acted as they did and why 20 years earlier—when I was new to the House of Commons and in the position that the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon is in now—when those care givers were born, nothing was done to ensure that they were adequately equipped to be decent, rounded human beings, just as we would expect for ourselves and our children?
This is not rocket science; it is about how to promote good parenting and the social and emotional aspects of learning that is provided to primary school children. Every child in Nottingham starts to understand qualities such as empathy, interaction, learning and respecting others, and each time one of those capabilities is built in, the prospect that someone will become abusive, antisocial or treat others in a disrespectful way is diminished. Every teenager in the city of Nottingham studies life skills—it is like personal health and social education but involves talking about relationships and what it is like to have a family or a baby, or to maintain a relationship. By giving people such skills, their parents, care givers or teachers give them not a guarantee but an inoculation against the things that we are discussing today.
This is about the development of empathy and love and about nurturing. If people have social and emotional capability, it is difficult to go wrong. If they do not have that, they might be prone to some of the behaviour that, at its most dysfunctional and extreme, can include the sexual abuse of children. We must think beyond tomorrow’s headlines and constituency casework, and beyond the horrendous things that happen to individuals, and look strategically at how we can start to take steps to eliminate, as far as humanely possible, the sexual abuse of children.
Finally, I congratulate the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon on initiating this debate—it is a great thing to have done. I hope that she, unlike me, will not be here in 20 years’ time listening to Members protest and object to terrible things that have happened in their constituencies, without having seized from the Government an opportunity to help change the culture that allows noxious individuals to grow and thrive in our society. We can do something about this issue, but we need a proper culture in which to develop serious research that the Government can pull together. We also need an overarching inquiry that deals not with individual cases, but tells us how we can combat the development of these predators and reduce sexual abuse of children in our society.
The Minister of State, Home Department (Mr Jeremy Browne)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me an opportunity to speak on behalf of the Government at the mid-way point of this important debate.
I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) and others who have provided us with the opportunity to consider this grave matter. I thank those who have already contributed, making powerful and significant interventions on a range of related subjects that all touch on this overarching subject of child sexual exploitation.
Child protection is an absolute priority for this Government, and both the Home Secretary and I are committed to ensuring that children receive the protection they need and deserve. Where child abuse takes place, the effects on the victim can be lifelong and devastating. It is vital that victims feel empowered to come forward to report abuse and that they receive the support needed to help recover from the trauma of this hateful crime.
Equally, we are clear that if child abuse takes place, it must be thoroughly and properly investigated, and those responsible arrested and brought to justice. My message beyond this House today is that anyone who has any information about any paedophile or anyone who has suffered abuse, whether now or in the past, should feel empowered to report it to the police.
Mr Graham Stuart
I find it extraordinary that the Minister is standing at the Dispatch Box now, on two grounds: first, the representative for the Government is not listening to the whole of this important debate; and, secondly, with no disrespect to the Minister, it is he rather than a Minister from the Department for Education who is on the Front Bench now. I think the House deserves an explanation on both those fronts.
Mr Browne
These are rather procedural points, and I want to get back to the substance, but I will answer both of them. On the former, I was advised that in debates such as this, the Minister may speak either at the beginning, the end or somewhere in between—and there are merits and demerits in all those possibilities. It struck me as reasonable to speak at this stage of the debate, although I understand my hon. Friend’s point. As for his latter point, this issue touches on many different aspects of Government responsibility. There is, for instance, a large Home Office responsibility, and because the Home Secretary had already spoken in the House about topical child sexual exploitation cases, it was thought appropriate throughout Government for a Home Office Minister to reply. However, the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), and Ministers in other Departments—including, obviously, the Department of Health—take a keen interest in the matter as well.
Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
It is a pleasure to take part in this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) on securing it, and I pay tribute to the powerful and often authoritative speeches we have heard this afternoon from people with a real understanding, in different ways, of the issues that come into play when we examine child sexual exploitation. I suppose that, rather like the poor, child sexual exploitation will always be with us. There is no way of eradicating it entirely; there will always be the combination of power and predilection which means that children can be sexually exploited. We need to ensure—I hope this debate will contribute towards this—greater public awareness of the issue and a greater willingness among authorities in so many different agencies to prioritise the issue and to recognise that the prevalence of child sexual exploitation is greater than people have perhaps been willing to admit in the past, not least because they find it so repellent.
I am disappointed that no representative from the Department for Education is here today, as it leads on this issue. Although the Minister of State, Home Department, the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne), spoke from his departmental point of view, we need the Department for Education to provide that leadership, that ability to have the overview and that commitment always to seeing the child—not the criminal and not the trafficked person, but the child within—in all conditions.
One issue that the Select Committee found in our investigation into child protection in England, which did not focus on this area in particular, was a tendency among many authorities, such as the UK Border Agency in some cases and the police or health workers in others, to see the condition—perhaps seeing someone in a criminal environment as a criminal or someone in an immigration environment as an immigration issue—rather than a vulnerable child.
Another theme of our report was that older children are poorly served by social services compared with younger children. As many Members have powerfully said this afternoon, there is a tendency not to believe those children and not to see past their behaviour, which can be pretty awful. A troubled teenager who has been abused will not always present in the most sympathetic way. They might be involved in criminal or other antisocial behaviour and people tend not to see past that to the child who has been exploited and abused in various ways, so they do not ensure that the child gets what they need.
We all want to see a more effective system. It will never be perfect and will certainly never eradicate child sexual exploitation and we should recognise that, but we want a system that is as attuned as it possibly can be to identifying people at risk, protecting them and taking action against perpetrators who seek to exploit children.
I made inquiries of East Riding of Yorkshire council, in which my constituency sits, and I was pleased to find that it is taking child sexual exploitation seriously and has set up a child sexual exploitation strategic group. I read through the terms of reference. In some respects, it is rather a dull, dry document, but it is important that it contains stipulations such as:
“This is a strategic group during which those attending will be expected to have decision making responsibility”.
It is important to ensure that the right people turn up in such circumstances, as it is no good for someone with no authority from an organisation to turn up to tick a box. The group is absolutely right to identify that its members must have decision-making authority for their organisation on child sexual exploitation. It lists the agencies whose attendance is required, makes provisions so that anything less than 75% attendance must be questioned and expects people to attend consecutive meetings.
That is all about the nuts and bolts and quite a long way away from the more emotive issues we have discussed this afternoon, but ensuring we have the right people in the right place, taking responsibility and ensuring that the issue does not drop down the agenda, as can so easily happen, is very important. All strength to the arm of those involved across the agencies in the East Riding of Yorkshire and elsewhere in recognising the severity and prevalence of child sexual exploitation.
Let me run quickly through some of the relevant recommendations in the Select Committee’s report on child protection, which came out last week. Older children were a major theme and we wish to see
“the College of Social Work, in outlining curricula, and individual institutions delivering social work training must ensure that teaching delivers an understanding of the effect of maltreatment on older children”
and
“their ability to cope”.
The tendency is to believe that they are more resilient, but all too often they are not and the effect of abuse in the teenage years can be just as traumatic as in early life. It is just as long-lasting and just as likely to lead to unemployment, drug abuse and, in some cases, a cycle that leads to their becoming abusers in due course if they are not given appropriate support.
We were particularly concerned about care leavers and the accommodation and range of support provided for them. We visited care homes in Barnsley and were struck by the commitment of the staff and, after talking to the young people, by the quality of the support they felt they were getting. We must never be complacent in believing that our children’s homes are all safe and that we do not have abuse in our care system. However, we must also recognise that if, as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) suggested, as many as one in seven children in care are subject to some form of abuse, seven out of seven of those children were subject to some form of abuse before they came into the care system. That in no way excuses failings in our care system, but we must recognise that problems in the past must not be read into problems today, although we should never be complacent. Whatever the problems in our care system, it does offer a place of safety; it does provide a haven and hope for young people. When we met children from around the country who came to a seminar with us behind closed doors, and in our visits to care homes, children told us so again and again.
I, perhaps philosophically, would have a predisposition to worry about taking children away from poor parents in the community and into the even worse parenting of the state. What we found, and the evidence we saw, was that in fact the care of the state for those children, although it is not all perfect—anything but—was, for most of the time, far better than what happened before. It is important that young people hear that, especially before they seek help. Why will they seek help if they think the help provided will make them more of a victim than they already feel? We must build up the quality of the service that our care system offers, but we must also ensure that people out there in the community, and children themselves, realise that care can be a really positive step for them.
Mark Pritchard
Does my hon. Friend agree that where there is best practice—whether it be in Barnsley or elsewhere, whether provided within the public or private sector—municipal and council boundaries should not get in the way of the sharing of that best practice, or even of good local authorities taking over child care facilities in bad local authority areas, and that there should be no ideological barrier stopping the private sector delivering the best care?
Mr Stuart
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who makes a powerful point. Obviously, again talking philosophically, I have no problem with that. Where we can split commissioning from provision, it is possible to create a better tension. The ability to challenge the service is increased if it is not directly provided by one’s department. My hon. Friend was right to make that point.
Such is my loquacity that I have used up most of the time without covering most of the issues that I wanted to talk about. As a Committee we recognised in our report that abuse between teenagers is an overlooked issue in the child protection system. That was mentioned in today’s debate. There is a need for that issue to be recognised, and for strategies to be developed to deal with the complications involved in assisting victims and perpetrators out of that abusive situation. We agreed that the primary aim within Government must be effectiveness, but we are not convinced that the system at the moment enables vulnerable children to be treated as children first. Earlier I spoke about the way in which other agencies tend to view young people.
We recommended that Childline be assisted and enabled by the Government to market its existence and services more widely, especially to older children. When we visited Childline, we were surprised to learn the number of older children who already use it. While people who do not use it might think Childline would be seen as only for younger children, children themselves seem to be using it; but we felt that more could be done to make it possible for Childline, which has a brand that people know, to be promoted more effectively. It was said earlier that for someone in the care system, the only person it is possible to complain to is someone else who works for the local authority. Well, Childline provides a third party to go to, and the NSPCC is behind it; so the more we can promote Childline, the more likely we are to make children safe.
We must do everything we possibly can to make children safer, while accepting that child sexual exploitation will go on. The one thing we have not touched on this afternoon, because we are all rightly focused on ensuring that we get better systems in place, is how we strike a balance so that children are not taught to view all adults and all men as a form of sexual predator until they are found to be otherwise. In my childhood, my best friend and I, wandering around, spent a lot of time with men in our community, none of whom sought to abuse or exploit us in any way. My life would have been very much less rich if that had not been possible. I think, frankly, today it is not possible, so some boys in single-parent households have little or no contact with men. That is enormously to be regretted.
Mark Pritchard
I am very happy to do that. I would like the Government to be more imaginative and innovative in the tax system—as I think the Conservative Opposition said before the election—in recognising the work of grandparents and rewarding them for it, because where the family works well, it is obviously the best place for children to grow up.
I have huge respect for the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), the new children’s Minister, as I did for his predecessor. I am excited about his promotion, because I know that he has great personal knowledge of fostering and adoption. This is an opportunity for him as an individual Minister and for the Government. As I said in a speech last week in the Chamber—albeit a speech on Europe—if we are not making a difference in this place, what is the point of being here? While there is strategic focus in the media, the Government and the nation as a whole, this is perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the coalition Government to make a real difference by changing the way children are fostered, making changes to the adoption system and fundamentally changing the way we look after children in full-time care.
As I mentioned, my view is that everybody has something to contribute—everybody has a God-given ability or talent. Therefore I hope the Government will bring forward definitive and precise measures to tackle the issues arising from the mistakes made in the past—to be fair, under successive Governments—where children left care with the list of problems that I outlined earlier, costing the taxpayer even more money, by the way, as the homelessness bill, the criminal justice bill and the bill for getting people off drugs and alcohol rises.
Mr Graham Stuart
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important that the profile of children’s issues is not lowered in the Department for Education? Does he support the Select Committee on Education recommendation that, as has happened with schools, a non-executive board member with expertise in this area should be appointed to the board of the Department?
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Members for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) and for Stourbridge (Margot James) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) on securing this debate on child sexual exploitation. However, I have to say at the outset that, like the Chair of the Education Select Committee, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), and the former Children’s Minister, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), I am disappointed that the present children’s Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), has not been on the Treasury Bench throughout the debate. I appreciate that he has been here for the past hour.
I was also surprised to be told that I would be responding to the debate as shadow Minister on behalf of the Opposition, as the lead on this matter is obviously with the Department for Education. However, I am pleased to have had the opportunity to listen to the whole debate and to the contributions from Members on both sides of the House on this important subject. I also recognise the special role of Back-Bench debates.
This is a timely debate, and I am pleased that it has consistently focused on the victims of exploitation, on what we can and should do to support them and on what needs to be done to learn from current cases to prevent abuse in the future. As we have heard today, sexual exploitation takes many forms and needs to be understood within the wider context of physical and sexual abuse. It is important to recognise the different situations in which children are exploited, because abuse is often not recognised for what it is.
This has been a good debate, and I want to respond to some of the contributions that have been made. The experience and knowledge that Members have demonstrated has been first class. My hon. Friend the Member for Stockport spoke about her long engagement with these issues. The ex-Minister, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham, brought his experience of the past few years to the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) spoke of his experience in Nottingham, and of the need for a cultural change.
The Chair of the Select Committee and my near neighbour, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness, went through some of the recommendations in his Committee’s report. My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) is the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on prostitution and the global sex trade. He provided the House with his particular focus on the matter. The hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) described his experience of working with the police. The hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) told the House of his first-hand experience of being in care.
Many Members described constituency issues, including the hon. Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins), and my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd), who talked about issues in Wales and about the power that insurance companies have commanded in recent inquiries. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) spoke powerfully on behalf of his constituents, and talked about some of the shocking revelations in his constituency. The hon. Members for Stourbridge, for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray), for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) also described what was happening in their constituencies.
I want to comment on the contributions of other Members who brought their specialist knowledge to the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne) talked about her work with incest survivors and paid tribute to those who were strong enough to get their voices heard. We should of course thank them for that. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) talked about her experience as a prosecutor of sexual offences, while my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) talked about what was happening in Birmingham.
We have encountered a great wealth of experience in the many hours of our discussion this afternoon. We need to remember that neither perpetrators nor victims are easily defined, although we know that certain groups are particularly vulnerable and that the reality is that young women from all different social groups are exposed to sexual violence and are vulnerable to exploitation. It is equally unwise to generalise about the perpetrators. In the media—the hon. Member for Keighley raised the issue, too—much has been made of the prevalence of grooming within certain Asian communities, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East said, in reporting what the Children’s Commissioner had said, sexual exploitation extends far beyond any particular community or ethnicity. By trying to identify typical perpetrators, we risk missing many others.
Indeed, we need to remember that most child sexual exploitation is done either by a child’s peer or by a young adult. A National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children study found that 65% of sexual abuse was conducted by the under-18s, while a Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre sample of 1,200 known perpetrators found that where the age was known, over half were under 24.
Over the last year, we have seen a number of high-profile cases of abuse and exploitation. Obviously, there has been the Jimmy Savile case, and also the fresh allegations of abuse at the north Wales care homes. We have seen the practice of grooming and sexual exploitation occurring in several towns, most notably Rochdale and Derby, where vulnerable young women were abused by networks of men and then used to recruit new victims. These cases are themselves shocking and the public interest that they have provoked is entirely understandable. However, it is important that this debate goes beyond these high-profile examples.
The really shocking truth is that child abuse and exploitation is far too common. We have already heard in this debate the comments of the Deputy Children’s Commissioner that
“sexual exploitation of children is happening all over the country.”
The NSPCC’s 2009 survey on the prevalence and impact of child maltreatment found that 5% of under-16s reported coerced sexual acts. That is one in 20 of our young people. A YouGov poll commissioned by the End Violence Against Women coalition found that 29% of 16 to 18-year-old girls have experienced unwanted sexual touching at school.
We know that a number of inquiries and pieces of research have either already been conducted or are now under way. There are the investigations into Jimmy Savile’s conduct at the BBC and other institutions, and the inquiry into the Waterhouse inquiry, while the Deputy Children’s Commissioner is in the process of conducting an inquiry into the culture of grooming. The Home Affairs Committee is conducting an inquiry into localised grooming, and the Education Committee has just completed an inquiry into child protection. The NSPCC has conducted a number of excellent pieces of research. I would also like to acknowledge two pieces of research from Barnardo’s: “Puppet on a String” and “Cutting them free: How is the UK progressing in protecting its children from sexual exploitation?” Then there is the excellent work done by CEOP, “Out of Sight, Out of Mind”, which has already been mentioned. My hon. Friend the Member for Stockport referred to the joint inquiry of all-party parliamentary group for runaway and missing children and adults and the all-party parliamentary group for looked-after children and care leavers. A joint report into children who go missing from care has been produced under my hon. Friend’s able chairing.
Now that we actually have both Ministers in their places on the Front Bench—they have seen half the debate each—perhaps I could ask the Minister of State, Home Department, the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne), even though he has already spoken, to provide a response in writing to the following issues. First, in evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee, the Department for Education claimed to have accepted all 11 recommendations contained in the Children’s Commissioner’s preliminary report, so it would be helpful to know how far the Government have got in implementing those recommendations.
Secondly, support and treatment for victims is a key issue, which the hon. Member for Strangford raised. The NSPCC has identified an estimated shortfall in the provision of therapeutic services of between 51,000 and 88,000. Is either Minister aware of that shortfall, and can either of them tell us what is being done to deal with it?
Thirdly, given that the NHS is currently being reorganised, can either Minister tell us which organisation will be responsible for giving care and support to abused children within the new structures? Where will statutory responsibility for child protection lie following the demise of the primary care trusts?
Fourthly, local safeguarding children boards are key structures, and when they fail children are left particularly vulnerable. The CEOP inquiry, to which Members have referred today, found that
“Most LSCBs do not fulfil the pivotal role prescribed for them in statutory guidance in respect of child sexual exploitation.”
Can one of the Ministers explain what the Government have done to improve the performance of those boards? Thursday’s elections for police and crime commissioners have been mentioned; how will the role of the new PCCs support the boards, and what work has been done to encourage PCCs to promote and engage with them?
Diana Johnson
No. I am very short of time.
Although children’s services are another key component of the process of keeping our children safe, many councils are being forced to slash the budgets of those services. In my home city of Hull, the council’s budget has been cut by 20% during the current Parliament. What assessment have the Government made of the effects of those cuts on the performance of local safeguarding children boards?
The Government have scaled down the child protection regime to what they call a common-sense level, although organisations such as the NSPCC and experts including Lord Bichard challenged them on some of their plans. I hope that Ministers will take a moment to consider the number of children who have not been protected by common sense in some of the cases that have been discussed today. I hope that they will also have a look at the changes in the criminal records regime, which will restrict information sharing.