Child Protection

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I apologise to the hon. Gentleman. If I keep giving way, I will not get through any of the responses that I want to make to points that have been made.

It is reasonable to ask what the national group has achieved. We have issued new guidance for consultation on protecting children who go missing or run away from home or care. On the policing side, the College of Policing and the Director of Public Prosecutions have launched a public consultation on revised guidance for sexual violence victims. It was launched in June and runs until September. Although we are still consulting, the new guidance is already in effect, which is critical if we are to move the focus of investigations away from testing the credibility of victims to testing the credibility of the allegation and ensuring that the police listen to victims.

In the criminal justice system, we have improved the experience of victims by launching the new criminal justice strategy, which includes significant measures to improve the court process for victims of sexual abuse and exploitation. As the hon. Member for Stockport acknowledged, later this year we shall be piloting measures for recorded pre-trial cross-examination of vulnerable and intimidated witnesses. I agree with her that it is important that victims do not have terrible experiences in court.

On the online front, leading companies have pledged £1 million to the Internet Watch Foundation, which will strengthen the work that it is doing in tandem with the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre to identify child abuse images.

On wider child protection reform, on 21 March this year we published statutory guidance entitled “Working together to safeguard children”, and we have strengthened the role of local safeguarding children boards in holding the local agencies to account, providing funding to the association of independent LSCB chairs to drive forward that improvement and share good practice across the network. We are also continuing to drive improvements in the quality of serious case reviews so that the system learns from past mistakes.

I was asked whether there would be a review of what went wrong in Oxford and Operation Bullfinch. The LSCB in Oxford has commissioned a serious case review to learn the lessons and will ask precisely what went wrong and make sure that it does not happen again.

I was asked about hotels and bed and breakfasts. Earlier this week, I attended the launch by the National Working Group Network charity and the Children’s Society of a new toolkit for local practitioners, which I think will be useful.

The hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) raised the Daniel Pelka case. We have strengthened arrangements for serious case reviews and we will see what the case review has to say next week. On the issue of child protection at a local level, everyone who works with children obviously has responsibility. The hon. Gentleman asked whether, if everyone has responsibility, no one has responsibility. That is why the local safeguarding children boards have the key and central role and why we have sought to strengthen them.

Various hon. Members have called for mandatory reporting of concerns. There is already a clear framework in place for all who work with children to report concerns. The statutory guidance is clear that immediate referral should be made to a children’s social worker if there is concern about a child. So I hope I can reassure my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) that already in a few months many changes have been made.

Points have been made about culture in the context of Christian Churches and of groups of often predominantly Pakistani heritage men grooming and abusing white British girls. It is worth saying that political or religious sensitivities must not get in the way of preventing and uncovering child abuse. The same laws apply to all of us in this country whatever our background, religion or ethnic origin. There are no excuses for anyone committing this disgusting crime. The vetting and barring arrangements apply to those who are working in a faith context as much as anyone else; I can assure hon. Members of that.

I thank the many Members who have contributed to a serious and very good debate.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Can I sit the Minister down? It is now 3.30 pm and we should have started the next debate. I am sorry that there are not two more minutes for winding up.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered child protection in the UK.