Operation Augusta

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

First, I draw attention to my entry in the register. Secondly, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) for bringing this case before the House. It received very little coverage—a few headlines in the newspapers—and was not mentioned at all in this House. Yet the report was of huge significance, not just historically, but for the lessons that still need to be learned, as he alluded to today: how we are still not dealing adequately enough with child sexual abuse in all its forms; and in particular whether we are policing it properly.

As everyone will agree, the report is troubling and makes for uncomfortable reading, such as the tragedy of Victoria Agoglia, the 15-year-old so badly let down in the care of Manchester City Council. Her treatment has many wider implications for vulnerable young people exposed to child sexual exploitation.

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman mentioned Maggie Oliver, who has been the hero throughout the whole of this sorry episode. She called out the neglect—to put it mildly—in effect sacrificed her career and has at last been vindicated after all that time. I met Maggie at the “Newsnight” studio when this issue came up and we were interviewed, just a few weeks ago. I hope the charity that she is looking to set up to continue her good work will be a great success.

I pay tribute to the Mayor of Manchester for commissioning his review—historical, because it was many years before Manchester had an elected Mayor. This is only the first phase of that review, and four further stories that may make equally uncomfortable reading will come out in future. I also pay tribute to the BBC and the “Betrayed Girls” programme, which highlighted some of the horrors that happened.

I am afraid that the situation is not untypical. When I was Children’s Minister, one of the least enjoyable parts of my job was, every Monday morning, a run-through of all the cases that had come in of child abuse or child fatalities, often at the hands of carers, and of the latest state of play in the court cases. Only a few high-profile issues—the Victoria Climbiés, the Baby Ps and some of these gangs—reached the headlines, but they were just the tip of the iceberg. This was going on wholescale, at an industrial level, and to an extent it still is.

Reading the report, I am afraid that I had such a sense of déjà vu. It talked about the horrendous way in which Victoria Agoglia met her death, stating that “No action was taken” by the police or social care to address the issues. The “scoping phase” of the investigation

“built up a compelling picture of the systemic exploitation of looked after children in the care system in the city of Manchester”,

and found that “97 persons of interest” were

“identified as being involved…in the sexual exploitation of the victims”.

None of those 97, it would appear, has been brought to justice. The report concluded that although “significant information” was

“held by both Manchester City Council and Greater Manchester Police on some individuals who potentially posed a risk to children, the review team can offer no assurance that appropriate action was taken to address this risk.”

Sixteen children in the sample were being sexually exploited, and the review team could offer no

“assurance that this was appropriately addressed by either Greater Manchester Police or…the responsible local authority.”

Evidence was presented and victims—often vulnerable children in the care system—were not believed, even when they were brave enough to present. Victims were almost tarred as perpetrators, for bringing it on themselves. In some earlier studies, comments referred to “child prostitutes”—but there is no such thing as a child prostitute. If you are a child, and if you are engaged in sexual activity at the hands of somebody else, that is not prostitution; that is child abuse. It is child sexual exploitation, plain and simple. That phrase “child prostitution” should have no place in our lexicon. We are talking about children, particularly vulnerable children who were ruthlessly exploited and taken advantage of by some very unpleasant individuals.

The whole thing was therefore all too difficult to handle. There were ridiculous considerations of political correctness—which I am afraid were all-pervading, particularly in those days—and the police and other local agencies did not want to rock the boat, so it was swept under the carpet. Even with those 97 identified potential suspects, the inquiry was prematurely closed.

One phrase from the report about the perpetrators summed it up for me:

“They weren’t viewed as sex offenders per se, just a group of men of all ages, from one ethnicity taking advantage of kids from dysfunctional backgrounds.”

It was almost the kids’ fault; those people just happened to be there and took advantage. There is clear evidence that young people were not served or protected by the statutory agencies. The hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton made the point that there is no evidence of any misconduct charges having been brought against anyone involved in the failures of this case. There was a clear absence of identifying where the buck stopped. Some of those police officers are still in the police force, in one case at the level of chief constable, and their careers have advanced with apparently no consequences of the failures raised in the report. That must be addressed.

That attitude was all too common before 2011. There was a combination of ignorance, inadequate training, complacency, political correctness and indifference to vulnerable children. However, I believe that there was a sea change in 2011. Operation Retriever, which was the first high-profile operation, identified, prosecuted and jailed a gang of British Pakistani men based in Derby and other cities across the north. It was bravely brought by Sheila Taylor, who at the time was running a charity for victims in Derby. Through her constant badgering of the police to take the matter seriously, she made sure that it was properly investigated. That was the turning point.

That case was about the scale abuse of mostly but not exclusively teenage girls, by mostly but not exclusively British Pakistani gangs of men. Let us be clear: child sexual exploitation is committed by all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds. Most of those in jail will be white men who have committed various forms of child sexual exploitation, but this was a case of organised, systematic gang abuse by predominantly British Pakistani men and it was not properly called out, identified and prosecuted so that those people could be brought to justice. That sea change came about in 2011.

[James Daly]

The report mentioned a 2014 interview in which Victoria’s grandmother said that the men were still walking around in the local community. Nothing happened between 2014 and 2018, when the investigation took place. If there was such a sea change in 2011, can my hon. Friend explain what happened between June 2014 and 2018?

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right; there are still serious shortcomings in this case, but I am trying to draw a picture of why things changed nationally and why there are grounds for optimism, although one would not believe it to look at this report.

The report needs to lead to further investigation into the culpability of the perpetrators and the people who failed to identify and do something about them. Back in 2011, the Government produced the first comprehensive child sexual exploitation plan. I launched it, together with Barnardo’s, and worked with other agencies. It made it clear that that sort of CSE was going on in all parts of society and all parts of our country; it is not just a preserve of northern metropolitan cities such as Manchester. It happens in all parts of town; it is not something that just happens to those sorts of people in a different part of town. It happened to the children of doctors, lawyers and other professionals from all walks of life. The shocking images of gang members started to appear in the newspaper, and people started to wake up to it.

What really caused that sea change was the Jimmy Savile scandal the following year. It became a different world. From October 2012, most people in this country came to realise what child sexual exploitation actually was, and that it was happening. Awareness rose hugely. It was widespread throughout all sorts of society: in the health service, in education, in children’s homes, in the Church of England—I refer to the recent exposure about Bishop Peter Ball. Again, the police just shoved it under the carpet and did not properly pursue it. It happened in politics, with Cyril Smith and Operation Midland, where there were serious shortcomings—that will be the subject of further debate in this House in due course. It was happening in Rotherham, Oxford, Cornwall, Rochdale, Telford and so on. That led to the historic child abuse inquiry, which is still undertaking its huge job of work.

The question is: have things changed? Have the police, and all agencies, got wiser to detecting and taking seriously allegations of child sexual abuse? Have mindsets changed since 2004? The people who should have been looking after vulnerable children were just not; they were questioning whether anything serious was happening to them. Back in 2004 we were focused on cases such as that of Victoria Climbié. We had just had the Laming review. Abuse of children was largely down to carers inflicting violence on vulnerable children. The whole business of gangs and sexual exploitation was not on the radar. Some seven or eight years later, that very much came on to the radar.

What has changed—I saw this in my time as Children’s Minister and subsequently—is that now every single police officer is trained to identify child sexual exploitation. We have better joint working between agencies, although it is still not nearly good enough—I have serious concerns about the successors to the local safeguarding children boards properly joining up all the local interested parties. More cases are coming to court. Indeed, some 50% of cases going through the courts at the moment are to do with historical and contemporary sexual abuse. The problem is that far too little is ending up in prosecutions, particularly for contemporary sexual abuse and rape. It is still a big problem in this country.

I would like to finish with some of the statistics. Last year something like 104,000 children went through the care system in this country. It was estimated by an all-party group led by our former colleague Ann Coffey, who did a lot of very good work, that 11,500, or 11%, went missing at some stage. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children estimates that a child is abused in this country every seven minutes. There were some 76,000 reported sexual offences—a record level and a big rise over recent years—and 20% of those relate to children under the age of 10. That is down to better reporting and better police recording, but also to the fact that it is still a problem and we are not doing enough about it. It is also to do with children in the care system not being properly looked after.

Too many children are excluded from school— 42 children a day are permanently excluded from school and 410 are on fixed-term exclusions. They end up in gang and knife culture and become vulnerable to predators. Back in 2011-12 we produced heat maps of where children should be placed. Senior police officers and heads of schools from Kent, where a disproportionate number of children in care are placed—largely from London boroughs—came to see me. They told me that they were seriously worried about being overwhelmed by children in the care system who were not properly looked after and were placed in wholly inappropriate areas. We had cases of children being placed in children’s homes on the same streets as sex offender hostels.

We changed the regulations so that where children are placed out of the area of the local authority responsible for them, the director of children’s services will be responsible for a risk assessment of whether the place is appropriate and safe—not just whether the house was okay, but whether the area was okay. Still, 41% of children across the care system are placed out of area. In the case of going to children’s homes, that is over two thirds. Those heat maps are still not being properly enforced. That is part of the reason why too many of our children are still vulnerable.

My plea is that we learn the lessons. We need to know why people were not brought to account, and they still need to be brought to account. Are perpetrators still out there who could be prosecuted? What are we doing for the victims—those children who are still suffering the trauma of having gone through their experiences, which have been brought up again by the publication of this report? Are we properly looking after their interests? What are we doing now to ensure that those vulnerable children are properly looked after by agencies who get it? Agencies must know the extent of the problem, know what they have to do and act together in the best interests of the welfare of those children, so that tragic cases such as Victoria’s never happen again.

[Several hon. Members rose—]