Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report
Debate between Yvette Cooper and Bob Blackman(4 days, 3 hours ago)
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Yvette Cooper
I can tell my hon. Friend that we are going to expand that, and that we will not let up the pace of implementing measures and recommendations. That includes the work that the Education Secretary is already doing on the mandatory sharing of data on children at risk, the new identifiers and the measures in the Crime and Policing Bill on mandatory reporting. Crucially, we have also already increased the resources for policing operations to be able to review closed cases. That is why we already have 800 cases identified for review, although we expect that figure shortly to rise to over 1,000 cases. Those are cases that were closed with no further action being taken that are now being looked at again—not waiting for the inquiry, but taking action now to protect children.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) and I are the sole remaining Members of the House who served on the Communities and Local Government Committee when we conducted the inquiries into Rotherham, in both November 2014 and March 2015. We heard from the victims then about the terrible abuse they had suffered and interviewed Dame Louise Casey at great length about her concerns over what was happening and what was being allowed to happen. There is clearly still something going on, which is that most victims are young girls from broken homes who have been taken into care by local authorities and have never experienced the love of a family. They then take the view that someone expressing some form of love is something that they should like and enjoy, when the reality is that they are being ruthlessly exploited by individuals who should know better, and are evil.
The key concern here is the lackadaisical approach that has been taken by many local authorities, social workers, police forces and other bodies. My genuine concern, which I am sure is shared by other Members, is that a local inquiry will not get individuals who either turned a blind eye or actually participated in the abuse to give evidence. Will the Home Secretary ensure that witnesses are called to those inquiries under oath so that we can get to the bottom of this, and make sure that those who turned a blind eye to or connived in this abuse are brought to justice as well as the perpetrators?
Yvette Cooper
I reassure the hon. Member that the point of having the national inquiry is to ensure that where local institutions are being examined, the commission has powers to compel witnesses, take evidence under oath and gather information, papers and evidence as it sees fit to make sure that we can get to the heart of this institutional failure.
The hon. Member is also right to say that this is about vile criminals knowing when young children—teenage girls especially—are vulnerable to the most appalling exploitation and coercion. They play with children’s emotions and vulnerability to draw them into what is ultimately violent crime and the most terrible abuse. This raises questions, particularly when the number of child protection cases around sexual abuse identified by social services has dropped. We are very concerned about that, and the Education Secretary is now investigating. There is also a failure to properly share data about the children who are at risk—the ones who are going missing. The hon. Member mentions the evidence from the work he and the Communities and Local Government Committee did 10 years ago about missing children and children in care. It is all the same evidence now, and we have got to be better at pursuing the evidence.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Yvette Cooper and Bob Blackman(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right to mention the television programme “Adolescence”, which many people will have seen, and the issue of rising violence among teenagers. We see this in a number of areas; the issues range from knife crime to extremism and violence fixation. Importantly, we have the stronger measures in the Online Safety Act 2023 to protect young people from seeing extreme violence and inappropriate material online, but it is also important for us to work with schools to prevent violence among young people, including violence in relationships.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Border Security: Collaboration
Debate between Yvette Cooper and Bob Blackman(6 months, 1 week ago)
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Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right that this is a practical issue. To disrupt the criminal gangs operating along the French coast, we need to disrupt their supply chains and to be able to go after them wherever they operate. One of the most basic issues, on which the previous Government took no action at all, is the fact these flimsy and incredibly dangerous boats were being shipped across Europe, often being stored in German warehouses. However, the legal framework in Germany made it very hard for the German police and prosecutors to take action against those smuggling gangs.
The basic thing we have done is to reach agreement with Germany that it will strengthen its law to make it clear that storing these boats facilitates dangerous and illegal boat crossings out of the EU and into the UK, which is a crime. Strengthening the law in that way helps us to take action against the criminal gangs, but the previous Government just never chose to do it. It required diplomacy, hard work and shared commitment, and that is what we have shown.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
We all welcome the fall of Assad and look forward to him, and his accomplices, being dragged before the criminal courts to face justice for crimes against humanity. However, the Home Secretary will know that the current situation in Syria is very complex, with a number of proscribed organisations involved. We understand that the Government are considering de-listing some of these organisations. At the same time, we are hearing that money being sent to Syria, to help and assist the Syrians, could fall into the hands of these proscribed organisations. What action will the Home Secretary take to make sure that does not happen? As this is a moving situation, will she undertake to update the House on any moves to de-proscribe these organisations?
Yvette Cooper
The hon. Gentleman raises an important issue. As he will know, we do not routinely comment on either proscription or de-proscription, or on any of those processes, but I make it clear that proscription decisions are taken with care, based on evidence over time. They are not rushed or based on inadequate evidence. These are always important issues, but the most important thing is the safety and national security of the UK, and any decisions we take will always be taken in that light.
Immigration and Home Affairs
Debate between Yvette Cooper and Bob Blackman(10 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Yvette Cooper
The right hon. Member raises an immensely important point, which we support. I am happy to talk to him further, or he can talk to the Minister with responsibility for victims and safeguarding, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips). A series of issues included in the Criminal Justice Bill, which fell when the election was called, had cross-party support and need to be taken forward.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I congratulate the right hon. Lady on her appointment. One issue that was agreed on a cross-party basis was the campaign that we led on abolishing the Vagrancy Act 1824. We concluded that that change would be beneficial for homeless people because they would no longer face arrest and would be provided with assistance. Will she commit, on behalf of the Government, to introducing that change as part of the legislation?
Yvette Cooper
The hon. Member makes an important point—there was a lot of cross-party agreement. There were also areas where the last Government’s attempt to respond ended up provoking a lot of disagreement and where we had different views. I suggest that he discusses the detail further with the new Home Office Ministers, because we take the matter seriously but want to ensure that we get it right and do not make the errors that the previous Government made in the detail of their response.
As well as the issues around community and town centre crime, we have had an important report from the police today warning that violence against women and girls is “a national emergency” that has not been taken seriously for far too long. We have record levels—90%—of crime going unsolved. The criminal justice system and prisons are being pushed into crisis. Too many people have the feeling that nothing is done and no one will come. We cannot go on like that.
For us in the Labour party, this is rooted in our values. Security is the bedrock of opportunity. Families cannot prosper and get on in life if they do not feel safe. Communities cannot be strong if they do not feel secure. A nation cannot thrive if it is under threat. Respect for each other and the rule of law underpin who we are as a country; they are how we sustain our democracy and our sense of justice and fairness. Too often, those things have felt undermined.
That is why we have made safer streets one of the five central missions of this Labour Government—a mission to restore and rebuild neighbourhood policing, to restore trust and confidence in policing and the criminal justice system, and to deliver our unprecedented ambition of halving serious violence within a decade. That is a hugely ambitious mission: halving serious violence means halving knife crime and violence against women and girls over the next 10 years. I know that will be extremely difficult, but I ask everyone to be part of it, because it is so important and we should all be trying to keep people safe.
Police
Debate between Yvette Cooper and Bob Blackman(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right. The ducking and diving from Ministers shows how out of touch they are with what is happening in police forces and communities across the country. Communities know what is happening, because they can see it. Police officers are being taken off the front line and the number of uniformed officers working in custody suites, for example, has gone up, not down. In Birmingham, uniformed officers have been taken off the front line in order to monitor CCTV and, in Leeds, police officers are having to go back into the station between incidents to type up their own case notes because the support staff have gone. Whereas those officers would previously have been able to move from incident to incident, rapidly responding, they are now having to go back into the office to do paperwork instead.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The right hon. Lady has played strongly on the fact that 16,000 police officers are leaving, with 4,000 leaving, as she claims, in the past year. How many were past retirement age and could therefore choose to go and how many were on active duty, as opposed to light duty in police stations, in which case they would not have been available for police commanders to use in proper policing?
Yvette Cooper
HMIC’s assessment was that 4,100 of the 4,600 officers who went in the first year were from front-line jobs, according to the definition of front line that HMIC agreed with the Home Office. The hon. Gentleman also raises an important issue about people nearing retirement, and he will know that in practice chief constables in many parts of the country have been forced to push officers into early retirement when they did not want to go. A Staffordshire officer whom I am meeting tomorrow has said, “I would not have finished. I am not bitter, but very disappointed. The feeling is that there is no control over the mass exodus of experience—it is just going.” That is the reality of what is happening in forces across the country.