Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what measures are being taken to strengthen compliance with the statutory duty to refer individuals to the Disclosure and Barring Service, as recommended by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.

The Tackling Child Sexual Abuse Progress Update, published in April last year, set out clearly the actions the Government is taking to respond to IICSA’s recommendations. We are now delivering on those commitments overseen by an inter-ministerial group on child sexual abuse chaired by the Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls.

Child Protection Authority

Last month the Government published a consultation seeking views on the creation of the new Child Protection Authority for England. A Government response will be published by summer 2026 including a plan to establish the new body, and further information on its scope, structure, activities and responsibilities.

Mandatory Reporting

Measures to introduce a new statutory duty for individuals undertaking key roles with responsibility for children and young people in England to report sexual abuse, and to create a new criminal offence of obstructing an individual from making a report under the duty are included in the Crime and Policing Bill which is currently passing through Parliament.

Disclosure and Barring Service

The Government, working with the DBS, has been driving forward a continuous programme of work to improve employers’ and stakeholders’ understanding of, and compliance with, their statutory duty to inform the DBS about individuals who may pose a risk of harm to children.

That work has included bespoke workshops on the legal duty to refer, how to make a good quality barring referral and recognising when it may be appropriate to refer someone to DBS because of harm caused outside the workplace. Through these workshops the DBS has reached over 12,000 individuals working in safeguarding roles. Since the DBS Outreach Service was introduced the number of referrals has increased by over 50% in every region.

On 18 December 2025, legislation was also brought into force which enabled ACRO Criminal Records Office to include an individual’s barred list status on its International Child Protection Certificate (ICPC) which is available to those who are looking to work with children overseas. By ensuring that overseas employers can also learn an individual’s barred list status, this will reduce the risk of those barred from working with children in the UK being able to do so overseas.

Limitation Period for Civil Claims

The Government has committed to remove the three-year time limit for victims to bring civil child sexual abuse claims with the burden of proof falling on defendants (rather than victims, as at present) to show that a fair trial is not possible. This measure has been included in the Crime and Policing Bill which is currently passing through Parliament.

Joint inspections of compliance with the Victims’ Code

The Government has asked the Criminal Justice Joint Inspectorates (CJJI) to include an inspection on the experiences of victims of child sexual abuse in the criminal justice system, including compliance with the Victims’ Code, in their 2025-27 Business Plan. The inspection is expected to take place in summer 2026.

Retention of Records

The Government is preparing regulations instructing the Information Commissioner’s Office to produce a code of practice on the retention of personal data relating to child sexual abuse. We intend to lay the regulations before the House as soon as possible. Once the regulations have been laid, the ICO will prepare the code following consultation with an expert panel.

Single Core National Dataset

The Government is taking a range of steps to improve the consistency of data collection and sharing related to child sexual abuse. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, currently passing through Parliament, will introduce a new information sharing duty and a consistent identifier for children to improve opportunities for agencies to better share their information about children at risk of child sexual abuse. The Government also continues to support the independent Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse which, through it’s Trends in Official Data report and Data Insights Hub brings together local and national data on the prevalence, identification and response to child sexual abuse.

National Public Awareness Campaign

The Government is committed to raising public awareness about the scale and impacts of child sexual abuse and is supporting several targeted programmes to achieve this, including the #LookCloser campaign, aiming to raise awareness of all forms of child exploitation, and the Lucy Faithfull Foundation’s Stop It Now! Online Deterrence campaign and its services to prevent offending. As part of the Government’s commitment to halve VAWG in a decade, we are also supporting the ENOUGH campaign, a long-term national programme of behaviour change campaigns to deliver a generational shift in the awareness, attitudes, and behaviours underpinning abuse.

Expenditure on Services Supporting Victims and Survivors

The Government is committing significant funding towards specialist support for victims and survivors of child sexual abuse. The Department for Health and Social Care has announced a £50m package to support expansion of the ‘Child House’ model, a key step in addressing IICSA’s recommendation on improving therapeutic support for children affected by sexual abuse. The Ministry of Justice will be investing £550 million in victim support services over the next three years – the biggest investment in victim support services to date - and the Home Office will also invest £2.59m this year to support frontline providers that offer nationally accessible services to support victims and survivors of child sexual abuse.