Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to ensure there are enough detectives to support investigations into child sexual abuse.

This Government has made child sexual abuse a national threat in order to empower forces to maximise their specialist skills and resources. In 2016, the Home Secretary awarded £1.9m to the College of Policing through the Police Transformation Fund to accelerate its vulnerability training programme, including work to strengthen training for specialist child abuse investigators.

In its 2017 Effectiveness report, published on 22 March 2018, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services recommend that by September 2018, all forces with a shortage in qualified detectives should develop an action plan, working with the NPCC. I fully support this recommendation.

HMICFRS’s recommendations are primarily for police leaders to take action and ensure progress is made. We welcome the work done by Chief Constable Matt Jukes on behalf of NPCC, together with the College of Policing, to improve analysis of the nature and scale of the reported shortages of investigators and to form an action plan.