Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s totality report into Child Sexual Abuse; and if she will make a statement.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council’s totality report into Child Sexual Abuse is a vital tool for government and police policy makers in understanding the scale and nature of the child sexual abuse threat. It is important that policies to tackle child sexual abuse, in every part of Government and across all agencies - education, health, social care, law enforcement, industry and civil society, are grounded in evidence so that they are effective in tackling this crime and safeguarding children.

To further build our understanding of the threat, Home Office funding provides a dedicated analyst, working on child sexual abuse and exploitation, in each of the ten policing Regional Organised Crime Units based in England and Wales. The Prime Minister and Home Secretary recently announced a new Child Sexual Exploitation Police Taskforce, which will develop a Complex and Organised Child Abuse Database to strengthen what we know about the scale, risk and prevalence of child sexual abuse and exploitation, as well as rolling out the Tackling Organised Exploitation Programme to give a clearer picture of organised exploitation. They will work collectively to enable us to build on the totality report analysis and improve local forces’ understanding of risk in their areas, and thereby better identify and disrupt offending and safeguard children.