Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his policy of the recommendations of the Children’s Society report, Counting Lives: Responding to Children Who Are Criminally Exploited, published in July 2019 on (a) amending the Modern Slavery Act 2015 to include a definition of child criminal exploitation, (b) introducing with the Department for Education a cross-Departmental strategy against child criminal exploitation including changes to relevant statutory guidance, (c) introducing universal access to Independent Child Trafficking Advocates providing support throughout childhood and the transition into adulthood and (d) ensuring that all local safeguarding partnerships maintain an assessment of how many children are at risk of child criminal exploitation in their areas and use that assessment in planning their early intervention and prevention activities.

Criminal exploitation in the form of county lines has a devastating impact on those affected and we must work together to identify and safeguard the vic-tims and potential victims of this form of exploitation as early as possible.

We welcome the report published by the Children’s Society and will consider its findings carefully as we continue to develop and strengthen our response to county lines.

In 2018, the Department for Education revised the Working Together to Safeguard Children and Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance to reflect the risks to include specific mention of the risks to children from county lines, criminal exploitation and other harms from outside the home.

New arrangements to safeguard and promote the welfare of all children, must be implemented by safeguarding partners by the end of September 2019. It will be for local determination what the arrangements cover, but they must set out how all children, including those at risk of child criminal exploitation, will be kept safe. In order to bring transparency about the activities undertaken, the safeguarding partners must publish a report at least once in every 12-month period, setting out what they have done as a result of the arrangements and how effective these arrangements have been in practice.

The Independent Review of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 considered the def-inition of exploitation under the Act and found it is sufficiently flexible to meet a range of new and emerging forms of modern slavery.

In addition, there is an existing, published definition of child criminal exploi-tation in the Serious Violence Strategy. The strategy is available https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/698009/serious-violence-strategy.pdf

Section 48 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 which makes provisions for Inde-pendent Child Trafficking Advocates was also considered by the Independent Review of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. In-line with one of the Review’s recommendations, Independent Child Trafficking Advocates have recently been renamed Independent Child Trafficking Guardians (ICTGs).

ICTGs are an additional source of advice and support for all trafficked children and somebody who can advocate on their behalf. The current service model provides one-to-one support for children who lack a figure of parental responsibility for them in the UK and an expert ICTG regional practice co-ordinator whose role will be to focus on children who do have a figure of parental responsibility for them in the UK. The ICTG regional practice co-ordinator works with statutory bodies including the police, social workers and the Criminal Justice System to foster effective multi-agency working to safeguard these vulnerable children.

The Government remains committed to rolling out ICTGs nationally with the service currently being available in one third of local authorities in England and Wales.The Government Response to the Independent Review was published on 9 July and is available:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/government-response-to-the-independent-review-of-the-modern-slavery-act