Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to help reduce the number of missing children in the West Midlands; and what steps she is taking to help reduce the number of Black and Asian missing children.

The Missing Persons Authorised Professional Practice, issued by the College of Policing, sets out best practice guidance for all missing person investigations, including missing children.

The Government recognises the need for an effective multi-agency response to missing person investigations. To this end, the Home Office and Department for Education have been supporting the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) lead for Missing Persons in the development of a ‘Missing Children from Care’ framework, which has been piloted in West Yorkshire. This framework outlines good practice that can be adopted by local areas when setting up their own multi-agency protocols for the strategic and operational response to a missing incident, with an aim to ensure that the appropriate safeguarding partner responds in the best interest of the missing person.

The Home Office has also funded the NPCC for Missing Persons to conduct research to explore disproportionality and discrimination in police missing persons investigations; comparing how risk is categorised in different ethnic groups. The final report is nearing completion.