Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent steps her Department has taken to reduce the number of child sexual offences.

In February 2017, the Government published its Tackling Child Sexual Exploitation: Progress Report which reported that 90% of the actions in the March 2015 Tackling Child Sexual Exploitation Report had been delivered, including investment in the frontline response to child sexual abuse, e.g. recruiting around an extra 100 specialist rape and child sexual abuse prosecutors, establishing new investigative teams in the National Crime Agency, and launching a new Child Sexual Exploitation Response Unit to support social care, health and other agencies.

In February the Government announced a £40 million package of measures to protect children and young people from sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking and to crack down on offenders. The package included £7.5 million for a new ground-breaking Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse, an extra £20 million for the National Crime Agency to tackle online child sexual exploitation, and £2.2 million for organisations working to protect children at risk of trafficking.