Child Sexual Exploitation by Organised Networks

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse report on child sexual exploitation by organised networks.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey, and I know that you take a keen interest in the topic.

“Children are sexually exploited by networks in all parts of England and Wales in the most degrading and destructive ways. Each of these acts is a crime. This investigation has revealed extensive failures by local authorities and police forces to keep pace with the pernicious and changing problem of the sexual exploitation of children by networks.”

Those are not my words, but the conclusion of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. The inquiry published its report on child sexual exploitation by organised networks, also known as grooming gangs, on 1 February this year. It followed two years of hearing and evidence gathering, of which I was proud to be a core participant. The report paints a grim picture and describes a culture that forces survivors of child sexual exploitation to fight to be believed. Those who were heard were made to feel as though they had brought the exploitation on themselves.

If the abuse was prosecuted, the victims had to relive their trauma in court, where they were brutalised by an adversarial process that lacked the empathy to support them. I thank the brave survivors and victims who shared their experience with us during the public hearings; I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been. Their experiences were so similar to those of the survivors that I know in Rotherham. It was incredibly powerful to hear about the clear and organised pattern of abuse nationally, but also so frustrating to hear that the same failings by authorities to protect and prosecute occurred all over the country.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate and on all the work she has done on the issue over many years. I wonder if she is as concerned as I am about the online abuse that our children are exposed to? Even today, we are hearing about children having explicit images forwarded to them, and we also hear how social media is used to co-ordinate those gangs. Does she think that the draft Online Safety Bill will deliver and protect our children online?

My hon. Friend raises a very pertinent point, and I commend her for the work that she has done to try and prevent this hideous crime. She is right that the initial stages of grooming are now almost exclusively happening online. Today I was with the Minister for School Standards talking about that, because the Department for Education’s teaching around grooming still features someone going up to a child in a park with a bottle of alcohol and does not tackle social media. My hon. Friend is right to raise that and the online harms Bill must reflect it.

The inquiry took thousands of hours, costing millions of pounds and effectively reached the same recommendations that I and others have been raising in Parliament for years—and that relate to what survivors have been saying for decades. However, in that time, little has actually changed. CSE is still flourishing, and abusers still seem to flout the law with impunity. The Government must now take decisive action to empower local authorities and law enforcement to protect children from exploitation.

The report makes six key recommendations that provide clear actions for Government to take. I urge the Minister to act urgently to implement them in full to prevent further horrific abuse. First, the criminal justice system’s response to CSE by organised gangs must be strengthened. The law must recognise the particular nature of sexual offences where a child is exploited by two or more people. The Government must swiftly amend the Sentencing Act 2020 to provide a mandatory aggravating factor in the sentencing of such cases. Secondly, the Minister should publish an enhanced version of the child exploitation disruption toolkit as soon as possible. The Government recognised the need to do that in their tackling child sexual exploitation and abuse strategy over a year ago, but the updated toolkit is yet to be published.

The toolkit needs to make clear that the core element of the definition of child sexual exploitation is that a child was controlled, coerced, manipulated or deceived into sexual activity. Currently, English statutory guidance defines child sexual exploitation as requiring some sort of “exchange” between the perpetrator and the victim. Barnardo’s and the IICSA report agree that exploitation does not necessarily involve exchange, financial advantage or an increase in status, not least because it implies collaboration by that child. The toolkit must reflect the fact that, both to recognise the true nature of the crime and to shift from victim-blaming, the definition must be updated.

I declare my interest as recorded in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I congratulate the hon. Lady on all the work that she has done over so many years and I am sure that she shares with me a sense of déjà vu that a problem that we were talking about five years ago or 10 years ago persists. I remember launching the child sexual exploitation action plan back in 2011 and many of the things in that plan are things that she repeats now. Why does she think that despite the hugely enhanced awareness of CSE, which went on in the shadows before, and better training for and awareness among the police and other professionals, it is still going on, and that people still think they can get away with it and do get away with it?

I am blessed to be in a Chamber with people who have campaigned for decades on the issue and made changes; the hon. Gentleman is certainly one of them. To be quite blunt, I think the reason it still goes on is that it is too expensive to deal with, and too endemic, and people have just washed their hands of it. I cannot express how much it upsets me to say that, but it is the only conclusion that I can draw, namely that it is too expensive to look after these children properly.

I made recommendations that the inquiry did not take up. One was that local authorities must take urgent steps to improve the access to CSE support systems for children from ethnic minority communities. That requires the Government to mandate that institutions dealing with CSE incorporate an understanding of the range of cultural or ethnic backgrounds into the services they offer. It is deeply disappointing that the IICSA report made no recommendations on the specific issue of CSE among ethnic minority communities, despite that and the lack of cultural-specific services being a major and systemic problem.

Next, the Government cannot accept that the court proceedings must, by their nature, further brutalise victims of abuse, by forcing them to relive their trauma in repeated interactions with the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and again in court. Of course, justice must be served, but how is justice served if victims and survivors are too afraid of the legal system to come forward or give evidence? I hope that the upcoming victims Bill will provide the desperately needed changes in those areas. I strongly encourage Ministers to continue to engage with me, MPs and organisations that work in the sector, to finally get this right.

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and for all the work she has done over many years. Does she agree that the pressures on the court system mean that the situation will be even more challenging? It will mean even more problems for victims and those who are trying to support them. Will the Minister address the point about what she is doing with the relevant Ministries to ensure that the legal system is not failing victims of child sexual abuse, after the horrific experiences they have faced?

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. Rape figures were recently issued by the CPS and prosecutions are even lower than they were. In a number of cases that have not gone forward to prosecution, the victims have been blamed for disengaging with the process when the process is adversarial and they do not get the support they need to protect them from people who are largely still out in their communities. It shocks me; the whole system is wrong, and I fully support my hon. Friend’s campaign to address it.

Abusers commit horrific crimes, but we will not secure convictions unless victims and survivors are thoroughly supported throughout the criminal process. I know that the Minister is committed to tackling child abuse. I hope she agrees today that the Government will accept and implement the findings of the IICSA report. But, to be blunt, warm words mean nothing when children are still being harmed.

To highlight that, I have two local examples where I need the Minister’s help. For the past four years, Barnardo’s in Rotherham has been working, through the trusted relationships project, to support children who are vulnerable to sexual and criminal exploitation. It provides direct, one-to-one support for children and wider support for their families, and carries out awareness-raising sessions for groups of pupils in schools, as well as providing training and resources across Rotherham. However, its funding from the Home Office is due to end on 31 March. The loss of contract will mean that the four team members will have to close 35 children’s cases, and will not be able to go into schools and community groups to deliver work or do assemblies on CSE, child criminal exploitation and healthy relationships.

I thank my hon. Friend for securing the debate and for all the work she has done over the years. I praise Barnardo’s, which has been doing a fabulous job. That funding cut would be morally reprehensible of the Government, and would leave even more children vulnerable. It would be brilliant if the Minister could reassure our hon. Friend that that funding will remain.

I thank my hon. Friend, who I know does a lot of work in her community. Barnardo’s, 25 years before anyone really acknowledged child sexual exploitation was a thing, was trying to prevent it. It is deeply naive to believe it is not a current crime in Rotherham, when there are more than 300 identified abusers on whom the National Crime Agency has enough evidence to take them to court, but there is no court capacity. We need help, Minister, not funding cuts at this point.

The next thing that I want to raise is the case of—and I use this word loosely—Lord Ahmed, who recently received a custodial sentence of five years and six months for two counts of attempted rape of a young girl and one for the serious sexual assault of a boy in Rotherham in the 1970s. This man is not a hereditary peer. He was given the honour in 1998 by the then Labour Government, but we threw him out of the party almost a decade ago. In 2020, the Lords Conduct Committee found that he had breached the code of conduct by sexually assaulting a vulnerable woman and exploiting her both emotionally and sexually. The Committee recommended that he be expelled from the House, but instead—

Order. Just in case this is sub judice at the moment—

It is not. He is in jail, and this is all in the public domain.

I was just checking.

The Lords Committee recommended that he be expelled from the House, but he stepped down to avoid the humiliation. The Government now need to do their duty and introduce legislation to remove his title. It is an insult to his victims, to all survivors and to justice that that does not happen automatically, so I urge the Minister to correct the situation as soon as is practicably possible.

Child sexual exploitation is not inevitable. It must be stopped, and we all must do everything in our power to make that happen.

Many Members want to speak, and I am looking at time limits. We will get to the Front-Bench speakers at about 5.10 pm, so we will start with a three-minute limit. If need be, I will reduce it to two minutes.

It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Ms McVey, and I do not intend to detain the House for long.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) on all the work she has done over many years to highlight the problem, and on being like a terrier and never letting it go. Her tenacity and determination on child sexual exploitation is completely unparalleled, and I am proud to stand alongside her in raising the issue in the House. I have seen her determination both in relation to the awful cases of child abuse that took place in Rotherham and internationally through our work together on the International Development Committee, which she chairs. She has rightly held the Government’s feet to the fire, and I am sure the Minister will join me in acknowledging that that sort of parliamentary pressure is exactly what is needed to ensure that our national institutions, such as the police and local authorities, perform their functions correctly. I thank the hon. Member for securing the debate and would like to reiterate a few points, as we have very little time.

I welcome the report of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, which was published at the beginning of the month. It focuses on the sexual exploitation of children by those networks and is a powerful and important report. Although it focuses on six case study areas, it acknowledges that child sexual exploitation by networks or organised groups takes place all over the country. It is not an issue specific to one area; rather, it is widespread. We must be as much on the lookout for such conduct in Derby as anywhere mentioned in the report. We know that because, before the Rotherham case was discovered, we had Operation Retriever in Derby, which was a very similar situation to all the others throughout the country.

Keeping children safe is one of the most important duties of lawmakers, and it is precisely for that reason that I introduced the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Bill, which will protect children from marriage. I do not want to confuse child marriage with child sexual exploitation, because they are not really connected, but the fact that my Bill is needed shows there is a long way to go on child safeguarding in this country. I have worked closely with both the safeguarding Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean), and the victims Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove), during the progress of the Bill. I know that they are deeply committed to the protection of children, particularly vulnerable children, so I know that they will be as concerned as I am about the report’s findings.