Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

Today marks one year since the publication of Baroness Casey’s national audit on group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse, and one year since this Government accepted all 12 recommendations.

This was a landmark report, exposing more than a decade of inaction in the face of these appalling crimes, and it is right that these findings continue to command the highest level of attention.

Time after time, victims and survivors were let down by the very institutions responsible for keeping them safe, despite repeated warnings and long-standing recommendations for action. This Government have been clear that we will not lose any more time in pursuing truth and justice for victims and survivors, who deserve so much better. I remain determined that we confront these failings directly and decisively. We must be clear-eyed about what went wrong, ensure full accountability, and drive the lasting change that is so urgently needed.

I want to take this opportunity to update the House on the Government’s progress in delivering all 12 of Baroness Casey’s recommendations, and driving the change that victims and survivors deserve.

In response to recommendation 1, we have legislated in the Crime and Policing Act 2026 to create new offences in England and Wales covering rape and other penetrative sexual activity with a child under 16 by an adult regardless of apparent consent, where that adult did not reasonably believe that the child was aged 16 or over, as long as they are at least 13. We will conduct a post-implementation review of the new offences to test what impact they are having, including looking at how the element of “reasonable belief in age” works in practice. We will also launch a public consultation on how to treat close-in-age relationships.

In response to recommendation 2, we have established a national police operation into group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse, Operation Beaconport, overseen by the National Crime Agency and delivered in partnership with policing, backed by £37.7 million this year. This is a tenfold increase from last year—financial year 2025-26—and is part of a £100 million funding package to drive a crackdown on child sexual abuse. This investment will support the collaborative work of Operation Beaconport to reset the way in which policing responds to group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse including by reviewing closed cases, building capability, embedding trauma-informed practice and approaching child sexual exploitation like serious and organised crime. We have also established the statutory independent inquiry into grooming gangs, backed by a £65 million commitment, with a chair and panel who are committed to getting the answers that victims and survivors have so long fought for.

In response to recommendation 3, we have legislated through the Crime and Policing Act 2026 to disregard convictions and cautions for loitering or soliciting for the purpose of prostitution—contrary to section 1 of the Street Offences Act 1959—where the offender was under 18 at the time of the offence. The section 1 offence was amended by the Serious Crime Act 2015 so that it no longer applied to persons under 18. Section 68 of the 2015 Act removed from the Sexual Offences Act 2003 anachronistic references to “child prostitution”, instead recognising such children as victims of child sexual exploitation.

For cases not covered by the disregard scheme, the appropriate route is to apply to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. Last month, the Criminal Cases Review Commission referred its first conviction of a grooming gang victim to the courts since Baroness Casey’s audit.

In response to recommendation 4, we continue to work with police forces to improve collection of ethnicity data for suspects of these crimes, and we have committed—through the police reform White Paper—to legislate through the police reform Bill to ensure we have the necessary powers to mandate the collection of this and other forms of data. In the meantime, we will hold police forces to account for improving performance in the collection of this data as a priority.

In response to recommendation 5, we have secured the new information-sharing duty through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, to ensure it is unequivocally clear that information must be shared where it is necessary to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.

Parliamentary progress to pass this vital piece of legislation was slower than the Government would have liked. However, since Royal Assent, the Department for Education has worked swiftly to develop draft statutory guidance that is now out for consultation. This pace will enable the information-sharing duty to be commenced in September 2026. In parallel, the Government response to the consultation on the child protection authority will be published this summer. Updates to children’s services inspections and the regulations for the relevant workforces will reflect these changes in legislation.

In response to recommendation 6, the passing of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 means that there is legislative provision for a single unique identifier that will improve information sharing. In April 2025, the Department initiated a series of test and learn pilots, starting with Wigan local authority, to establish how a single unique identifier can be implemented effectively. Initial pilots explored access to the NHS number for local authorities and matching rates between school census data, data held by children’s social care, and the NHS personal demographics system, which holds all NHS numbers. Building on this learning, work is now progressing in close partnership with the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England to design and deliver the next phase of implementation.

We have been explicit in our ambition to move at pace, with a clear intention to bring forward regulations at the earliest opportunity and by the end of this Parliament.

In response to recommendation 7, the Department for Education and the Home Office have undertaken a deep dive, looking at policing systems to help inform the work done in recommendation 6 and to establish how an identifier for children would work in policing systems. Work is also under way to improve national data integration and data sharing by developing and establishing a national data integration and exploitation service, which will link key policing datasets and improve data sharing.

The Home Office has also invested record amounts in the tackling organised exploitation programme, including £10.8 million this year, which brings high-end technological capabilities, including AI, to bear in order to enable policing to better exploit large datasets to identify potential victims and suspects.

In response to recommendation 8, we have made it a core requirement of Operation Beaconport to ensure an enduring legacy across policing, so that forces approach child sexual exploitation investigations like serious and organised crime, and we are investing in the capabilities to enable this at all levels.

In response to recommendation 9, in December 2025 the Department for Education completed this action and published “Children in need: A focus on sexual abuse and exploitation”, followed in March 2026 by the publication of qualitative research. We are disseminating this widely and harnessing opportunities to improve identification, practice and data.

Tackling child sexual exploitation and abuse is a top priority for the Department for Education. This includes improving its identification by children’s services, as well as work under way to improve the quality of serious incident notifications. This activity is being personally driven by the Secretary of State for Education.

We are looking to change the data we collect on children in the children’s social care system to better understand the abuse they suffer. We have strengthened the statutory guidance, “Working together to safeguard children”, in order to ensure that child sexual exploitation and abuse is strongly reflected throughout. The 2026 update included changes to areas of the guidance about submitting serious incident notifications.

We are rolling out child sexual exploitation and abuse training to child protection practitioners, and embedding child sexual exploitation and abuse in new standards for lead child protection practitioners.

Joint targeted area inspections are currently assessing how effectively local areas identify and respond to child sexual abuse. Findings from these inspections, alongside new practice guides, will strengthen the evidence around what works to improve the identification and response to child sexual exploitation and abuse.

In response to recommendation 10, the Home Office has commissioned UK Research and Innovation to deliver independent research into the drivers of group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse, including cultural factors, group dynamics and the role of online technologies. This will strengthen the national evidence base, enabling a more detailed understanding of the factors at play, and will support the development of more targeted and effective interventions. Calls for applications will launch soon.

In response to recommendation 11, the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 includes provisions to set national standards for taxi and private hire vehicle licensing in order to ensure that high safeguarding standards are applied across the country. The Department for Transport will consult on these standards later this year. Through the Act, the Government also have powers to allow all licensing authorities to take immediate action where there is an urgent risk to public safety, wherever a taxi or private hire vehicle is licensed or operating. The King’s Speech announced the development of a proposed draft taxis and private hire vehicles Bill for pre-legislative scrutiny during this parliamentary session, which will go further still. This will include reforming regulation of taxis and private hire vehicles, stronger enforcement powers for regulators, mandating a national database of all licensees, and taking action so that operators and drivers are licensed where they intend to work.

Finally, in response to recommendation 12, the Government are fully committed to the implementation of these recommendations, and the Home Office continues to track progress across them.

We have made good progress against the mandate for change set out by Baroness Casey, but our job is far from complete. Among other things, we have committed to a post-implementation review to assess how the changes to the criminal law are operating in practice, and the new independent inquiry will shortly announce which local areas will face specific local investigations. We need to do—and are doing—more to improve the collection of suspect ethnicity data in the short term. We need to ensure that the changes to information-sharing policy and practice work effectively so that the safety of children is prioritised. As set out in the police reform White Paper, we need to do more to ensure that policing data that is siloed in local systems can be effectively shared, which is why we have announced a new national data integration and exploitation service.

The Government response to Baroness Casey’s recommendations is just one part of a comprehensive approach to tackling all forms of child sexual exploitation and abuse—backed up by investment of over £100 million to help tackle offending, protect children, and support victims and survivors of these heinous crimes wherever they occur, including within the family home, institutions, in the community or online.

Following recommendations from the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, we have taken action, including by recently introducing measures in the Crime and Policing Act on the new mandatory reporting duty, reforms to Disclosure and Barring, and the removal of the civil limitation period. The Home Office is working with the Department of Health and Social Care to roll out the Child House model of support for child victims, and with the Department for Education to establish a child protection authority to strengthen national oversight and improve child protection.

We are also acting on our commitment in the violence against women and girls strategy to make it impossible for children to take, share or view nude images. This measure supports and goes beyond IICSA’s recommendations on protecting children online, and reflects Baroness Casey’s finding that grooming is now as likely to begin online.

One year ago, Baroness Casey set out in stark terms the repeated inaction and failures faced by the victims and survivors of these horrific crimes, and she called for action. We are acting: to rectify the failures of the past, to bring perpetrators to justice, to ensure victims and survivors can count on us to support them, and to do everything possible to prevent these offences from ever happening in the first place.

I recognise the long-standing and deeply held interest of parliamentarians in this issue, and I am grateful for their continued scrutiny and engagement. I also pay tribute to Baroness Casey for her formidable work, and to the victims and survivors whose courage in coming forward has been instrumental in driving forward this agenda. They will remain at the heart of our response.

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