I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to place a duty on the Secretary of State to promote the safety and wellbeing of teenagers; to make provision to prevent crime against teenagers; and for connected purposes.
There is nothing more important than ensuring that our young people have the best opportunities to thrive and that all are able to access such opportunities. Every instance where we fail to do this, we let those young people down and often start a spiral of wasted potential and greater societal need down the road.
Recent reports warn that social care, education, family support and children’s mental health services are not working for thousands of vulnerable teenagers, diminishing their life chances, putting some teenagers at risk of grooming, exploitation and serious violence, and costing taxpayers billions. For the young people we fail the most, the implications are stark.
Government statistics reveal that, in 2021-22, more than 16,000 cases of child sexual exploitation were identified in social care assessments, as were 11,600 cases involving gangs and more than 10,000 cases of child criminal exploitation. Sadly, these numbers are likely to be the tip of the iceberg, because those involved in gang activity and criminal exploitation are disproportionately young, vulnerable and, crucially, unknown to services. This leads to estimates that as many as 200,000 children in England aged 11 to 17 could be vulnerable to serious violence.
Let us be clear that the blame for this lies at the feet of those cowards who seek to exploit children for their own individual gain, but the responsibility for tackling and preventing it is with us in this place, with our devolved Assemblies, with our elected Mayors and combined authorities and with our town halls. We must collectively find the answer.
There is significant concern that the pressures on overstretched services and on the public purse due to a lack of early intervention and a combination of the pandemic and the cost of living crisis are increasing the risks to teenagers. It has been reported that many of these problems have become more extreme since the pandemic, including the ages of those running gangs becoming even younger. This creates a great challenge for the system, one mirrored in slavery cases more broadly, where the boundary between the exploiter and the exploited is blurred and, in many cases, exists in the same person.
We must recognise that what we are talking about in many cases is slavery. The Government were right to introduce anti-slavery legislation, but we must make sure it keeps pace with the challenges we face. According to the Children’s Society, 22,000 children have entered the national referral mechanism since the Modern Slavery Act 2015 was introduced. That is a staggering scale, but it has led to just 186 prosecutions where children were the victims, and only half of those led to a conviction.