Tackling Child Sexual Abuse

Statement

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Tuesday 8 April.

“With permission, I will make a Statement updating the House on government action to tackle child sexual abuse and exploitation and on progress on the recommendations of the independent inquiry.

Child sexual abuse and exploitation are the most horrific and disturbing crimes—an abuse of power against those who are most vulnerable, leaving lifelong trauma and scars. Best estimates suggest that 500,000 children are sexually abused every year. Analysis by the police found that there were 115,000 recorded cases of child sexual abuse in 2023; 4,228 group-based offences identified by the CSE taskforce, of which 1,125 were family abuse; and 717 were sexual exploitation cases. In a growing number of recorded cases, the perpetrators themselves are under 18.

The House will be aware that, in its first year of operation up to March 2024, the grooming gangs taskforce contributed to 550 arrests across the country. In the last nine months of 2024, the taskforce contributed to 597 arrests. In other words, it surpassed in that nine-month period what it achieved in its first full year of operation. Data for the first three months of this year is currently being collected from forces and will be available early next month, but all round we are making progress at every level to increase the number of investigations, the number of arrests and, most importantly, the number of victims who are seeing their attackers brought to justice.

Despite the seriousness and severity of these crimes, there has been a shameful failure by institutions and those in power over many years to protect children from abuse or exploitation, so we are today setting out a progress update on action this Government are taking to tackle child sexual abuse and exploitation, to get support and justice for victims, and to ensure that perpetrators are caught and put behind bars.

Action on CSA since the election means that we are introducing a new child sexual abuse police performance framework, including new standards on public protection, child abuse and exploitation; legislation targeting online offending, including abuse and grooming enabled by artificial intelligence; new powers for Border Force to detect digitally held child sex abuse at the UK border; new restrictions preventing registered sex offenders from changing their names to hide the threat they pose; and increased investment in law enforcement capability, through the police undercover online network and the Tackling Organised Exploitation Programme.

In the Home Secretary’s Statement to the House in January, she set out what we are doing to crack down on grooming gangs, and today I can provide an update on that work. Baroness Casey’s three-month national audit on group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse is ongoing. It is building a comprehensive national picture of what is known about child sexual exploitation, identifying local and national trends, assessing the quality of data, looking at the ethnicity issues faced, for example, by cases involving Pakistani heritage gangs, and reviewing police and wider agency understanding. We are developing a new best practice framework to support local authorities that want to undertake victim-centred local inquiries or related work, drawing on the lessons from local independent inquiries such as those in Telford, Rotherham and Greater Manchester. We will publish the details next month.

Alongside that, we will set out the process through which local authorities can access the £5 million national fund to support locally-led work on grooming gangs. Following feedback from local authorities, the fund will adopt a flexible approach to support both full independent local inquiries and more bespoke work, including local victims’ panels or locally led audits of the handling of historical cases.

The chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, Gavin Stephens, has, at the Home Secretary’s request, urged the chief constables of all 43 police forces in England and Wales to re-examine their investigations into group-based child sexual exploitation that resulted in a ‘no further action’ decision. As of 1 April, the Child Sexual Abuse Review Panel can review child sexual abuse cases that took place after 2013. Victims and survivors can now ask the panel to independently review their case if they have not already exercised their victims’ right to review.

I can also announce that we intend to expand the independent child trafficking guardian scheme across all of England and Wales, providing direct support to many more child victims of sexual exploitation and grooming that to date has only been available in selected areas. These measures will enable more victims and survivors to receive the truth, justice, improvements and accountability they deserve and put more vile perpetrators of this crime behind bars.

Much of this crucial activity builds on the vital work of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse that was undertaken between 2015 and 2022. Let me, on behalf of the whole House, again thank Professor Alexis Jay for chairing that seven-year national inquiry with such expertise, diligence and compassion. IICSA revealed the terrible suffering caused to many child sexual abuse victims, and the shameful failure of institutions to put the protection of children before the protection of their own reputations. The inquiry drew on the testimony of over 7,000 victims and survivors, and considered over 2 million pages of evidence. Its findings, culminating in the final report published in October 2022, were designed to better protect children from sexual abuse, and address the shortcomings that left them exposed to harm. The publication of that final report two and a half years ago should have been a landmark moment, but instead the victims and survivors were failed again. None of the inquiry’s recommendations were implemented or properly taken forward by the previous Government in the 20 months they had to do so.

As part of today’s progress update on our action on child sexual abuse, the Government are setting out a detailed update and timetable for the work that is under way on the IICSA recommendations. I can announce to the House that, to prioritise the protection of children and improve national oversight and consistency of child protection practice, this Government will establish a new child protection authority. Building on the national child safeguarding review panel, the child protection authority will address one of IICSA’s central recommendations by providing national leadership and learning on child protection and safeguarding. Work to expand the role of the panel will begin immediately, and we will consult on developing the new authority this year. We have also asked Ofsted, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services and the Care Quality Commission to conduct a joint thematic review of child abuse in family settings, starting this autumn.

The IICSA report recommended the introduction of a new mandatory duty to report—something that the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and I have all supported for more than a decade. In the Crime and Policing Bill we will now be taking forward a new mandatory duty to report child sexual abuse for individuals in England undertaking activity with children and, crucially, a new criminal offence of obstructing an individual from making a report under that duty. Mandatory reporting will create a culture of openness and honesty, rather than cover-ups and secrecy. It will empower professionals and volunteers to take prompt, decisive action to report sexual abuse. It will demonstrate to children and young people that if they come forward, they will be heard. Anyone who deliberately seeks to prevent someone from fulfilling their mandatory duty to report child sexual abuse will face the full force of the law.

Today’s update also sets out how the Government are supporting victims and survivors in accessing support and seeking justice. We are tasking the criminal justice joint inspectorates to carry out a targeted inspection of the experiences of victims of child sexual abuse in the criminal justice system. We are instructing the Information Commissioner’s Office to produce a code of practice on the retention of personal data relating to child sexual abuse. In some cases, where serious institutional failings contributed to the abuse, those institutions have provided financial redress schemes or compensation to victims and survivors who are affected. We continue to support those schemes as recognition by those institutions that they badly failed children in their care.

On the IICSA proposal for a wider national redress scheme for all victims and survivors of child sexual abuse in institutional settings, the scale of that proposal demands that it is considered in the context of the spending review later this year, and we will make further updates at that stage.

One crucial area where we want to make immediate progress is the provision of therapeutic services for victims and survivors of child sexual abuse. We will therefore bring forward proposals in the coming weeks to improve access to those services; further details will be set out following the spending review. Ahead of the spending review, I can announce that in this financial year the Home Office will double the funding it provides for national services, supporting adult survivors of child sexual abuse, and providing more help to those adults who are living with the trauma of the horrific abuse they suffered as children.

Finally, we want to speed up progress to make it easier for victims and survivors to get recompense directly from the institutions that failed them. We are therefore removing the three-year limitation period on victims and survivors bringing personal injury claims in the civil courts and shifting the burden of proof from survivors to defendants, thereby protecting victims from having to relive their trauma to get the compensation they are owed.

Today’s update, building on the measures that the Home Secretary announced in January, demonstrates this Government’s steadfast commitment to tackling child sexual abuse. The measures we are implementing will protect more children, find more criminals, and deliver support and justice to more victims and survivors. But this is not the endpoint; it is just the beginning. We will continue to drive forward reforms to protect more children from abhorrent abuse, and support more adult survivors of those traumatic crimes. As we pursue our safer streets mission, we will use every available lever to drive progress on these issues, across government and beyond.

I want to finish with a word for the victims and survivors. No one should go through what they did. While the failings of the past cannot be undone, we can, we must, and we will strain every sinew to prevent them from being repeated. I commend this statement to the House”.

19:32:00

My Lords, the issue we are debating is incredibly serious and we should always remember that, at the centre of this debate, are hundreds, if not thousands, of victims, and children at risk of becoming victims, of the horrific crime of child sexual abuse. It is vital to remember that the discussions we have on this issue should focus on justice for victims of sexual abuse, urgent action to prevent further abuse, and the steps we can take as a country to safeguard members of our community and communicate in no uncertain terms that we will never tolerate these crimes. The Statement delivered in the other place before the Easter Recess by the Safeguarding Minister has raised several questions. One point of concern held by many across both Houses is the decision to reject calls for a national statutory inquiry into rape gangs in favour of five local ones. The detail on these inquiries is vague. It is deeply concerning that, months after they were announced, we still know almost nothing about them, with only one having been announced. The Government’s decision to undertake numerous localised inquiries means there is a risk that the local authorities that presided over these crimes are not held to account, as they should be. In their Statement, the Government said that they would “adopt a flexible approach to support both full independent local inquiries and more bespoke work”. Certain local councils, such as Bradford, where the abuse was at its worst, are refusing to participate in local inquiries. How will the Government ensure that all local authorities, including those in Bradford, participate fully in these inquiries? We welcome that the Government have decided to continue our policy of a mandatory duty to report child sexual abuse. Children who are abused need to know that if they come forward, they will be heard. Adults that children trust, such as teachers and healthcare workers, have the capacity to act on behalf of victims to make sure that their abuse can be stopped and those responsible brought to justice. However, it is important to recognise that we need to support those adults who will hold these new responsibilities. By nature, the situations they will be helping to resolve will be highly emotional, stressful and dangerous. I therefore ask the Minister how the Government will make sure that those adults are supported in their important work of reporting child sexual abuse and how those adults, like the children they are supporting, can be sure that their reports will be taken seriously and their well-being supported. The national audit on group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse, led by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, was announced on 16 January. The Government gave assurances that the report would be concluded within three months. People across this country have had their faith in the system shaken by stories of this abuse. It has now been more than three months since the report was announced. I must therefore ask the Minister as a matter of urgency: when will the report be published? Can he please name a date on which the final report will be released in writing? Can the Government show that they are acting in good faith by producing this report as soon as possible? It is now overdue. Finally, I want to touch on the point of aggravating factors in some instances of abuse. It was disappointing that the Government did not engage properly with this issue in the debate that followed the Statement in the House of Commons. It is clear from the patterns of abuse we have observed, often connected with co-ordinated abuse undertaken by grooming gangs, that ethnic and religious factors play a key role in characterising the nature of these crimes and who the victims are. I therefore close by asking the Minister whether he accepts that, in many cases, these crimes were racially and religiously aggravated, and how, without a national inquiry, we can understand what part those factors played. Understanding why these crimes were committed, which groups are particularly at risk of abuse and the various factors that motivated abusers to perpetrate these abhorrent offences, is fundamental to making sure that our next steps to prevent further abuse are as effective as possible.

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Brinton should be speaking on this Statement on our behalf, but, unfortunately, she has been unwell and so cannot be with us. From these Benches, I begin by paying tribute to the victims and survivors of child sexual exploitation—individuals who, for far too long, were not only ignored but actively failed by the very institutions meant to protect them. Many were treated as offenders rather than as victims and retraumatised by police, social services and others in power. Their courage in continuing to demand justice, even after being silenced for years, is nothing short of remarkable. We welcome the Government’s Statement before Easter updating the House on their actions to tackle child sexual abuse and exploitation. It is right that we now see momentum after years of delay. The grooming gangs task force is making arrests and a national audit by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, is under way. These are important steps. But this update also highlights how much time has been lost. It has now been over two years since the final report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse was published, drawing on over 2 million pages of evidence and testimonies of more than 7,000 victims. Yet the previous Government failed to implement a single recommendation. That was a catastrophic failure, for which survivors have paid the price. We welcome the progress now being made on the independent inquiry’s key proposals, particularly the creation of a new child protection authority and the commitment to mandatory reporting. We also support the proposed criminal offence of obstructing someone from making a report, but how will that be implemented? Who will be held to account? Crucially, will this reporting duty extend to all relevant institutions —faith settings, private schools and voluntary groups—where abuse has so often been hidden? On mandatory reporting, while the Government now promise legislation through the Crime and Policing Bill, questions remain. The duty must be clear, enforceable and properly resourced. Professionals and volunteers need legal protection when they report, and we must see firm consequences when people deliberately obstruct such reports. Support for survivors also remains a concern. We welcome the commitment to double funding for national support services in this financial year, but this must be part of a longer-term plan. Survivors live with this trauma for life, and they deserve continuity of care, access to therapeutic support and a clear, properly funded path to justice and recompense. Therefore, we on these Benches were disappointed by the delay in progressing the national redress scheme recommended by the independent inquiry. The scale of this proposal is indeed significant, but so too is the suffering it seeks to address. I ask the Minister, why must survivors wait yet again until the spending review later this year? Surely, they have waited long enough. While we welcome steps to remove the limitation period for civil claims, we must be vigilant that the shift in burden of proof does not get lost in procedural detail. Victims must not have to endure fresh ordeals simply to secure the justice they were denied as children. So I ask the Minister, will all of the independent inquiry’s 20 recommendations be implemented in full? Will the newly proposed child protection authority serve not just as a symbolic body but as an authority empowered to enforce, investigate and hold failing institutions to account? Survivors have done their part. They spoke their truth, often at great personal cost. Now it is time for us to show that we are finally listening, and that their suffering was not in vain. We must ensure that this renewed energy leads not only to new laws and frameworks but to a culture that puts children’s safety before institutional reputation.

I am grateful to noble Lords for their comments on the Statement. I begin by wishing the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, well; I look forward to seeing her back in her place shortly. The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, is right: this is a very serious issue. There are some 500,000 victims of child sexual abuse each year, and that is an enormous number of victims who carry that with them for a considerable time. The duty of government is to ensure that we protect those victims, that we put in place preventive measures where possible, and that we hold to account people who have committed those crimes. I hope that the Government’s response to date has shown that this is the direction of travel we are trying to undertake. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, that this is a positive series of actions after a period of delay, for which I do not hold the shadow Minister accountable but which I think needs to be reflected upon. We have tried to take strong action since 4 July last year. That has been indicated by the response to the IICSA recommendations, of which we have accepted the bulk. We have also put in place mandatory reporting measures and other measures in the Crime and Policing Bill, which the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, mentioned. We have put in place a response to the grooming gangs issue, which we were planning to do before Christmas but which was speeded on by events. I think it has been a positive response. To the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, one of the responses that we have put in place is the fund of £5 million for local authorities, wherever they may be, to bid against that. We have established a framework for those bids to ensure that authorities can undertake inquiries or provide support for victims in their local area. The noble Lord will know that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary indicated in January that Bradford would be a priority for that expenditure, but all local authorities will shortly be able to bid against that fund. That, I hope, will help to put in place some preventive measures in areas where local authorities feel that they have failed in their duty to date, or where they need further support or local inquiries accordingly. We have put in place the mandatory reporting measures as well as the measures that the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, mentioned, in relation to support for victims. For example, there is now therapeutic support for the lifelong impacts of child sexual abuse, and we are committed to improving victim-centred therapeutic support as a whole. We have also undertaken particular support to ensure that the child sexual abuse review panel can now look at closed cases, even if they happened after 2013, which I hope the noble Lord, Lord Davies, will welcome. The report from the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, which has been mentioned, was a three-month report which will be reporting shortly. I cannot give the noble Lord a date as yet, but I hope that he will understand that, when we said we wanted a short, sharp report from the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, we meant an early, quick review of existing evidence on grooming gangs. This point was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, as well. That will be brought forward in due course, in very short order, and I look forward to debating and discussing the outcome of that. It will be difficult for all involved, but it will be an important contribution. There is also the independent review of progress on the policing response to grooming gangs by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, which touches on both Front Bench points. That is a very important issue. As I have mentioned, we have also put in place the victim-centred £5 million fund. It is right and proper that we focus on some of the issues around grooming gangs and, as the noble Lord mentioned, the reasons why they happened. However, I do not wish to focus just on ethnicity; I wish to ensure that individuals who commit crimes are brought and held to account, whatever their ethnicity. I also say to the noble Lord, and I hope we share common ground on this, that we should not use the issue of political correctness to avoid attacking and challenging areas where there have been issues of concern raised about grooming gangs. I would like to focus particularly on the fact that offenders must be pursued and tracked down whatever their race, gender, sexuality or religion, because offenders are offenders. The grooming gang issue has raised a number of other issues that need to be addressed, which is what we are trying to do with the measures we have brought forward. However, it is important that we do not just say that this happens in only one community, because it does not. Therefore, we need to hold all individuals to account for those issues. I am trying to cover all the points that were mentioned. The criminal offences we have put in the police and crime Bill are important. We will discuss those in this House in June or July—certainly before the summer. That also gives power for the Home Office’s responsibilities on the IICSA report. If noble Lords look at the nine months since 4 July —which is all that I can account for—they will see that we have implemented and put on the agenda legislation on IICSA responsibilities, established the fund, given powers to police to examine previously uncovered areas of abuse, given victims the right to challenge for the reopening of cases and put in place support for local authorities to undertake their own inquiries. We could certainly have a national inquiry, as the noble Lord has mentioned, but this Government’s judgment is that we know what the problem is. We have had seven years of the IICSA report, leading to recommendations, and we have local challenges in certain areas that we need to examine. The way forward is to look at how to implement action on the recommendations, rather than to set up an inquiry that would last still longer and probably come to the same conclusions we can make now, having had the IICSA inquiry before. That is the judgment of government. I sense that the noble Lord, Lord Davies, disagrees with that, but I hope that the answers I have given to both him and the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, are helpful. I will look in detail at Hansard to see whether I have missed any issues; if I have, I will respond in due course.

19:49:00

My Lords, I had the duty to give evidence to IICSA while I was a Minister in the Department for Education, so I am grateful for the Government’s action on mandatory reporting. I am grateful to see in this Statement that the recommendation for a child protection authority is being taken forward and note that it will be sent out to consultation. I would be grateful to know from the Minister whether it is envisaged that that authority would deal with some of the gaps in DBS checks that still exist. For instance, as far as I understand it, if you are a private tutor not employed by a company, you cannot get a DBS check. I would also be grateful to know whether, as the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, asked, there will be broad enough jurisdiction over charities and, in particular, faith institutions—which may be struggling with their safeguarding investigations—so that the authority would be authorised to intervene in those charities within the Church of England. There are many smaller charities with some kind of oversight function over faith institutions where there are vulnerabilities preventing them doing those investigations swiftly. Does the Minister envisage that the child protection authority would have that jurisdiction?

I am grateful for the work that the noble Baroness did on this issue while in government. The new child protection authority will be established to prioritise vulnerable children by making the child protection system clearer and more unified and by ensuring that there are ongoing improvements. It will try to achieve the points that the noble Baroness mentioned. By the end of this year—which I know seems like a long time to noble Lords and Baronesses—we will consult on how we establish the child protection authority and what its functions and responsibilities will be in more detail. We have responded to the IICSA recommendation to establish the authority, and therefore it will be done. However, it is important that we consult widely on what it is, what its powers are and what areas it covers, so I cannot pre-empt that in answering the points that the noble Baroness made today. There will in due course be opportunities for full consultation and, ultimately, for this House to determine, with the House of Commons, the format and responsibilities of that body.

My Lords, this problem has been going on for decades. I am really disappointed that my party did not do enough when we were in government, but those victims are not being well served. Having a national inquiry is absolutely a must. There are many areas that are still not being looked at with the sort of rigour that we should be looking at them with, and my noble friend Lady Berridge mentioned the example of charities. At the end of it, there are big cultural issues in some communities that we need to address, but we also need to address why institutions were not coming forward to make sure that there was no favour against the victims. I think that victims will feel incredibly let down if we do not give them a rigorous inquiry. I do not have much faith in local inquiries; I come from a city where these issues have been going on for decades. I hope that the Minister can take on board that some of us are really concerned about places that are not checked regularly, where this sort of behaviour is still going on, under the protection of saying, “Well, we did not quite get it because we did not understand the culture”—and that is regardless of the faith or ethnicity involved.

I hope that the noble Baroness will bear with me. I understand that there is a case to be made for a national inquiry, but the view that the Government have taken is that the IICSA recommendations, made over seven years—which were put to the previous Government and are now being implemented over the next 12 months by this Government —are the basis of what would come out of any national inquiry. There are issues to address, and we have tried to ensure that there is an independent review of the policing response in the areas that the noble Baroness has mentioned. If there are issues about the culture, or how those charges or investigations took place, they will be looked at. There is the pot of money that we put aside for local authorities to determine a local response, if they wish, and they can apply for that. We are putting in place a framework that will made be public very shortly. We are trying to ensure that the victims, which the noble Baroness rightly put at the heart of her contribution to the House, are served well, which is why we want to ensure that we do not drag out, over a long period, things that we can do now. The review of the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, will report shortly with immediate responses about what happened in certain local authority areas; undoubtedly, it will be painful reading and will create further debate. There will be the police and inspectorate reports on the current positions that we have talked about to date. The legislation currently before the House of Commons, on the recommendations that will come forward shortly, will put in place, by the end of this year, a range of measures that will, I hope, prevent the creation of future victims. I understand why both the noble Baroness and her Front Bench have called for a national inquiry, but I believe that the response needs to be made now. That is why we are trying to put some energy—through my ministerial colleagues in the House of Commons—into this area to deliver some urgent outcomes. We are always open to further lessons. This is not the end of a process; it is an ongoing process. The key thing should be to prevent future victims, to prevent systematic abuse and to hold those people who have abused to account.

My Lords, the Minister emphasised the importance of now, but I want to emphasise that these are not historic cases of grooming gang abuse. If you look, you will see that the rape and systematic sexual abuse of young women and girls is still happening. We sometimes talk about it as though it was in the past, but it is happening now. That is why some of us get frustrated at the rather slow response. The Minister keeps saying—this was also said in the other place—that there is a £5 million fund that councils can apply for, as though it is something they would want to apply for. The frustration is that the councils do not want to apply for the money because they are the people who are being accused of covering up the abuse in the first place. So they are not exactly queuing up and saying, “Give me some money, so I can look into myself”. That is why so many of the victims, from Rochdale, Bradford, Huddersfield, Oxford and so on, feel so frustrated: they feel like they are banging their heads against a brick wall. Although I have reservations about mandatory reporting, in the instances of the grooming gangs, reports were made. People knew about it. The reports were made to people in social services, education and so on, but they were ignored. They were covered up and people looked the other way. When the Minister says that we have immediate solutions such as mandatory reporting or a £5 million fund, it just sounds like he is talking about a different issue. I will make one final point. These are gangs, not just arbitrary individuals. With child abuse in the Church, we did not shy away from recognising specific child abuse scandals, but it did not mean that I then thought that everybody in the Church of England or every Catholic was an abuser. We should not shy away from the particular ethnicity and religion of these gangs now, because it does not mean we are saying that all people of that religion or ethnicity are paedophiles or rapists—of course not. Do not let us be frightened to say the truth.

I am grateful for the noble Baroness’s contribution, as ever. Since the election, a new child sexual abuse police performance framework has been developed. We have put in place legislation, which will be before this House shortly, on online offending, abuse and grooming enabled by artificial intelligence. We have put in place new performance powers for Border Force to detect digitally held child sex abuse material at the border. We are putting new restrictions on sex offenders changing their names. We are increasing investment in law enforcement capability through police undercover online networks and tackling organised exploitation programmes. Those measures are before the House now. The Government have had to both develop that at policy level and put it into legislation and are now taking those matters through both Houses of Parliament. Slow though it might seem, in my experience of nearly 14 years as a Minister over two sets of Governments, it is actually quite a speedy process. By the end of this year, we should have legislation in place to deal with a whole range of issues that are currently being recommended to us and are important areas which will help prevent abuse and support victims. The noble Baroness mentions mandatory reporting. Yes, it is there and, yes, it was ignored. The difference now is that, in the legislation before the House of Commons which will soon be before this House, there will be professional sanctions against those who fail to undertake mandatory reporting. That is not the case currently, and that is why we are strengthening the regime on mandatory reporting to try to ensure that we beef it up to hold people to account if they fail to report incidences of sexual abuse that come before them. The noble Baroness is right that we should not ignore where abuses are undertaken by particular ethnic minorities, but the simple point that I would make is that we should tackle the sexual abuse of children wherever it comes from. If there are particular lessons to be learned from the grooming gangs issue, that is what the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, will bring to us very shortly, that is what the police are looking at now through a historical reassessment of the cases and that is what we have asked HMIC to examine as well. I simply say to the noble Baroness that there are things that she thinks may not be happening, but I hope she can trust us that there are positive actions being taken by the Government on these issues and there will be further reports back and legislation in this House during the course of the next few months.

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to have this short session this evening. I also gave evidence at IICSA in person: I was an expert witness on Anglican religious communities, because that was one of the guises in which Bishop Peter Ball had justified his abuse. I want to pick up on mandatory reporting, which has been referred to already. For some in the Church of England, and for many in the Roman Catholic Church and some other churches as well, the tradition of the seal of the confessional has been honoured for many centuries and established in canon law in this land. There is an arguable case that the seal allows somebody—and it is more likely to be a victim or witness who comes to the confessional—to make a kind of protected disclosure, which then often would lead to them being helped to make a more public disclosure and allow a perpetrator to be taken to justice. I hope there will be careful discussions with religious bodies as to exactly where the seal of the confessional will fit in with this; I know my Catholic colleagues will particularly be concerned around that. We want what will produce the best safeguarding, but it is not simply that mandatory reporting or getting rid of the seal of the confessional will get better reporting at the end of the day. On redress, I am vice chair of the Church of England redress board. We are setting up our own scheme because we just could not be bothered to wait for the IICSA recommendation on redress to come into force. But we also think it is important that we are the ones who will be paying out the money where we did wrong to somebody—whether it was in the original abuse, in colluding with a cover-up or in failing to take a disclosure seriously. I would appreciate the Minister’s comments on whether, if we do have a national redress scheme, there will be some effort to recoup the costs from the bodies that were responsible for the abuse, or covering up the abuse, in the first instance, rather than this simply being something that the taxpayer ends up picking up.

I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate for his approach to the issue. I hope I can reassure him that I have already had representations from churches, and I have received at the Home Office a delegation from a cross-religious group to discuss the very issue that he has mentioned about the relationship between the priest or vicar and the individual. I want to explore that and I have given a commitment to discuss that further with those from the churches who made contact with me, and we have had submissions on that. I cannot give him definitive, final positions today, but I hope that we can debate this during the course of the passage of the Bill in this House. I recognise that the issue of a redress scheme is extremely important. I recognise that victims and survivors will probably be very disappointed that the Government are not yet able to commit to a redress scheme. For those who know the internal workings of government, there is a spending review in the current climate and we have to work through that spending review. I cannot give a commitment today on that issue, but I hope that the right reverend Prelate knows that it is certainly a recommendation to government, and we will examine and respond in due course.

My Lords, I think that nothing short of an independent public inquiry should be required, but I would just like to touch on the role we play in the Department for Education, for example, because most of these victims were young children from the ages of 11 to even 13 or 14, and I think this is where schools come into play. Unfortunately, I have recently been made aware that a council-funded sex education presentation shown in schools to young under-age children told them how to safely choke their girlfriends during sex, saying it must always be done with consent and suggesting that strangulation can be done safely, which of course it cannot. Official data shows an increase in reported cases for adults, which also link strangulation to cases of sexual assault, rape and even murder. Despite a new non-fatal strangulation offence being introduced in England and Wales in June 2022 by the previous Government, reflecting the dangers, this Act is clearly being ignored by those adults pushing this agenda who are literally breaking the law. Does the Minister and his colleague the Secretary of State for Education support these presentations being given in schools—which I hope they do not? Does he agree with me that those responsible, who knowingly have broken and are breaking the law, should be immediately removed from their posts and reported to the police?

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for drawing that issue to my attention. I hope she will understand that I am a Home Office Minister and have not seen, nor have I been given sight of, the issues that she has mentioned, but I am very happy to draw her comments today to the attention both of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and of the Minister for Education in this House, so that they are aware of that. I am sure that they will follow up with the noble Baroness to elicit details privately, outside of the Chamber, of the concerns that she has raised so they can examine them in detail. That may not satisfy the noble Baroness today, but, not having seen the material—it sounds horrendous —I cannot comment in detail on it, but I will make sure that it is referred to those who can.

20:07:00

Sitting suspended.