Yvette Cooper

Yvette Cooper

Labour — Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley

Speaking in the House of Commons on 16 June 2025

Debate

Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report

Contribution

I say to the hon. Member that child sexual exploitation and abuse are some of the most vile crimes that our country faces. What Baroness Casey’s report sets out in some detail, over 17 pages, is that there has been report after report after review after review but so many of the recommendations were never implemented, so concerns that were raised at the time of the Rotherham inquiry about issues around ethnicity, lack of information-sharing and lack of protection for children were simply not acted on. Baroness Casey herself says: “If we’d got this right years ago—seeing these girls as children raped rather than ‘wayward teenagers’…then I doubt we’d be in this place now.” The hon. Member was a member of the previous Government, who failed to do that. I hope that he agrees that successive Governments and agencies across the country have failed to act. We need to ensure that there is a proper independent inquiry, as well as, most crucially of all, action by police in the operations that will bring perpetrators to justice and put them behind bars.

More from Yvette Cooper

Other recent Hansard contributions by the same speaker.

About Hansard

Hansard is the official verbatim record of proceedings in the UK Parliament. Every word spoken in the Commons and Lords is recorded and published — this page is a single contribution from that record.

For Yvette Cooper's full parliamentary record including voting history, expenses and all other contributions, see the Yvette Cooper report card.