Lord Farmer (Con)

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Polak in his Amendment 7. It is now rightly impossible for any public discussion of the Epstein files and grooming gangs—or rather child rape gangs—not to put victims front and centre. About a year ago, we were discussing child rape gangs in this House, and I flagged to the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, how the recent tragic news of the death of Virginia Guiffre demonstrated the long-term effects of child sexual abuse. I declared at that time my interest that my sister had suffered serious sexual abuse as a young girl and, thereafter, for the rest of her life, suffered long-term depressive and self-destructive effects. I mention that again simply to explain why I have signed the amendment. We can say that victims should be at the forefront but, without taking action, this could sound very much like virtue signalling. I understand, as my noble friend Lord Polak has highlighted, that specialist domestic abuse and other trauma-focused services, particularly those supporting child victims of sexual abuse, have very high waiting lists, and that where counsellors with the necessary expertise are practising, funding is always inadequate to the need. I suspect that, even if sufficiently high levels of money were forthcoming, workforce shortages would become even more apparent. Have the Government done a needs analysis that would identify prevalence, the scale of the staff shortfall, how many more specialists are needed, how they could be trained and how potential candidates could be identified? Prevalence certainly appears very high. Could all professionals interacting with victims, including teachers, nurses, GPs, and police and prison officers, be given appropriate training in trauma-informed practice so that there was more of a whole-society approach? I understand that this is straying a little from my noble friend Lord Polak’s amendment, but it gives us the opportunity to hear from the Government how they will put the victims of perpetrators such as Epstein and child rape gangs at the forefront, as they have promised to do.