Sir Bernard Jenkin

Sir Bernard Jenkin

Conservative — Harwich and North Essex

Speaking in the House of Commons on 16 January 2025

Debate

Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

Contribution

The House should be generous towards the Home Secretary, as she has travelled a long way since last week by recognising that there is a requirement for far more inquiries into the towns affected, and we should thank her for that. However, one crucial thing still lacking from her statement today is whether these new inquiries will have the power to summon witnesses and require the production of papers. Only the Home Secretary—or a Secretary of State or Minister—can set up a statutory inquiry. In fact, the Minister specifying an inquiry could set the terms of reference, decide whether it should concentrate on certain towns, set the timeframe and set the budget. She could appoint as many people as she wants to the panel so that different parts of the inquiry could run in different parts of the country concurrently. Is she really ruling out that any of these inquiries should be statutory inquiries? Victims have the real freedom to speak out only in this Parliament, as we have just movingly heard, or in a statutory inquiry, where they are legally immune from consequences for anything they say. Why cannot she provide the victims with those protections?

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