Contribution
I thank the Minister for the Statement. From these Benches I also thank the Government for the progress that is finally being made on the acceptance of the recommendations from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. The victims—not just victims of criminal exploitation and grooming in gangs but all the victims covered in IICSA—were ignored at every level for far too many years, except by a small number of people, including women and including Jess Phillips, now a Minister, whose work has been absolutely outstanding in this area. Even so, it has taken us many years to get to this point where we can actually formally move forward. We can move forward, but many of the victims’ lives are still affected—not just then but now—and many are feeling victimised again because of the debate currently going on in the wider world.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, asked again for a new inquiry—I recognise that he and his colleagues are doing that. I sat in this Chamber on 24 October 2022 when the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, was the Minister responding to the publication of the report. The words the Government said at that point led one to believe that things would move ahead with speed and that most, if not all, of the recommendations would be accepted and implemented at speed. That has not been the case. It may be only two years on, but it has been very slow. The only recommendation that I think has been implemented is on the toolkit, which is a helpful practical tool—but none the less it is not enough.
From these Benches I wonder whether, given the tone of the debate at the moment, it would be helpful for the Government to publish a list of all the inquiries that have happened, not just IICSA but also in relation to children being groomed in towns and cities around the country, as well as the inquiries that the inspectorate of policing has held—at least two—along with links to them so that we, the public, can check them, in addition to the recommendations and action plans. Some of those were published some years ago—Telford in particular—and it might be helpful if the Government could have a brief look at the reviews of those action plans, ask people involved in them to mark progress, and re-energise those issues that require more work. Are the Government planning such a move? It might be salutary, not just for the Government but for everyone.
During Questions earlier today I spoke about one of the issues I was utterly confused about: the IICSA recommendation on providing mandatory aggravating factor sentencing when a child was exploited—that is, controlled, coerced, manipulated or pushed into sexual activity by two or more people. That is exactly the territory of the gangs that we have been hearing about in the past few days. I am concerned that the written response from the previous Government was very clear that it absolutely did not need to happen—they absolutely refused to do it. Yet now they are saying that it must be done. In fact, Robert Jenrick MP has gone further and said there should be a mandatory life sentence, which is a bit of a jump from an aggravating factor in sentencing. I hope the Government move speedily ahead with the aggravating factor in sentencing, because that will send a very clear message about the unacceptability of this sort of crime by the communities. The focus that many of us have also had is not on the perpetrators but on the failure of the public services, which is why I am particularly keen to see whether there is any further information from the inspectorate of policing on the recommendations it has made to see whether they have been picked up in further inspections.
Many noble Lords will know that I have a particular interest, as does my noble friend Lady Walmsley, in mandatory reporting. Recommendation 13 in IICSA on mandatory reporting was not the standard mandatory reporting style that has been accepted by scores of countries, including some states in America, Canada and Australia, where it has worked extremely well.
The most important thing about this model of mandatory reporting that has been adopted abroad is that it entirely changes the culture in every organisation working with children to think safeguarding because it is safe to report it, and it is only ever used as a criminal response where there has been deliberate negligence by somebody not to report. Interestingly, it has also changed the methods of training on safeguarding for people who need it. I hope that the Government will consider the Private Member’s Bill from the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, which has its Second Reading a week on Friday, because it reflects the international model of mandatory reporting. I highly commend that to the Government.
In summary, I hope that the Government will be able to give us a timetable on which of the recommendations might take slightly longer to implement than others. The Minister may be able to give us an indication today. He made a reference in the Question earlier today about concerns expressed by another noble Lord on the lack of recompense. Can he outline the current thoughts on the timescale for that recompense to be available to victims?