Mr Jonathan Brash

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Siobhain. I want to begin by putting on the record my thanks to the 651 constituents in Hartlepool who signed the petition. They are right to demand greater transparency and accountability from the institutions responsible for protecting children. I also thank the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) for opening the debate in such a measured way. Let me be absolutely clear: child sexual exploitation is one of the most vile, destructive and unforgivable crimes imaginable. It destroys lives, shatters childhoods and leaves scars that never heal. It is a crime that demands from all of us the strongest possible response. That word “unforgivable” is important. I make no apology for saying this, both as a Member of this place and as a dad: for those convicted of the rape of a child, no punishment is too harsh. They should be chemically castrated, they should be given hard labour, and they should never be allowed to see another free day for the rest of their, I hope, very miserable lives. There should be no ambiguity and no softness when it comes to protecting our children. I support wholeheartedly the intent of the petition: transparency, accountability and truth. Where facts are missing, speculation—sometimes fostered by malign actors—fills the gap, and when trust in institutions breaks down, it is ordinary people and, most importantly, victims who suffer. As we have heard, sunlight is the great disinfectant. It matters. The public have a right to know the full picture of crime in their communities and how we intend to deal with it. Of course there are practical challenges. As Baroness Casey has highlighted, some categories, such as religion, depend on self-declaration and, on that basis, may not always be particularly reliable. But those challenges are not a reason for inaction. They are a reason for getting the systems right, not for avoiding the issue altogether. Let me make a second point very clear: this debate must be about victims, not about political point scoring, and not about narrowing or distorting the problem. Analysis by the police showed that 115,000 children were victims of sexual abuse in 2023. The child sexual exploitation taskforce identified 4,228 group-based offences in that same year, of which 1,125 were cases of family abuse and 717 were sexual exploitation cases, including offences perpetrated by grooming gangs. Even if we accept that not all crimes will be recorded, not all data will be accurate and many crimes will remain hidden, there is simply no doubt what these figures reveal: group-based abuse is real and must be tackled without fear or favour. The figures also show something broader and far more uncomfortable: this abuse takes many forms and happens in many settings. The most common offenders are not organised networks; tragically, they are family members, trusted adults, friends of the family, neighbours, acquaintances and, in a growing number of cases, peers—children themselves, under the age of 18. These are hard truths, but they are essential truths if we are serious about prevention. That is why we cannot afford a selective focus. Every victim matters, every offender must be pursued, and every form of abuse must be confronted with equal seriousness. It is true, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), that investigations of grooming gangs have identified instances where offenders come disproportionately from an ethnic minority background. That must be investigated and confronted without fear or favour wherever it occurs. I trust that the independent inquiry, which in my view was set up too slowly, albeit much faster than under previous Administrations, will do that. Anyone found to be complicit in not dealing with these appalling crimes should be brought to justice with the severity of punishment they deserve.