Contribution
With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will now make a statement regarding the sickening case of child sexual abuse at a nursery in Camden. Before I go further, I want to remind the House that a live police investigation is still under way and that the perpetrator is awaiting sentencing.
All Members and people across our country will wish to join me in expressing our horror at hearing of these appalling crimes. A 45-year-old British man, Vincent Chan, has pleaded guilty to 26 offences, which include multiple counts of sexual assault on a child by penetration, assault of a child by touching, and taking and making indecent photographs of a child, including category A images depicting the most serious abuse. He was employed by a nursery setting in Camden between June 2017 and May 2024. On 8 September 2025, he was arrested after evidence was uncovered on devices seized in a previous police investigation and was charged with the 26 offences in question on 9 September. Yesterday, Vincent Chan entered a plea of guilty, and sentencing will take place on 23 January.
In the meantime, the Metropolitan police have met families of all the children they have identified as victims of contact offences. In addition, the Met has written to the other families whose children attended the setting in question while the individual worked there to reassure them that where there is evidence of offences, the affected families have been contacted. Local children’s social care services are providing emotional and practical support to families and signposting them to specialist support services.
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has been commissioned to set up a bespoke helpline as the first point of contact for anyone affected by these horrific acts. Details of the helpline can be found in communications from Camden council and the Metropolitan police. Specialist support is available for victims from the NSPCC helpline. People affected can be supported directly or referred to the right source of support to meet their needs, and the Government have provided funding to ensure there is sufficient capacity to support families.
Following a notification of a serious incident, the police, the integrated care board and the local authority completed a rapid review to establish the facts. That meant setting out a clear timeline of the events leading up to the incidents, the incidents themselves, the roles played by different agencies, and the safety of children at the nursery at each stage. Those initial findings are now being worked through quickly, but I can confirm to the House that the rapid review has concluded that a full local child safeguarding practice review is warranted. That wider review is being set up immediately. I am clear that it must shine the strongest possible light on these horrifying incidents, and that we must learn every lesson we can to make sure that crimes like this are guarded against at every step and every stage. It is critical that local safeguarding partners can continue their investigations, but I will work closely with them, with the child safeguarding practice review panel and its chair Sir David Holmes, and with Home Office colleagues to make absolutely sure that we have the most robust safeguards possible in place.
We must do everything in our power to protect children. I take my responsibilities as Secretary of State for not simply Education, but children, with the utmost seriousness. However, preventing cases like these requires everyone to believe in, and act on, the fundamental principle that safeguarding is everyone’s business. It is the duty of all of us right across our society to report abuse if we see it, and if we see or hear something that feels wrong, to question and challenge it. All of us owe it to our children to do the right thing. Keeping children safe is one of the most important duties of any society, and I thank our early years staff and wider children’s services workforce—those who work so hard, day in and day out, to give the children of this country the best start in life. I know that all committed early years and children’s services professionals will be just as horrified as we all are to hear about what has taken place, and just as distressed to think that something like this could happen in a place that should have been dedicated to keeping children safe and helping them thrive.
The defendant has now pleaded guilty to these sickening crimes and will be sentenced, but my thoughts this afternoon are not on him; they are with all the child victims of these vile and abhorrent crimes and their families, who are now trying to recover from the suffering and pain he has caused. My promise to them through these darkest of days, and my promise to Members in the Chamber today and to families across the country, is that not only will justice be served, but we will strengthen the ways in which we keep children safe. We will root out abuse wherever it hides, and we will never stop working to rid our society of this evil. I commend this statement to the House.