Child Exploitation in Oxfordshire — House of Lords, 2015-03-03
Topic: Law and Crime
John Nash (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat, in the form of a Statement, the Answer given by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education to an Urgent Question in another place earlier today concerning a serious case review of child sexual exploitation in Oxfordshire. The Statement is as follows: "No child should have to suffer what the victims of child sexual exploitation in Oxfordshire have suffered. The serious case review published today by Oxfordshire Safeguarding Children Board is an indictment of the failure of front-line workers to protect extremely vulnerable young people over a number of years. Reading the details of what happened to them has been truly sickening. The serious case review makes clear that numerous opportunities to intervene to protect these girls were missed, as police and social workers failed to look beyond what they saw as troubled teenagers, to the frightened child within I welcome the publication of the serious case review. It is only by publishing such in-depth accounts of what happened, what went wrong and why, that children’s social care systems locally and nationally can address the failings that have betrayed some of our most vulnerable children. That is why the Government have insisted that serious case reviews be published and in full. The Minister for Children and Families has also written today, with Ministers from the Home Office and the Department of Health, to request from Oxfordshire Safeguarding Children Board a further assessment of the progress being made, and we will send an expert in CSE to support it in this month Sadly, Oxfordshire was not alone in failing to address the dangers of CSE. We now know from the report of Professor Alexis Jay and Louise Casey on Rotherham, and Ann Coffey’s report on Manchester, that child sexual exploitation has been a scourge in many communities around the country This Government have been determined to do everything in their power to tackle CSE. That is why, today, we are publishing an action plan setting out the action we have already taken to strengthen our approach to safeguarding children from sexual exploitation, and the further steps we think are necessary to address the culture of denial, improve joint working, stop offenders, support victims and strengthen accountability and leadership. We are setting up a national centre of expertise in tackling CSE to support local areas around the country. There will be a new whistleblowing portal so that anyone can report concerns about CSE. We have prioritised CSE as a national threat so that police forces will now be under a duty to collaborate across force boundaries. We will consult on extending the criminal offence of wilful neglect to children’s social care, education professionals and elected members This afternoon, I will join the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and other Secretaries of State in Downing Street to discuss with local and police leaders how we will collectively take forward the actions set out in today’s plan. The experiences of the children set out in this serious case review should never have happened. We are determined to do everything in our power to stamp out this horrific abuse and to bring perpetrators to justice" That concludes the Statement.