Child Abuse Allegations (Police Resources) — House of Commons, 2015-10-30
Topic: Law and Crime
Helen Elizabeth Hayes (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend makes a very important point about the need for police investigations to be resourced properly. The survivor needs proper support and, in cases where the public sector has played a role, local authority resources should be made available so that they can go through archive records to find all the available evidence and, as my hon. Friend suggests, to investigate with modern eyes the wrongs that were perpetrated in the past My hon. Friend and I recently met senior police officers who are responsible for Operation Trinity—the investigation into historical abuse in Lambeth—and the wider police investigations on historical abuse. We were particularly concerned to hear about the resources available to the police. Operation Trinity has only a handful of officers working on it in a dedicated way, and there are 200 survivors of Shirley Oaks alone. As a consequence of the Goddard inquiry, tens of thousands of new allegations of abuse are expected across the country. That inquiry is already under way, and the first truth pilot—the inquiry work stream that enables survivors to give their evidence—started last week Senior Met officers told me that they are recruiting additional police officers to Operation Trinity. At the time we met, however, the resourcing plan had not been signed off, and it was not clear to me which parts of the Metropolitan police they would be drawn from or what additional specialist training they would receive This is at a time when the police are facing unprecedented cuts. Across the country as a whole, 17,000 police officers have been cut since 2010, and it is estimated that between 22,000 and 30,000 more will be cut following the comprehensive spending review. In London, we are set to lose all our police community support officers and between 5,000 and 8,000 police officers. These are not small cuts that can be accommodated through efficiency savings; they will have a fundamental impact on policing. I am very concerned that, at a time when the police are facing such significant cuts and a process is under way that will prompt many more survivors to come forward, opening up their pain and trauma as they do so, there is not currently a credible plan for resourcing the police investigations A further concern is that, although much of the resource for investigations into abuse that took place in the past has focused on London, it is clearly a national issue. Links have been drawn between abuse in children’s homes in Lambeth and locations in Wales and elsewhere. Understanding these connections also presents resourcing challenges. The police do not currently have fit-for-purpose IT infrastructure to enable them fully to evaluate all the information that is gathered and to join up investigations in different parts of the country The abuse of children that took place in the past is a national scandal—a national issue—and it demands a national response. It is not sufficient for the police and councils, both of which are experiencing among the greatest cuts of any part of the public sector, to have to find the resources from their mainstream funding to investigate allegations and support survivors. That is simply not a good enough response. The recent consultation on police funding arrangements made no suggestion that the need to investigate historical incidents should be a factor in considering the basis on which funding is allocated, and nor should it be. The need to investigate historical abuse is unique and extraordinary, and it should be treated as such. I am therefore asking the Home Secretary to recognise historical abuse as an extraordinary national issue that demands proper resources on a national scale so that we can understand what happened in full and provide the compassion, understanding and, ultimately, justice for survivors of this shameful period in our history The resource to investigate historical abuse should be a separate line in the comprehensive spending review, over and above the resources for individual police forces and, indeed, local authorities. It should include provision for specialist training, in relation to both survivors and investigating past events. It should provide for the co-ordination of investigations and fit-for-purpose IT facilities so that links can be drawn among the abuses that occurred in different areas of the country. I hope that the Home Secretary and the Minister will agree with me that we owe it to the survivors of child abuse to ensure that the investigation into the dreadful crimes committed against them is properly resourced.