Yvette Cooper’s central reform to tackle the child sexual grooming scandal is likely to backfire, a former children’s minister has warned.
In an article for The Telegraph, Tim Loughton, who is also a former member of the home affairs committee, said the proposed law requiring mandatory reporting of child abuse could end up overwhelming police and other agencies with “low-level or outright vexatious” allegations.
The proposal was announced last week by the Home Secretary as Sir Keir Starmer’s Government sought to head off Tory demands for a national inquiry into grooming scandals, maintaining victims wanted active measures rather than more investigations.
Under the plans to be brought forward as part of Sir Keir’s crime and policing bill, anyone who works with children, including teachers, social care workers and NHS staff, and who fails to report child sexual abuse could face prosecution.
The change was recommended by Prof Alexis Jay as part of the national inquiry she chaired into child sexual abuse.
Those who fail to report child abuse will be banned from working with children, while those found to have actively prevented others from reporting it, or who have covered up the crime, will face up to seven years in jail.
Mr Loughton, who as children’s minister from 2010 to 2012 was responsible for setting up the UK’s first comprehensive child sexual exploitation strategy, says mandatory reporting could actually prove “detrimental.”
“Experiences in other countries shows that it leads to an undermining of professionals who then flood the safeguarding system with low level or outright vexatious reports to cover backs, diverting resources from serious cases,” he said.
In Victoria, Australia, where mandatory reporting was introduced, the number of notifications investigated by social services dropped from 92 per cent before its introduction to 40 per cent afterwards. In New South Wales, 79 per cent of reports of child abuse were unsubstantiated.
Research from the USA suggests that mandatory reporting resulted in a sharp decline in offenders’ revelations of child sexual abuse. With the loss of confidentiality and the certainty of a report being made to the police and social services, offenders no longer confided in their health and social care professionals.
As a result, child abuse was said to have been driven further underground, as offenders and potential perpetrators could not seek help without risking prosecution.
Mandatory reporting was one of 20 recommendations by Professor Jay’s independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (ICSA), which have largely not been implemented but which Labour has committed to introduce as early as possible.
Mr Loughton argues, however, that they will have “zero relevance” to tackling the sexual grooming of vulnerable teenagers by British Pakistani gangs.
He said ICSA had failed to “delve deeply” into the specific phenomenon of British Pakistani grooming gangs, which was “disappointing”, and the reason why a further inquiry was necessary.
“In some respects, ICSA has proved counterproductive as it has been an excuse for delaying action until its long drawn-out work was completed,” said Mr Loughton.
‘Tightly focused’ inquiry is needed
He said the shortcomings of ICSA made the case for a “short and tightly focused” inquiry now into why abuse by British Pakistani grooming gangs was still such a disproportionate feature of child sexual exploitation (CSE).
Data published on Friday by police show that Britons of Pakistani origin are between two and four times more likely than the general population to be involved in offences of child sexual grooming.
Mr Loughton says a new inquiry would establish which police forces and agencies have done most to prosecute and prevent such crimes, and whether better enforcement is needed.
“It mustn’t cost another £186 million and it should be set up quickly and report within a year, giving plenty of time to implement those recommendations from ICSA which might actually be helpful in tackling the vast majority of CSE, not just the preserve of rapists who happen to be of British Pakistani origin,” he said.
Grooming gangs scandal demands a new inquiry
ByTim Loughton
Amidst the snow and floods, the new year has also brought with it the revelation that apparently we have lots of experts on child sexual exploitation (CSE) in the UK. The problem is that these experts seem to have been completely silent for many years, as if this problem is a completely new phenomenon.
The self-taught didacts also seem to be rather more fascinated with the heritage of the exploiters than the welfare of the actual children who have been subject to their obscene abuse.
CSE is a cancer that has impacted, and can impact, children in all sorts of communities, all parts of the country and from all backgrounds. Before 2010, the term was virtually unknown and unused, largely because it had not been taken seriously by various agencies, most notably the police, and the few victims brave enough to come forward were told to get over it. Few prosecutions ensued.
Whilst statistically most CSE was committed by white men, usually with a familial connection, it became clear that there was a particular problem with gangs of British Pakistani men.
Grooming gangs exposed in 2010
The lid was only really blown off in 2010 with the game-changing Operation Retriever, which resulted in the prosecution of nine British Pakistani men involved in a Derby sex abuse ring for grooming and raping at least 26 girls aged from 12 to 18.
Crucially, the trial was plastered all over the media, and it became clear this case was just the tip of an iceberg, and that other potential prosecutions had been quietly swept under the carpet in the interest of not rocking the “community cohesion” boat.
One brave and persistent individual who relentlessly badgered police in Derby to take this seriously was Sheila Taylor, then head of the Safe and Sound charity, who really is an expert in CSE. Sheila came to see me as children’s minister at the DfE and it became clear that government needed to act.
I brought together police, children’s services, children’s charities, academics and countless other safeguarding agencies. I visited victims and their families and organisations supporting them in various cities, visited mosques and exhorted imams to preach against the practice for the rape crime that it is.
In November 2011, we launched the first comprehensive child sexual exploitation strategy in the presence of Queen Camilla, then Duchess of Cornwall, in her role as president of Barnardo’s.
Alongside raising awareness of CSE in every community, there followed a huge overhaul in the way that victims of CSE were listened to, treating them as victims rather than errant teenage girls who had brought rape upon themselves.
We also commissioned the then deputy children’s commissioner to look at sexual violence by gangs and groups, which uncovered a culture of denial about the perpetrators. I was not alone in being attacked as some sort of racist when I dared to speak out against the “combination of political correctness and racial sensitivities which had kept cases of child sexual grooming under the radar”.
Much work ensued. Then in September 2012, Jimmy Savile was exposed as a paedophile. For months, newspaper headlines recounted endless cases of CSE not just amongst BBC celebrities, but in schools, hospitals, churches, politics, everywhere.
Cameron ‘not interested’ in CSE inquiry
All of sudden, everyone knew about CSE, whatever the origin of the perpetrators. Thousands of victims and survivors came forward, the police were overwhelmed and at one stage more than half the cases in clogged up courts were to do with sexual abuse cases. EastEnders even ran a storyline about the grooming of Whitney Dean, much more impactful than any minister’s speech.
Then out of government, but a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee, I led a cross-party group of MPs lobbying for an all-encompassing historic child sexual abuse inquiry. David Cameron was not interested but Theresa May, then the home secretary, was and the ICSA Inquiry was announced in 2014.
After an inauspicious start with three chairs in quick succession, Prof Alexis Jay took over the reins in 2016. Over six years and £186 million later, the inquiry reported, with 20 main recommendations which have largely not yet been implemented.
Now this new phalanx of “experts” would have us believe that combating grooming gangs is entirely contingent on implementing ICSA’s 20 recommendations in full. It doesn’t need an expert to see that, alas, that is a red herring.
Establishing a redress scheme to pay compensation to victims; registration of care staff in homes; a ban on pain compliance techniques on children in custodial institutions etc all have merit in themselves, and I would support them.
However, they have zero relevance to tackling grooming of vulnerable teenagers by British Pakistani grooming gangs. The main recommendation of ‘mandatory reporting’ of abuse against children could actually prove detrimental as experiences in other countries shows that it leads to an undermining of professionals who then flood the safeguarding system with low level or outright vexatious reports to cover backs, diverting resources from serious cases.
The truth is that the ICSA inquiry was established to show victims and survivors that society was at last taking the crime of CSE seriously and they should come forward (no fewer than 6200 contributed to the subsequent “truth project”); to demonstrate that no sector or community was immune from this crime, and to achieve a culture change in the way society recognises, challenges and prevents it.
ICSA inquired widely across the churches, specific local authorities and even politics. They chose not to delve deeply into the specific phenomenon of British Pakistani grooming gangs even though Prof Jay had made her name investigating Rotherham, now synonymous with just that problem.
ICSA ‘an excuse for delays’
That is disappointing and, in some respects, ICSA has proved counterproductive as it has been an excuse for delaying action until its long drawn-out work was completed.
In 2022, the last government set up a grooming task force with 550 arrests in its first year and 400 victims saved, made CSE a policing priority akin to terrorism and recorded properly the ethnicity of perpetrators which has at last just been published. (Yet some “experts” on the Left whose primary agitation is race still denounce this sensible data analysis as racist, which panders to the “experts” on the right whose primary agitation is also race. Both sets of “experts” disgracefully treat the safety of the actual children as a secondary consideration.)
All these measures represent progress, with thousands of perpetrators from whatever heritage now in jail, and give the lie to all those “experts” who claim nothing has happened over 14 years. The shortcomings by ICSA however do make a case for a short and tightly focused inquiry now into why abuse by British Pakistani grooming gangs is still such a disproportionate feature of CSE, which police forces have done most to prosecute it, which agencies have been most successful in preventing it, and whether we need better enforcement or a whole raft of new laws and institutions. I strongly suspect the former.
The inquiry can draw on the rich vein of evidence already published in the localised inquiries from Rotherham, Manchester and the like.
It mustn’t cost another £186 million and it should be set up quickly and report within a year, giving plenty of time to implement those recommendations from ICSA which might actually be helpful in tackling the vast majority of CSE, not just the preserve of rapists who happen to be of British Pakistani origin. I might even be available to chair it!
Tim Loughton is a former Conservative MP and children’s minister