Jonathan Reynolds MP Proudly serving the communities of Stalybridge, Hyde, Mossley, Longdendale and Dukinfield
This week in Parliament the new Government presented the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. I was not able to be present in Parliament during the evening, but I fully support this Bill and the decisions taken by my Labour colleagues.
This Bill is the single biggest piece of child protection legislation in a generation. It has real measures in it to keep children safe, as well as other positive things like providing more free breakfast clubs, cutting the cost of school uniforms, and making sure there are qualified teachers in the classroom.
The Conservative Party opposed this Bill. They did so putting forward an amendment saying this was because it did not announce a new inquiry into child sexual exploitation. This is despite the fact that when in government they themselves commissioned the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse sat for over 5 years and conducted 15 investigations. It published its final report in October 2022, and made 20 key recommendations, none of which the Conservative Government implemented fully or at all. That report is a very good piece of work and in my view we should get on with implementing it. This is also what the author of the Inquiry report, Alexis Jay, and victims of this scandal have been calling for.
Child sexual exploitation is an utterly despicable crime. The law in this area must operate without fear or favour. Perpetrators must be punished, and victims and survivors must be protected and supported. This is exactly why we must get on with implementing the Inquiry’s recommendations. To have failed to do so, and then to call for a new inquiry, is breathtaking hypocrisy. This new Labour Government will act on those recommendations. We will do this to ensure that victims’ voices are heard, which will also include the Home Office setting up a new victims and survivors panel to advise on Government policy.
This is not a knee jerk reaction to current events. The Crime and Policing Bill and the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill were part of the Kings Speech in July 2024 and will seek to embed child protection in our legislation. Specifically, new laws will shortly be presented to Parliament to make it mandatory to report child abuse. Once this legislation, which I support, is approved by MPs, it will become an offence, with professional and criminal sanctions, to either fail to report or to cover up child sexual abuse. In addition, the Government intends to toughen existing laws to make grooming an aggravating factor in the sentencing of child sexual offences.
Regarding further inquiries into this issue, I fully support all police investigations and local independent inquiries and reviews. Local inquiries have a valuable role to play in uncovering wrongdoing. For example, it was a report by Louise Casey into events in Rotherham which helped to identify the failure to confront shocking acts of abuse by gangs of men of Pakistani descent. Andy Burnham has also commissioned specific local reports as Mayor of Greater Manchester. I would consider any further proposal if there was a need for something, but it must not stop us taking action now.
More widely, I am clear that it is completely unacceptable to use race and ethnicity or community relations as an excuse not to investigate and punish sex offenders. Nothing, including concerns about political correctness and the protection of institutions, must ever be put before the protection of children. All of us have a responsibility to keep children safe. I welcome the action the Government is taking to change protection for the better, give a voice to victims, and to ensure that perpetrators, whoever they are, pay the price for their crimes.