Sarah Champion MP: speeches

Speeches

• 18 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I appreciate being called to speak, Madam Deputy Speaker. I also really appreciate being able to follow in the wake of my two friends—my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) and the right hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Dame Karen Bradley)—who have been incredible campaigners on these issues. I know from first-hand experience of meeting the victims and survivors they spoke about that there are gaping holes in our legislation. I hope that the House will support their amendments, because that would do something to close them. I rise to speak first about my new clauses 9, 10 and 18, which seek to better protect child victims of sexual and criminal exploitation and empower our frontline responders to keep them safe. I welcome the Government’s introduction of the mandatory duty to report, which was recommendation 13 of the independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation, as it has the potential to strengthen our child protection system. However, following detailed conversations and meetings with Rotherham and Sheffield NHS safeguarding staff, I share their concerns about the finer details of its implementation. To put it bluntly, the duty will not protect children as intended unless mandated reporters are adequately trained. Recognising, reporting and—crucially—responding to child sexual abuse is far from straightforward, so to prevent overwhelming an already strained system, all those under the duty must be trained to know what to look for and how to report it. Let me give an example. A nursery nurse might see bruising around the genital areas of a toddler, and with the fear—I put it that way—of her duty on mandatory reporting, she will report it to the hotline or directly to the NHS safeguarding teams, which is absolutely the right thing to do. However, toddlers fall over and they fall in awkward places, so that nursery worker needs to have the skills and experience to be able to know when it is appropriate to report and when it is not appropriate, along with what evidence to gather and what not to. At the moment, I am scared that everything will be reported and that the system, which is there to protect and safeguard those children, will be unable to cope. I hope that a standard training package will be given to all people who fall under the duty. I will now turn to new clauses 10 and 18, on child criminal exploitation, which I know the safeguarding Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), is very familiar with, I having campaigned on this with her for many years in previous Parliaments. As Baroness Casey’s report states, right now criminally exploited children are at risk of prosecution rather than protection. These new clauses seek to change that. They have the backing of Action for Children. ECPAT UK, Barnardo’s and many other children’s charities. In 2024 alone, more than 2,891 children were referred to the national referral mechanism as potential child victims of criminal exploitation, but many more ended up in courtrooms, not safeguarding systems. As my police chief said to me, it is deeply sad that the first time we see these criminally exploited children is when we are looking to criminalise them. We cannot get above this and ahead of it. Clause 38 rightly creates a new offence of CCE, recognising the severity of that abuse. However, without corresponding changes to the Modern Slavery Act 2015, legal protections remain inconsistent and inadequate. New clause 10 seeks to fix that. In a similar vein, new clause 18 would insert a definition of “child criminal exploitation” alongside the offence in clause 38. Evidence from the Jay review into criminal exploitation of children demonstrates that the current lack of a definition contributes to significant inconsistencies in practice across the country and persistent failures to identify children as victims. I saw that time and again in Rotherham, with young, exploited girls all too often referred to as “child prostitutes” and not given the support they needed. The shift started only after we got the statutory definition for child sexual exploitation. Clear, consistent legislation empowers professionals to intervene earlier, prevents inappropriate prosecutions and ensures that exploited children receive the safeguarding support that they need. I turn to my amendment 9, on registered sex offenders, which is supported by 39 MPs from across the parties. It will not be new to many in the House as I have brought it up in the last three Parliaments. Between 2019 and 2022, 11,500 sex offenders were prosecuted for failure to notify changes of information. The same ongoing pattern allows offenders to slip through the cracks, with over 700 going completely missing in those years. I welcome the new measures in the Bill that require some offenders to seek police authorisation before applying to change their name on UK passports and driving licences, which will genuinely make a difference. However, I remain deeply concerned that many of the new measures lack strength and could lead to confusion. Clause 80 states that sex offenders must give seven days’ notice of using a new name but does not define what “using” means. The amendment seeks to provide much-needed clarity. It would require offenders to notify the police of an intention to change their name seven days before doing so by deed poll. That would allow vital time for the authorities to conduct appropriate risk assessments. More than that, I want to draw attention to the fact that the Bill still relies too heavily on a sex offender doing the right thing, which is something they rarely do. Finally, I will speak to my new clauses 99 and 100, in my capacity as Chair of the International Development Committee. Last week my Committee published its report on international humanitarian law. It is vital that those responsible for attacks on aid workers and unlawful blockages of humanitarian assistance are brought to justice. Throughout the inquiry, it became apparent that the UK needed powers to exercise universal jurisdiction over crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. There must be no safe haven for those who commit such heinous crimes. My new clauses would allow the relevant authorities to prosecute people suspected of those crimes without any requirement for a connection to the UK. At a time when the legitimacy and impartiality of some international courts is being questioned, the UK must stand firm in support of these important mechanisms for accountability, to prevent impunity for serious violations of international humanitarian law while ensuring that we have the domestic powers needed to hold perpetrators to account, no matter where their crimes are committed.

• 14 May 2025 · Glass Packaging: Extended Producer Responsibility · Hansard source

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  I am sorry, no. In public, and in response to correspondence, DEFRA stated that there is no, or not enough, evidence of material-switching. That is simply not true. The industry, our businesses, and the sectors affected have supplied that evidence. It makes me wonder whether there is any threshold of evidence that would result in a rethink of the scheme. DEFRA has highlighted the modulation of future EPR fees to address those expansive concerns, but let us be honest, even at the earliest point that such modulation would be introduced, huge and likely terminal damage will already have been done to glass manufacturers. It is not clear under the current guidelines whether glass will receive a reduction in fees, and it could even receive a fee increase in the future. Fees are currently charged retrospectively so, given the lack of confirmed information on the level of fees that glass will face, the costs are essentially unrecoverable. How can businesses be expected to operate under this profound uncertainty about their current and future costs? For DEFRA, “reuse” often represents a magic bullet that will address all concerns, if only the industry would get onboard. The glass sector is keen to be part of the development of reuse and glass is the perfect material for it, but we must accept that large-scale national reuse systems are at least a decade away because there is currently no reuse infrastructure. Furthermore, not all products are suitable for reuse. Glass manufacturers can already supply reusable bottles, but a reuse scheme is much more than that. It would require significant buy-in across the whole supply chain. The Minister also needs to recognise that not all glass bottles are for drinks. Beatson Clark, in my constituency, manufactures medicine bottles. Reuse is a laudable goal and one that the glass industry is keen to collaborate with the Government to achieve, but it is being repeatedly deployed as grounds to ignore the industry’s concerns about EPR. Reuse and EPR are two separate issues, and the conflation seems a deliberate muddying of the debate. The short-term impact of EPR could destroy the UK glass industry long before plans for reuse are even on the drawing board. DEFRA has stated that the recycling reforms will add at least 21,000 new jobs and £10 billion to the UK economy, and stimulate the growth on which the Government are rightly focused. Yet it is unclear how those new jobs will be created. They are unlikely to be the kind of wealth-generating jobs that we currently have in the glass sector—jobs that are based in our manufacturing heartland, which really needs that work. Even if the Minister’s prediction were true, why risk existing jobs? Why not take the time to get EPR right and have both? This is not scaremongering. The glass packaging industry is being driven into a crisis directly of the Government’s own making. UK glass manufacturers are already reporting that demand is down by 20%—although the EPR policy has been in place for only a month—and that low-cost imports have increased to help to absorb EPR costs. On paper, I get that the Government are ostensibly seeking to encourage recycling, while recovering the cost to the public purse of its delivery. That is the right objective, but their approach will achieve the exact opposite. It will encourage switching to less recyclable materials; add costs to businesses such as pubs and breweries already struggling under inflationary and other cost pressures; and increase prices for consumers. If the concerns of industry are not addressed today, the Government also risk destroying our domestic capacity, leaving us reliant on highly polluting foreign imports. I have raised these issues with the Minister time and again, as have other hon. Members, British Glass and individual businesses. I cannot therefore understand the reticence to engage with these very real problems. The origins of EPR lie with the previous Administration, but by continuing this flawed and ultimately self-defeating approach, a Labour Government risk destroying a great British industry. Does the Minister really want to be responsible for killing off our most recyclable packaging producer?