Yvette Cooper MP: speeches

Speeches

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

  More

  May I welcome my hon. Friend’s points that she makes about the anger in her community and the anger across British Muslim communities towards the grooming gangs, towards the rape of children and towards these appalling crimes? She has long called for work, including stronger action from the police to be able to go after perpetrators and bring them to justice. She is right that the horror at crimes committed against children and in particular against young girls is shared across communities. It is in the interests of those children and victim-survivors that we have reforms now.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

  More

  I do not think the Leader of the Opposition can have read the report and seen the seriousness of its conclusions, because it sets out a timeline of failure from 2009 to 2025. Repeated reports and recommendations were not acted on: on child protection, on police investigations, on ethnicity data, on data sharing and on support for victims. For 14 of those 16 years, her party was in government, including years in which she was the Minister for children and families, then the Minister for equalities, covering race and ethnicity issues and violence against women and girls. I did not hear her raise any of these issues until January this year. She will know that the Prime Minister did not just raise them but acted on them: he brought the first prosecutions against grooming gangs and called for action to address ethnicity issues in 2012. She will also know that the safeguarding Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), and I have raised these issues repeatedly. The Leader of the Opposition referred to Professor Alexis Jay’s independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. I called for that inquiry and strongly supported it, and we wanted it to work on a cross-party basis. We supported its conclusions, but the Leader of the Opposition’s party did absolutely nothing to implement them. Time and again, recommendations just sat on the shelf, and it has taken this Government to bring forward the mandatory duty to report. She says that we should ensure that people who have engaged in cover-ups are prosecuted. I agree, which is why the Labour party is changing the law to make that possible, so that cover-ups cannot happen and people are held to account. The Leader of the Opposition also knows that in the vote she referred to, what she wanted to do—the amendment she tabled—would have wrecked the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. That Bill includes two of Baroness Casey’s recommendations to strengthen child protection, recommendations that the Leader of the Opposition and her party refused to introduce over 14 years. I am sorry that she chose not to join in the apology to victims and survivors for decades of failure in 2022. That apology was a cross-party one, which, if she really had victims’ interests and the national interest at heart, it should be again.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

  More

  The hon. and learned Member will understand that Home Office responsibilities around policing and crime cover England and Wales. The Safeguarding Minister will be following up with the devolved Administrations, and it will be for them to decide how they want to take these issues forward, including in Northern Ireland. The Lord Chancellor will consult in the normal way with devolved Administrations on changes to the law.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

  More

  The hon. Member makes important points about the seriousness of this crime, and she is right, too, that we need to continue to implement the recommendations of the overarching inquiry into child abuse. The Safeguarding Minister updated the House before Easter on those recommendations and the action we are taking forward on them. I can tell the hon. Lady that in the Home Office, measures are already well under way, and we will continue to do that. It is important that we do not simply have recommendations sitting on shelves—things have to be implemented. On the Hillsborough law, we are working at pace to get the details right and to bring it before the House. The hon. Lady will understand that it needs to meet the expectations of the Hillsborough families, as well as be right for the House. We will continue to work on the wider issues, too. In her foreword, Baroness Casey says: “If we’d got this right years ago—seeing these girls as children raped rather than ‘wayward teenagers’ or collaborators in their abuse, collecting ethnicity data, and acknowledging as a system that we did not do a good enough job—then I doubt we’d be in this place now.” We lost a decade. We cannot lose another one.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

  More

  We must ensure that recommendations are implemented. One conclusion in the Baroness Casey audit states: “The timeline set out above—” that is the history of failed reports in the past— “shows a pattern of case after case of offending that is prosecuted, reviewed and then recommendations for improvement made and repeated, but not followed through. We become so used to hearing about these issues that they become more about justifications for failures rather than problems that need to be fixed.” We must ensure that these problems are fixed.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

  More

  I agree with my hon. Friend that we need action across social services, and that is why the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that the Education Secretary is taking forward is so important. The issues around online grooming and exploitation are immensely important. This is both about the abuse that stays online, often forcing children to get involved in the most appalling abuse and acts through online blackmail, pressure and coercion, and about the way in which this is used to provoke offline activity leading to offline physical abuse and contact abuse. We are working with the National Crime Agency on new technology to address this and with the Education Department on how we build children’s resilience in dealing with these crimes.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

  More

  I welcome that question, and I am glad that Baroness Casey will have the opportunity to set out more details of her findings. As the right hon. Lady will know, Baroness Casey has huge expertise and determination, and will be forthright in giving the evidence that she has drawn together. It will be important for the commission conducting the independent inquiry to have arrangements with police forces to ensure that criminal investigations that are currently under way are not cut across. It is also important to ensure that we can uncover institutional failings, because institutional failures to pursue action, or the turning of a blind eye, need to be looked into in particular areas, as part of the local investigations and the national inquiry. As the right hon. Lady will know, arrangements of this kind have featured in past inquiries, so they can be made and will need to be made again now.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

  More

  I reassure the hon. Member that the point of having the national inquiry is to ensure that where local institutions are being examined, the commission has powers to compel witnesses, take evidence under oath and gather information, papers and evidence as it sees fit to make sure that we can get to the heart of this institutional failure. The hon. Member is also right to say that this is about vile criminals knowing when young children—teenage girls especially—are vulnerable to the most appalling exploitation and coercion. They play with children’s emotions and vulnerability to draw them into what is ultimately violent crime and the most terrible abuse. This raises questions, particularly when the number of child protection cases around sexual abuse identified by social services has dropped. We are very concerned about that, and the Education Secretary is now investigating. There is also a failure to properly share data about the children who are at risk—the ones who are going missing. The hon. Member mentions the evidence from the work he and the Communities and Local Government Committee did 10 years ago about missing children and children in care. It is all the same evidence now, and we have got to be better at pursuing the evidence.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

  More

  I know that the hon. Member has met the Safeguarding Minister. She has spoken again to Fiona Goddard this morning to ensure that the voices of victims, survivors and campaigners are at the heart of the inquiry. He will know that the Safeguarding Minister said to him in their meeting that she would not allow local councils to be able to turn their backs and say no to investigations where they are needed. That is why we have accepted Baroness Casey’s recommendation to have a national inquiry that will underpin those local investigations. Obviously, the final decisions will be matters for the independent chair of the commission, but we will ensure that the hon. Member’s concerns and those of victims are passed on the national inquiry.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

  More

  I thank my hon. Friend for speaking out about his experiences. To speak out as a victim of child abuse in that way is immensely difficult, and I think everyone should listen to what victims and survivors have to say. I thank him for speaking out, because by doing so he provides strength and inspiration to other victims and survivors across the country, and I pay tribute to him for doing so. He is right that this should be something that everyone can agree on, because it is about the protection of children and the tackling of serious crime. I hope all of us can do that with respect and together.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

  More

  Yes, I can say to my hon. Friend that we accept that recommendation in Baroness Casey’s report and we will commission research into the drivers of child sexual exploitation and, more widely, violence against women and girls, so that we have stronger evidence to keep children safe.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

  More

  I agree with my hon. Friend. We have agreed to implement all the recommendations from the two-year inquiry into child sexual exploitation conducted as part of the Professor Alexis Jay review. We are taking forward one of those—on aggravated sentencing for grooming offences—as part of the Crime and Policing Bill. We are also introducing similar, parallel arrangements for online abuse because we must ensure that we are also taking action on online grooming, which has escalated and accelerated since Professor Jay’s work.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend is right that those attitudes towards teenage girls—towards children—and treating them as adults still persist. Baroness Casey quotes a serious case review of a case involving a teenager online. She was just 12 or 13 years old, and was being drawn into the most explicit and abusive chatrooms and pornographic sites online. This was treated as somehow being the child’s choice, even though there was evidence of exploitation and crime taking place. We have to ensure that we do more to protect our teenagers, and we will bring in the mandatory duty to report to strengthen the law in that area.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

  More

  I can tell my hon. Friend that we are working with the Lord Chancellor on taking forward this recommendation now and not waiting for any further local inquiry. Baroness Casey is really clear that the adultification of children, treating them as consenting to something into which they were coerced and in which they were exploited, lies at the heart of a lot of the institutional failure to take this crime seriously. That is why we need to change the law, but we also need to change attitudes, because some of the cases that Baroness Casey refers to are recent, and that cannot go on.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend is right that so many victims and survivors do not come forward. We need to make it easier for people to do so, and recognise the scale of abuse. I agree with her on the really important issue about county lines and the interaction between criminal exploitation and sexual exploitation. Too often, the county lines and criminal exploitation is seen as an issue involving teenage boys, but very often teenage girls are also drawn in—and very often, that also means sexual exploitation. I do not believe that enough investigation has yet been done into that particular pattern and form of child sexual abuse and exploitation. As we strengthen the law on the criminal exploitation of children, we need to ensure that this issue is properly pursued, as she says, as part of the data gathering and through further research.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend makes an important point. On the history and the action that has been taken, one thing that Baroness Casey criticises in particular is a 2020 report produced by the Home Office under the previous Government. She says that the conclusions that it came to were simply not justified by the data, and that the data gathered was inadequate. I think everyone should recognise that sufficient action has not been taken, be it on data, sharing or implementing recommendations. On victims and survivors, the Minister for Safeguarding is doing immensely important work to look at ways of ensuring that their voices can be at the heart of the new national inquiry and all Home Office work in this area.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend makes an important point. Too often, victims and survivors have been asked to tell their story, often to multiple agencies, and then have seen no action, which simply strengthens the distress that they feel. Seven thousand victims and survivors gave evidence to the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. As we draw up the arrangements for the national inquiry, we will work closely, as will the safeguarding Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips), to keep victims and survivors in our minds. We must ensure that they have support, and that the point my hon. Friend has raised on behalf of her constituent, and for the victims and their families, is taken seriously.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend is right to raise the appalling case in his constituency, where seven people were convicted on Friday. He will also know that further criminal investigations are still ongoing—it is shameful how long it has taken to get justice for those victims. I agree with him that no one can hide from justice on this appalling issue, on which victims and survivors have been let down for far too long. I hope that supporting that aim will be a cross-party process.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

  More

  I welcome my hon. Friend’s point. As he will know, many local authorities across the country have worked to ensure that they raise standards and checks in their licensing arrangements, particularly those in areas where there have been serious problems and criminal cases. However, those checks and safeguards can end up being undermined by the licensing of taxis in other areas that do not have such checks, so we are looking to take forward reforms to the law. The Transport Secretary is looking at exactly this issue to make sure that we find a way to close the loophole.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

  More

  I can tell my hon. Friend that we are going to expand that, and that we will not let up the pace of implementing measures and recommendations. That includes the work that the Education Secretary is already doing on the mandatory sharing of data on children at risk, the new identifiers and the measures in the Crime and Policing Bill on mandatory reporting. Crucially, we have also already increased the resources for policing operations to be able to review closed cases. That is why we already have 800 cases identified for review, although we expect that figure shortly to rise to over 1,000 cases. Those are cases that were closed with no further action being taken that are now being looked at again—not waiting for the inquiry, but taking action now to protect children.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

  More

  I can assure the hon. Member that we are taking forward the recommendations already. The Minister for Safeguarding updated the House on all the IICSA recommendations before Easter. Some require legislation, including legislation that is passing through the House at the moment. We will have further discussions on those issues later this week. We are already able to take forward some of the issues, and we will continue to update the House on the progress of the recommendations.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

  More

  I say to the hon. Member that child sexual exploitation and abuse are some of the most vile crimes that our country faces. What Baroness Casey’s report sets out in some detail, over 17 pages, is that there has been report after report after review after review but so many of the recommendations were never implemented, so concerns that were raised at the time of the Rotherham inquiry about issues around ethnicity, lack of information-sharing and lack of protection for children were simply not acted on. Baroness Casey herself says: “If we’d got this right years ago—seeing these girls as children raped rather than ‘wayward teenagers’…then I doubt we’d be in this place now.” The hon. Member was a member of the previous Government, who failed to do that. I hope that he agrees that successive Governments and agencies across the country have failed to act. We need to ensure that there is a proper independent inquiry, as well as, most crucially of all, action by police in the operations that will bring perpetrators to justice and put them behind bars.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

  More

  I thank my hon. Friend for raising this matter. The Safeguarding Minister takes this issue very seriously, and we cannot have issues relating to the criminal injuries compensation scheme being raised in court in a way that undermines victims and survivors, who have bravely shown that they are able to speak out about abuse that has haunted their lives for so long. We will look at this issue further.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

  More

  The terms of reference will be set out in due course. We have not yet appointed or determined the chair for the national inquiry. We will do so and set that out for the House. I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s response on the issue of the national apology for the historical and current challenges that have led to victims being let down over very many years. I think his response echoes the way in which the whole House came together in 2022 around similar support for victims.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend is right: what we need is change and action, and recommendations from inquiries need to be implemented. Part of the strength of the Telford inquiry lay in the fact that victims and survivors were at its very heart, and there were also serious plans to ensure, and ways of ensuring, that the recommendations were implemented. That is crucial. It is no good having inquiries if recommendations just sit on the shelf; we must ensure that they are implemented, as well as pursuing answers.