“(1) The Secretary of State must, within 3 months of the passing of this Act, set up a statutory inquiry into grooming gangs.

(2) An inquiry established under subsection (1) must seek to—

(a) identify common patterns of behaviour and offending between grooming gangs;

(b) identify the type, extent and volume of crimes committed by grooming gangs;

(c) identify the number of victims of crimes committed by grooming gangs;

(d) identify the ethnicity of members of grooming gangs;

(e) identify any failings, by action, omission or deliberate suppression, by—

(i) police,

(ii) local authorities,

(iii) prosecutors,

(iv) charities,

(v) political parties,

(vi) local and national government,

(vii) healthcare providers and health services, or

(viii) other agencies or bodies, in the committal of crimes by grooming gangs, including by considering whether the ethnicity of the perpetrators of such crimes affected the response by such agencies or bodies;

(f) identify such national safeguarding actions as may be required to minimise the risk of further such offending occurring in future;

(g) identify good practice in protecting children.

(3) The inquiry may do anything it considers is calculated to facilitate, or is incidental or conducive to, the carrying out of its functions and the achievement of the requirements of subsection (2).

(4) An inquiry established under this section must publish a report within two years of the launch of the inquiry.

(5) For the purposes of this section—

‘gang’ means a group of at least three adult males whose purpose or intention is to commit a sexual offence against the same victim or group of victims;

‘grooming’ means—

(a) activity carried out with the primary intention of committing sexual offences against the victim;

(b) activity that is carried out, or predominantly carried out, in person;

(c) activity that includes the provision of illicit substances and/or alcohol either as part of the grooming or concurrent with the commission of the sexual offence.”—(Neil O'Brien.)

This new clause would set up a national statutory inquiry into grooming gangs.

Brought up, and read the First time.

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

The arguments around this issue are reasonably well known, so I will be brief. This discussion started when Oldham asked for a national inquiry into what happened there, which it did because a local inquiry would not have the powers that are needed. For example, a local inquiry cannot summon witnesses, take evidence under oath, or requisition evidence. We have already seen the two men leading the local investigation in Greater Manchester resign because they felt they were being blocked, yet the Government say no to a national inquiry, and that there should be local inquiries instead.

However, there have been years during which those places could have held their own local inquiries, but they have not. In many cases, as is well known, local officials at different levels were part of the problem, and even part of the deflection, so they cannot be the people to fix it. In Keighley, for example, my hon. Friend Robbie Moore has been calling for an inquiry for years, but even as Ministers argued in the House that there should be local inquiries, local politicians decided again not to hold one.

In these debates the Government often refer to the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, which was an important first step, but it was not—indeed, it was never intended to be—a report on the grooming gangs. It barely touches on them. IICSA looked at about half a dozen places where grooming gangs have operated, but there were between 40 to 50 places where those gangs operated, and the inquiry touches on them very lightly and does not look at the places where there were the most severe problems. It means that victims in those places have never had a chance to be heard.

I welcome what the hon. Member says about the importance of victims, as they must be at the centre of all we do in this area. Will he outline whether he has met any victims of child sexual abuse in the past 12 months, and if he has, what they have said about the new clause? Is the new clause based on conversations with victims?

The new clause is based on calls by victims for a national inquiry; I was about to come to that point. Having a proper national inquiry does not stop us from getting on and implementing any of the recommendations in the previous report. Indeed, awareness raising was one of the recommendations that was made. Without a national inquiry, we will clearly not get to the bottom of this issue, and people who looked the other way, or who covered up or deflected, will not be held to account for doing that. So far, nobody in authority has been held to account.

The Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester and the hon. Members for Liverpool Walton (Dan Carden), for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) and for Rochdale (Paul Waugh) have backed some form of national inquiry, and the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, Jess Phillips, said that there should be a national inquiry if victims wanted one. Numerous victims are calling for an inquiry, so the real question is what we are waiting for.

Again, you are talking about victims—

I am not the Chair.

I apologise; that is a good point. The hon. Member is talking about victims and what they want, so I return to the question that I asked: has he met victims of child sexual abuse when tabling this new clause—yes or no?

As a constituency MP I have met victims of sexual abuse, yes, and it is clear, if people have been following the debate, that victims are calling for an inquiry. Indeed, numerous people in the Labour party agree that we should have a proper inquiry, for all the reasons that Oldham originally asked for one, namely that it does not have the powers locally to get to the truth and to get justice for the victims. The new clause would create a national inquiry and we hope that at some point the Government will support it so that justice can be done and those who have let victims down can finally be held to account.

I want to press the point about whether any victims of child sexual abuse have been directly consulted about the proposed new clause. Before I became an MP I ran a service to support victims of child sexual abuse. I have sat with survivors and listened to some of the stories they have shared about the worst things that could happen to a human being, in order to understand the difficulties and trauma that they are experiencing. I know that rebuilding their life will involve many long years of painstaking support alongside many types of services, and I know that what they need most is the implementation of the national inquiry that has already concluded, which heard from many victims of child sexual abuse.

Having sat with and listened to victims of abuse, my big concern is that not implementing those recommendations will be a signal to them that all they have shared and said—after significant difficulty—will have been discarded. That will make people who have gone through awful experiences that have made them feel as though they lack dignity, once again feel as though the system that was there to support and listen to them has let them down, and that as a consequence they are not worthy of the dignity that, as human beings, they really ought to be entitled to.

It is wrong to pretend that IICSA was a report into the grooming gangs. It was not; it was never intended to be. It looked a tiny handful of places, so many of the people who were affected by that scandal have never had the chance to have their story told. It has never been clear why having a new national inquiry would prevent us from implementing any of those previous things—it obviously would not. The argument that the Government cannot do two things at the same time is clearly wrong, so it cannot be used as an excuse not to listen to all those who have never had the chance to tell their story.

I believe that the Minister may be coming to that point very soon, and I am excited to hear your response to what she says—

Order. Please do not use the “you” word.

I appreciate that. I will return to the important topic at hand.

The Minister will comment explicitly on what the hon. Member said but I will say that, although I agree that the Government can do more than one thing, a significant amount of time and money would be invested on a second inquiry. I would want that money to be funnelled directly into the support of survivors and victims, who for so many years under a Conservative Government were denied the funding that they require to receive the support that they need in response to some of the worst experiences that a human being can go through.

The hon. Member is in danger of literally saying it is too expensive to get to the truth. He just said that the cost of a national inquiry was the obstacle to having one. I really hope that he will rethink that point.

I disagree strongly with the hon. Member. He knows exactly what I said, and he is choosing to put words into my mouth, as he has chosen to put words into the mouths of many other Committee members. If he wants to play that game, let us talk about whether he has focused properly on child sexual abuse in his time as an MP, quite apart from whether he spoke with any victims or survivors before tabling the amendment.

The hon. Member has been in this House since 8 June 2017, a total of 2,849 days. It took him 2,801 days before he spoke in Parliament for the first time about child sexual abuse. He may say, “Of course, I was a Minister for some of that time,” so I calculated the amount of time that you were a Minister. It is approximately 25% of your total time as an MP. I think it is important, obviously—

Order. [Interruption.] Sit down, please. The hon. Gentleman is now quite an experienced Member at speaking, but why does he keep using “you” and “your”? Just avoid those expressions, because I am not involved in this debate. I am trying to be neutral. Mr O’Brien may wish to respond to your points, but please try to control yourself in that respect.

Thank you, Sir Christopher.

I have made my point about whether the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston has used his time here to press the case on behalf of survivors and victims. I have made the point about whether he has chosen to sit with survivors and victims and listen to their stories before calling for another national inquiry that discards the views that have been given by survivors.

I have talked about the importance of the money that could be spent on a second inquiry being better spent on the support that victims and survivors so desperately need. I really wish that the Conservative party, which did so little in government to implement the recommendations that were called for by survivors, would put down the politics of this issue and stop focusing on a desperate pursuit of Reform voters, rather than the other voters they lost to the Liberal Democrats and Greens.

Does my hon. Friend share my puzzlement that, given that the independent national inquiry covered so many types of child sexual exploitation—so many horrors that have been visited upon our young people—only one aspect of it has become the focus of political debate? We should focus on all the children and young people who have been violated, abused and hurt, mostly by men, but they seem to be forgotten even though the national inquiry covered a whole range of child sexual exploitation.

I could not agree more, and my hon. Friend helps me make a point that I had forgotten. You urged me to exercise control, Sir Christopher, but as you and other Members can see, I feel deeply about this topic. I feel very strongly about the importance of standing alongside survivors, and I am prepared to work with anybody in this House, of any party or none, to enhance the support that survivors receive. But having sat with survivors, I am not prepared to allow people to play politics with their experience, and for those individuals then to feign disappointment, hurt and abuse. This is not about how Members of this House feel about the honesty and truth of the words I am speaking; it is about the importance of survivors out in our communities, who have been let down for 14 years, who have suffered exploitative, abusive practices, and who will be looking to this House today to do the right thing by them. I call on the Conservatives in this Committee and across the House to do the right thing, stop playing politics, actually read the report if they have not done so already, and as a consequence show some dignity.

Shortly after Christmas, a person came to see me who had given evidence to the IICSA inquiry and who was deeply upset by their perception that their experience, and the experience of others like them, was being used as a political football. They were outraged to find that the conclusions and recommendations of the inquiry had not yet been implemented. In this room, my role is to represent them. Their call is not for another public inquiry but for the implementation of the recommendations of the inquiry that has already been done.

I find it really disappointing that such serious matters are being used as a political football. The hon. Member for Bournemouth East made a valid point about the degree to which these issues were not addressed until very recently. I ask rhetorically: would this new clause even have been tabled were it not for pot-stirring tweets by Elon Musk? I very much doubt it. I therefore think this Committee should do the job we are here to do. We should scrutinise this Bill and not use it as an opportunity to play games with the lives of victims and survivors.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East for his incredible experience and work in this area. I rise to speak about new clause 15, and I hope I can be of service to the Committee, having spent the past seven years of my work as a barrister serving on a public inquiry. I went straight from that to representing a constituency in Derby, the city that was the subject of the first local inquiry into grooming gangs in 2010. Those crimes are despicable and must be rooted out in Derby and elsewhere. Without the bravery of the girls in Derby, those crimes would not have been punished.

I am committed to supporting the considerable action that the Government are taking to ensure that others are punished, and victims and survivors protected and supported. I am really proud to sit on this Bill Committee, which will give the next generation of children and young people in Derby better protection and life chances. The Education Secretary rightly described this as the “single biggest piece” of children’s safeguarding legislation in a generation. I will seek to set out why new clause 15 does nothing to contribute to that aim.

My first concern about new clause 15 is that it seeks to rerun the same questions from the seven-year long independent inquiry on child sexual abuse—IICSA. The inquiry panel was chaired by Professor Alexis Jay OBE, who had undertaken the 2014 independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham. That identified at least 1,400 children and young people in Rotherham who had been sexually abused or exploited.

On Second Reading, the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston said that we needed another national inquiry on grooming gangs because the IICSA inquiry “barely touches on them”. He has repeated that on multiple occasions today. IICSA, as is common practice in a public inquiry, involved a series of smaller inquiries of investigations of different strands. One of those inquiries was child sexual exploitation by organised networks. The inquiry into organised networks, the entire focus of which was grooming gangs, took two years and reported three years ago, in February 2022.

Could the hon. Lady say how many different places it looked at?

I will come to that. First, I make the point that I have the report in my hands; it is an inch thick, printed double-sided and it is nearly 200 pages. That is the specific inquiry into organised networks. Its contents are horrific, and I hope that by the end of my contribution, we will cease to hear the shadow Minister referring to the fact that it “barely touches” on grooming gangs.

For clarity, organised networks that conduct child sexual exploitation, as anyone who has carried out work in child protection will know, are grooming gangs. Organised networks are defined in this report as

“two or more individuals…who are known to (or associated with) one another”.

Section C.3 of the report sets out carefully why that definition was used. In comparison, new clause 15 seeks to define grooming gangs as a group of at least three adult males. As we saw in the convictions of women involved in grooming gangs in Rotherham, Newcastle and elsewhere, involvement in grooming gangs is not limited to men. Sadly, several of the cases mentioned in the investigation into grooming gangs make it clear that they are not always adults, as older children and teenagers can also be involved in grooming.

A further justification for another inquiry, as we heard from the shadow Minister, was that the previous inquiry covered just half a dozen places where grooming gangs have operated—namely, the areas covered by Durham county council, the City and County of Swansea council, Warwickshire county council, St Helens council in Merseyside, the London borough of Tower Hamlets and Bristol city council. The shadow Minister knows, I assume, that that was a deliberate sampling of local authorities from across England and Wales, and they were selected not because grooming gangs operated there—I do not think that was necessarily even known at the time of selection—but to consider a range of features including size, demography, geography and social characteristics. It was to illustrate different policies, practices and performance. It was a deliberate choice not to look again at areas like Rotherham, Rochdale and Oxford, which had already been the subject of independent investigation. Sampling, and looking at particular case studies like this, is very common and good practice in public inquiries. The fact that there were cases of child sexual exploitation by gangs in all six of the case study areas clearly indicated how common and pervasive this disgusting crime is.

On Second Reading, the shadow Home Secretary, Chris Philp, implied that there was new information that child sexual exploitation takes place in many areas. He said:

“We now believe that as many as 50 towns could have been affected”.—[Official Report, 16 January 2025; Vol. 760, c. 564.]

But as the previous specific inquiry made clear three years ago, on page 4, when it comes to grooming gangs:

“Any denial of the scale of child sexual exploitation—either at national level or locally in England and Wales—must be challenged.”

In looking at whether new clause 15 is a rerun of questions IICSA already considered in the previous specific inquiry into grooming gangs, it is helpful to cross-refer the contents of new clause 15 with the scope of the previous investigations into grooming gangs, which is set out on page 148 of this report. New clause 15(2)(a) seeks an inquiry into grooming gangs to

“identify common patterns of behaviour and offending”.

But the scope of the previous grooming gangs inquiry states that it will investigate “the nature” of sexual exploitation by grooming gangs.

New clause 15(2)(b) and (c) seek another inquiry to look at the

“type, extent and volume of crimes” and “the number of victims”. The specific inquiry looked at the “extent” of sexual exploitation.

New clause 15(2)(e) seeks a new inquiry to identify failings by

“(i) police,

(ii) local authorities,

(iii) prosecutors,

(iv) charities,

(v) political parties,

(vi) local…government,

(vii) healthcare providers…or

(viii) other agencies or bodies”.

But the grooming gangs inquiry investigated and considered the institutional responses to the sexual exploitation of children, and that specific inquiry also examined the extent to which

“children who were subjected to child sexual exploitation were known to local authorities and other public authorities such as law enforcement agencies, schools and/or the NHS”.

It also examined the extent to which

“relevant public authorities…effectively identified the risk of child sexual exploitation in communities and took action to prevent it”.

It examined the extent to which

“the response of the constituent parts of the criminal justice system was appropriate in cases of child sexual exploitation”.

The inquiry into grooming gangs heard from complainants, academics, local authorities, police officers, voluntary sector representatives, Government officials and representatives from victim support and campaign groups—a list that looks very similar to that set out at new clause 15(2)(e).

New clause 15(2)(g) seeks to “identify good practice” in protecting children. Was that left out of the previous inquiry? No, because paragraph 2.5 of the scope of the investigation makes it clear that the inquiry would also examine

“effective strategies…implemented to prevent child sexual exploitation in the future, and to monitor the safety of vulnerable children including missing children”.

On Second Reading, the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston accused the Government of not wanting to

“hear the voices of the victims.”—[Official Report, 8 January 2025; Vol. 759, c. 951.].

The new clause compounds the last Government’s crime of not listening to the victims when they had the chance to implement the recommendations of the specific national grooming gangs inquiry and the wider IICSA recommendations.

What new clause 15—the hon. Gentleman’s blueprint for a new inquiry—does not include is any requirement to look at the extent to which recommendations in previous reports and reviews were implemented by relevant public authorities at national and local levels. That requirement was in the previous grooming gangs inquiry, which was an attempt to build on learning rather than to be a rerun of previous inquiries. The previous grooming gangs inquiry notes that more than 400 previous recommendations were considered in this, as well as those arising from other recent reports and inquiries. This would be an obvious inclusion in any future inquiry, unless we did not want to draw attention to the previous Government’s failure to carry out a single one of the recommendations of the specific investigation into grooming gangs, or in the wider independent inquiry into child sexual abuse more broadly.

The three main functions of public inquiries are to investigate what happened, why it happened, and what can be done to prevent it happening again. Inquiries can make recommendations. What they cannot do is implement those recommendations; that is our job. Professor Alexis Jay, who knows more about this than anyone on this Committee, does not call for another national inquiry. She says that a new inquiry would cause further delay.

Having spent seven of my 17 years as a barrister on a public inquiry—although not into grooming gangs or the broader IICA—I can say quite forcefully that there is a universal principle here. Public inquiries cost time and enormous amounts of public money, but the biggest tab that they run up is in the hope that they give to victims—the hope that what they suffered will not be suffered in future by others. We must pay our debt to the victims by fully responding to the recommendations and implementing them where we can. If we call for inquiry after inquiry along the same lines, we are undermining the whole system of public inquiries, including public trust in them and public tolerance for the resources of the state that they demand. Therefore, rather than the gesture politics of rerunning an inquiry without the evidence and data that we need, it is the Government’s approach that makes sense, with Baroness Louise Casey’s audit to fill in the gaps that have already been identified by the previous inquiry.

This Government are setting up a new victims and survivors panel not just to guide Ministers on the design, delivery and implementation of plans on IICSA, but to produce wider work around child sexual exploitation and abuse. In the policing and crime Bill, they are making it mandatory to report abuse and will make it an offence to fail to report, or to cover up, child sexual abuse, as well as introducing further measures to tackle those organising online child sex abuse. They are legislating to make grooming an aggravating factor in sentencing for child sexual offences. They are already drawing up a duty of candour as part of the long-awaited Hillsborough law. And they are overhauling the information and evidence that is gathered on child sexual abuse and exploitation to implement the first recommendation of IICSA on a single core dataset on child abuse and protection.

New clause 15(2)(d) seeks to identify the ethnicity of members of grooming gangs. Sections B.5 and H.5 of the 2022 inquiry into grooming gangs identified the widespread failure to record the ethnicity of perpetrators and victims and the inconsistency of definitions in the data, which meant that the limited research available relied on poor-quality data.

Recommendation 5 from the report in February 2022 relates to child sexual exploitation data and states that the data must include

“the sex, ethnicity and disability of both the victim and perpetrator”.

In the final list of IICSA recommendations from October 2022, it was the first recommendation—a single core set of data. We do not have a core dataset, and the ethnicity data that was published in November from police forces has been found to be haphazard, because there is not a proper system for collecting data. It is this Government who have committed to gathering and publishing new ethnicity data, and it is this Government who are providing backing for local inquiries that can delve into local detail and deliver more locally relevant answers and change than a lengthy national inquiry of the type that I was involved in.

I said at the beginning of my speech that I am really proud to sit on this Bill Committee on the single biggest piece of children’s safeguarding legislation in a generation. Although I may not agree with the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston and the right hon. Member for East Hampshire on new clause 15, I acknowledge that they have shown as much support for parts of this Bill as anyone, from the family group decision-making meetings, which they thought were “a good thing” and supported, to the inclusion of childcare in schools in safeguarding arrangements, which they said was a very good idea and supported.

The Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, said that

“we welcome the inclusion of education agencies in safeguarding arrangements.”––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 23 January 2025; c. 130.]

On multi-agency protection teams, we heard that they were

“extremely supportive of this principle and agenda” and “generally welcome the clause”, which they described as “sensible”. We heard the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston say that

“it has the potential to address some of the really serious information-sharing gaps that have been so visible in pretty much every serious case review, from Victoria Climbié to the present day.”––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 23 January 2025; c. 133.]

On information sharing and consistent identifiers, we heard that it was

“a very good and important idea, and one of which we are completely supportive.”––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 23 January 2025; c. 146.]

On the provision of advice and support for care leavers, we heard:

“Again, the Opposition support the Government’s objectives in this clause to provide staying close support”. ––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee,28 January 2025; c. 177.]

On the following clause, on a local offer for care leavers, we were told:

“This is a good and sensible clause”.––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 28 January 2025; c. 185.]

On the list of what needs to be included in the local offer and how local authorities will co-operate with housing authorities and provide accommodation for those aged under 25, we heard “this is all good stuff”. Similarly, in relation to regional co-operation and looked-after children accommodation, we heard them say “we support the clause”. The hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston said:

“Were we in office, I suspect that we would be very much considering the same clause.”––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 28 January 2025; c. 190.]

On the ill treatment and wilful neglect of 16 and 17-year-olds, we also saw the Opposition’s support. We were told that clause 19

“closes an important gap in the law”.––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 28 January 2025; c. 239.]

Finally, we saw support for the Government’s intention in relation to withholding consent to home educate where there are safeguarding concerns or a child protection plan. The right hon. Member for East Hampshire said that the Bill was

“right to introduce a register of children not in school”––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 30 January 2025; c. 294.]

and that that was “our policy when in government”.

It is important to list just how much of the Bill the Opposition have shown their support for in this Committee. This Bill will improve the safety of children, particularly young women and girls in deprivation and in care, such as those who have been targeted by grooming gangs. I agree with the hon. Member for Twickenham, who last week said that she was

“pretty outraged—that Conservative colleagues sought to weaponise the issue on Second Reading to try to kill off the entire Bill.”––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 6 February 2025; c. 469.]

The Opposition have been grabbing at headlines to call for an inquiry to address the same questions already asked—

The hon. Lady makes an important point. This is an incredibly serious issue, and we should not be introducing anything that might inadvertently mislead. The Government control the time of the House of Commons. This Bill should probably have been two Bills to begin with; there are two distinct subjects in part 1 and part 2, but, for some reason, they were put together. There was nothing to stop the Government, at any point, from separating out parts of the Bill and reintroducing them immediately into the House of Commons—they literally control the timetable. On the Order Paper today, there was a statement on the business of the House. The Government can change the time and change what is considered in the House of Commons as they choose.

Can the right hon. Gentleman imagine if the wrecking amendment—

Will the hon. Lady give way?

I will not, because I am nearly finished—the right hon. Gentleman will then be able to speak about whatever he wants. Grabbing at headlines to call for an inquiry to address the same questions already asked in a national inquiry at the expense of a Bill that will protect children—

Will the hon. Lady give way?

I will not. The hon. Gentleman will have every opportunity to speak. I am nearly finished.

It is important to imagine the case had Conservative colleagues been successful—new clause 15 is a weak echo of that reckless shout for attention on Second Reading, and a shameful reminder. Alongside all the provisions in the Bill, which they agree will keep children safer, they should get behind the actions that the Home Secretary and the Minister for Safeguarding are driving on the issue of grooming gangs—real action, which means a great deal to me and many others in the Committee. Knowing the horrific abuse that girls from my city have gone through, I am hugely thankful for those actions. Opposition Members in Committee should not just withdraw the new clause, but apologise for risking protections for children by recklessly chasing headlines in this way.

I pay huge tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North for her frankly masterful navigation through the facts. This moment demands the facts—not misrepresentation and the dismissal of previous inquiries, but the gravitas and experience that she has brought to the debate. I believe that has kept the Committee on the track that it is meant to be on.

I simply make the observation against the new clause that this Bill and this moment require leadership. Leadership looks like getting on with making the changes that we have heard about in great detail. The subject has already been thoroughly and fully investigated, with recommendations made by a leading expert. It is time to make those changes to our country, to our law and to our services, first, to allow us to reflect on the past, and the report does that, and, secondly, so that we can get on with catching those who continue to do such things—and that is the horror of it. We are not just talking about something historical. Without doubt, such things are going on as we speak.

It is time to ensure that the whole of Government work together so that our law enforcement agencies are resourced to catch those who perpetrate such disgusting crimes. Crucially, this is the moment to ensure that we prevent them happening in the future. Several of the report’s 20 recommendations are already in train and implementation should be the absolute priority.

That is what leading looks like at this moment, but when it comes to following I am afraid that I agree with the observation made by the hon. Member for North Herefordshire. Some people have become a little bedazzled by social media suggestion and innuendo from certain individuals, wherever they are in the world. Opposition Members should be honest about it: such individuals have absolutely no genuine interest in the victims whose sufferings are known, but have their own political agenda to follow. They use their social media platform to do that, and none of it moves us any closer to doing what we need to do, which is to reflect, to catch the criminals and to prevent such crimes in future.

Those who are able to separate fact from trend will know that the urgent priority at this moment, as my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North so thoughtfully set out, is to act. Anything that becomes a distraction from that should not be supported.

I want to start by agreeing with my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Itchen that leadership and action are needed. Indeed, leadership and action were needed three years ago in February 2022 when the IICSA report came out. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North for her knowledgeable insights and her forensic examination of the Bill, the recommendations and the report. I will spend a moment establishing for the record what exactly those 20 recommendations are asking for, which we as a Government have committed to implementing in full—albeit three years too late for some victims.

Let me list the headings of the report. The first is on a mandatory aggravating factor for CSE offences. The second is on statutory guidance on preventing CSE. The third is on data collection and analysis, and establishing a national database. The fourth is about strengthening the criminal justice response. The fifth is about training for professionals and requiring mandatory training for all professionals working with children, including social workers, police and healthcare staff, to help them recognise the signs of exploitation and act accordingly. The sixth is about a national framework for support, and developing a national framework for services to ensure that appropriate support is available for victims. The seventh is about supporting victims and improving the availability and accessibility of specialised support services for victims. The eighth concerns tailored responses to CSE victims, ensuring authorities provide a tailored response to the specific needs of children who are victims. The ninth is about launching a national public awareness campaign to raise awareness of CSE, educating the public and reducing the stigma that surrounds the victims. The 10th is to strengthen safeguarding in schools and introduce better protocols. The 11th is about tackling perpetrators of CSE, strengthening law enforcement’s abilities to target them. The 12th is for a Government review of safeguarding systems, conducting a review of the national safeguarding system to ensure current measures are sufficiently robust to address child sexual exploitation and victims. The 13th is to ensure adequate local authority resources. The 14th concerns independence for local safeguarding boards. The 15th recommends a review of the placement of settings for vulnerable children. The 16th calls for a stronger legal framework for CSE. The 17th is about increasing the use of risk assessment tools. The 18th is about rehabilitation and reintegration services. The 19th is on specialised support for parents and families and the 20th on a regular review of local authority practices. Each one of those 20 recommendations has the victims at its heart.

I am grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Bournemouth East, for Derby North, for Southampton Itchen and for Portsmouth North, and to the hon. Member for North Herefordshire, for their thoughtful and measured contributions on this incredibly challenging issue. The Prime Minister has made clear that as a Government we are focused on delivering the change and justice that victims deserve.

On 7 January, the Home Secretary outlined in Parliament commitments to introduce a mandatory duty for those engaging with children to report sexual abuse and exploitation, making grooming an aggravating factor to toughen up sentencing and introduce a new performance framework for policing.

On 16 January, the Home Secretary made a further statement to the House that before Easter the Government will lay out a clear timetable for taking forward the 20 recommendations in the final IICSA report, which my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North powerfully set out. All of those recommendations were for the Home Office, including on disclosing and barring, and work on them is already under way.

The Government will implement all the remaining recommendations in IICSA’s separate stand-alone report on grooming gangs from February 2022, and as part of that we will update key Department for Education guidance.[Official Report, 3 March 2025; Vol. 763, c. 3WC.] (Correction) As the Home Secretary states, a cross-Government ministerial group is considering and working through the remaining recommendations, and that group will be supported by a new victims and survivors panel.

Other measures that the Government are taking forward include the appointment of Baroness Casey to lead a rapid audit of existing evidence on grooming gangs, to support a better understanding of the current scale and nature of gang-based exploitation across the country and to make recommendations on the further work needed; extending the remit of the independent Child Sexual Abuse Review Panel so that it covers not just historical cases, from before 2013, but all cases since, so that any victim of abuse will have a right to seek an independent review without having to go back to local institutions that decided not to proceed with their case; and providing stronger national backing for local inquiries by providing £5 million of funding to help local councils to set up their own reviews. Working in partnership with Tom Crowther KC, the Home Office will develop a new effective framework for victim-centred, locally led inquiries.

This landmark Bill will put in place a package of measures to support and drive high and rising standards throughout our education and care systems, so that every child can achieve and thrive. It will protect children at risk of abuse, stopping vulnerable children falling through the cracks in services. On that basis, I hope that the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston will withdraw his new clause.

I want to point out a tension between the arguments that we have heard. One type of argument says that the job is done; there is nothing more to find out. It dismisses calls for further work as “gesture politics”—that is one phrase that we heard this morning. The hon. Member for Southampton Itchen said that the grooming gangs had been “fully investigated”. I do not believe that, nor do the victims—in fact, not a single official has been held to account. More importantly perhaps, the Government do not believe it either. They argue that more work is needed—the disagreement is simply whether there should be local inquiries rather than a national inquiry. Members continue to make arguments that the Government were perhaps making at the start of the year, but that is not where the Government are now.

On the hon. Gentleman’s point that members of this Committee have said, in so many words, that the job is done and we do not have anything more to learn, I want to be categorical in saying that those are not the words that I use and I did not imply that in anything that I said. I look to Committee colleagues to nod if they agree. All people who spoke today have nodded to affirm that what the hon. Gentleman has just said is not a true representation of what in fact they were saying or even implying, so may I please ask him to withdraw that statement?

The people who read the transcript of this debate or perhaps have been listening to it at home can judge for themselves whether what I said was a fair summary of the arguments put forward by Government Members.

On the point about putting words in people’s mouths, nobody has said this is job done—quite the contrary. What we have consistently said is that we do not believe another national inquiry is needed. The Alexis Jay report took seven years, engaged 7,000 victims and had 15 separate strands. In the last 12 years, we have had hundreds of inquiries, serious case reviews and 600 recommendations. It is time for action. It is time to put this into practice and provide the justice that these victims deserve. That is what this Government are focused on doing.

I wonder whether the Minister agreed with the hon. Member for Southampton Itchen, who said that the grooming gangs had been “fully investigated”. Does she agree with that? I am happy to take another intervention if she does. She does not want to stand up and say that she agrees with her hon. Friend, so the tension I pointed out is real. On one hand there is an argument that there is nothing more to be found out; everyone who should be held to account has been held to account; and we must not go back into it—there is no need to go back into it. On the other hand there is the Government’s admission that we need more local inquiries.

This whole discussion did not start with some person on social media. This whole conversation started because Oldham council formally asked for a national inquiry into what happened there, and it did so because it did not have, at local level, the powers needed: it cannot summon witnesses, take evidence under oath or requisition evidence. It was that request from a council—a good and sensible request—that started this discussion. I have already listed some of the Labour people who have argued for a national inquiry. I hope that in the end they will win the argument in the Labour party, but until then, I want to put the new clause to the vote.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

The Committee divided: Ayes 3, Noes 11.

Question accordingly negatived.