Yvette Cooper
MP for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley · Labour · United Kingdom
“NATO has been the cornerstone of Euro-Atlantic security for over 75 years, protecting more than a billion people, but to ensure it remains as strong for the next 75 years, it needs to respond to changing threats.”
“He may have seen that the Prime Minister and the Canadian Prime Minister put out a joint statement over the last couple of days to set out how we seek to work together to ensure that those initiatives, which do slightly different things, can combine and collaborate to ensure that we get the best possible impact.”
“The world must not fail the people of Sudan again. Last week, the UK convened an urgent debate at the United Nations Human Rights Council. A UK-penned resolution condemned atrocities, called for an urgent UN fact finding inquiry and urged the RSF to comply with international law and halt this attack, urging both the RSF and the Sudanese A…”
“We agree about the nature of the increasingly dangerous world we live in and the importance of us being able to defend ourselves and maintain our security. We have committed to reaching the 3.5% commitment on defence, but that is part of a 5% commitment that was made to cover broader defence and security intelligence.”
“I did take the opportunity to discuss the situation in both the west bank and Gaza with some of our allies and partners. I am deeply worried that last year’s 20-point plan for Gaza—which was hugely important and which we supported, as did the whole world—is at risk of running into the ground.”
“As I have said, our security since the second world war has very much depended on the NATO alliance, which has always been a defensive alliance that has built its strength through deterrence. Deterrence is immensely important. When we reached the end of the cold war in 1990, there was at that point a substantial peace dividend.”
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“On the key issues of ethnicity that I asked Baroness Casey to examine, she has found continued failure to gather proper robust national data, despite concerns being raised going back many years. In the local data examined from three police forces, the audit identifies clear evidence of over-representation among suspects of Asian and Pakistani-heritage men. Baroness Casey refers to “examples of organisations avoiding the topic altogether for fear of appearing racist or raising community tensions”. These findings are deeply disturbing, but most disturbing of all, as Baroness Casey makes clear, is the fact that too many of them are not new.”
“The audit describes victims as young as 10—often those in care or children with learning or physical disabilities—being singled out for grooming precisely because of their vulnerability; perpetrators still walking free because no one joined the dots or because the law ended up protecting them instead of the victims they had exploited; and deep-rooted institutional failures, stretching back decades, where organisations that should have protected children and punished offenders looked the other way. Baroness Casey found that “blindness, ignorance, prejudice, defensiveness and even good but misdirected intentions” all played a part in that collective failure.”
“I am grateful that Louise and her team have done exactly that, conducting a hugely wide-ranging assessment in just four months. The findings of her audit are damning. At its heart, she identifies a deep-rooted failure to treat children as children, and a continued failure to protect children and teenage girls from rape, exploitation and serious violence and from the scars that last a lifetime. She finds too much fragmentation in the authorities’ response, too little sharing of information, too much reliance on flawed data, too much denial, too little justice, too many criminals getting off and too many victims being let down.”
“Earlier this year, I also commissioned Baroness Louise Casey to undertake a rapid national audit of the nature, scale and characteristics of gang-based exploitation. I specifically asked her to look at the issue of ethnicity and the cultural and social drivers of this type of offending—analysis that previously had never been done despite years of concerns being raised. I asked her to advise us on what further reviews, investigations and actions would be needed to address the current and historical failures that she found. I told Parliament in January that I expected Baroness Casey to deliver the same kind of impactful and no-holds-barred report that she produced on Rotherham in 2015, so that we never shy away from the reality of these terrible crimes.”
“More than 800 cases have now been identified for formal review, and I expect that figure to rise above 1,000 in the coming weeks. Let me be clear: perpetrators of these vile crimes should be off our streets, behind bars, paying the price for what they have done. Further rapid action is also under way to implement recommendations of past inquiries and reviews, including the seven-year independent inquiry into child abuse—recommendations that have sat on the shelf for too long. In the Crime and Policing Bill, we are introducing the long-overdue mandatory reporting duty, which I called for more than 10 years ago, as well as aggravated offences for grooming offenders so that their sentences match the severity of their crimes.”
“They should never have been let down for so long. The sexual exploitation of children by grooming gangs is one of the most horrific crimes. Children as young as 10, plied with drugs and alcohol, were brutally raped by gangs of men and disgracefully let down again and again by the authorities that were meant to protect them and keep them safe. These despicable crimes have caused the most unimaginable harm to victims and survivors throughout their lives and are a stain on our society. Five months ago, I told the House that our most important task was to stop perpetrators and put them behind bars. I can report that that work is accelerating—arrests and investigations are increasing. I asked police forces in January to identify cases involving grooming and child sexual exploitation allegations that had been closed with no further action.”
“With permission, I will update the House on the audit the Government commissioned from Baroness Casey on child sexual exploitation and grooming gangs, and on the action we are taking to tackle this vile crime—to put perpetrators behind bars and to provide the innocent victims of those crimes with support and justice. The House will be aware that on Friday seven men were found guilty of committing the most horrendous crimes in Rochdale between 2000 and 2006. They were convicted of treating teenage girls as sex slaves, repeatedly raping them in filthy flats, alleyways and warehouses. The perpetrators included taxi drivers and market traders of Pakistani heritage, and it has taken 20 years to bring them to justice. I pay tribute to the incredible bravery of the women who told their stories and fought for justice for all those years.”
“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.”
“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 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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I welcome what my hon. Friend has done over many years to champion victims in Oldham and across her constituency, and to work with survivors. She is right to point to the terrible delays in the justice system. She will know that the Lord Chancellor is taking forward reforms to look at how the huge backlog, particularly in Crown court cases, can be dealt with. Justice delayed is justice denied, and so many survivors have already waited far too long for justice. I assure my hon. Friend that those concerns are uppermost in the Lord Chancellor’s mind.”
“Gentleman will be able to make representations about his area, and other MPs will be able to make representations about their areas too.”
“The right hon. Gentleman raises an important question. Ultimately, the final decisions will need to be for the independent chair and the commission—that is what happens when we set it up as a national inquiry, rather than a Government process. He will know that concerns have been raised about investigations and inquiries that have taken place in Greater Manchester, where some areas could not be compelled to take part. As a result, there has been work with His Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary to pursue the final stages of an investigation and inquiry. We did look at whether there were other powers, either through local government Acts or through police inspection powers. However, the simplest way to address this issue is for it to be done through the national inquiry. The right hon.”
“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.”
“I thank the hon. Member for speaking out about his experience. I do not underestimate how brave it is and how difficult it can be to do that, and he will be giving all kinds of support to other victims and survivors simply by the fact that he has done so. The hon. Member is right to raise the challenge of how we ensure that recommendations are actually implemented. He will know that we want to extend therapeutic support to victims and survivors, but as the Health Secretary is setting out, we will start by providing additional support and training for those who provide mental health support in our schools.”
“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.”
“Member to look at the 17-page section of Louise Casey’s report on the failure, year after year, to follow through and take action, and I do believe that victims and survivors are owed an apology for that failure over very many years.”
“The hon. Member raises the timescale. In the discussions we have had with Baroness Casey, and recognising the many issues that people want to raise in the inquiry, we had expected that it would take around three years, but if the commission is able to work faster than that, people will clearly want answers as swiftly as possible. The final details about the timings are obviously to be determined. We need to make sure both that we are implementing the recommendations of previous inquiries and that we are pursuing further the investigations in local areas as swiftly as possible. I reiterated in my statement a recognition of the huge harm that has been done to victims and survivors through the decades. I would urge the hon.”
“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.”
“Everyone should want not just to get to the truth about past failures, but to ensure we make the changes to protect children for the future. That includes changes in social services; changes in policing and the police operation, which I hope the right hon. Lady would welcome, to take action to put perpetrators behind bars; and action to gather proper ethnicity data, which simply has not been gathered properly before. Louise Casey’s report is very clear: the data gathering that the right hon. Lady’s Government left behind is totally inadequate. I hope she will agree to all those factors being extremely important, so that we can get stronger protection, and truth, for victims.”
“I know that my hon. Friend has championed victims and survivors in her area and community. She is right to say that we have to make sure that victims and survivors get support. Some 7,000 victims and survivors gave evidence to the original Professor Alexis Jay inquiry. It is so important that they did not do so in vain, and that we make the reforms and the changes related to that recommendation. My hon. Friend is also right to say we need to increase the therapeutic support for victims and survivors. That will start with providing additional support for children.”
“The answer is yes. I recognise that the hon. Gentleman has raised this issue. Back in January, I said that I would undertake further work to ensure that the local investigations had the powers to compel witnesses in order to be able to get the evidence. We agree with Baroness Casey and have concluded that the right way to do this is to have the national inquiry, which will mean that every local investigation has full powers to compel witnesses and evidence. Where and how those investigations take place will be directed by the national commission and the national inquiry, in order to ensure they have those full powers in place.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I welcome my hon. Friend’s point. The Minister for Safeguarding will follow up these issues with the devolved Administrations. My hon. Friend is right that this is a devolved issue but that this kind of appalling crime is happening everywhere. Action is needed everywhere to safeguard and protect children.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I welcome the hon. Member’s points. Baroness Casey’s review identifies that sexual exploitation is a central part of trafficking, and modern slavery as well. I agree with him about the importance of sharing information. Time and again on these basic things, everybody says the right words and then it does not happen in practice. We need the law to change, but we also need systems to change to make it easier to share that information. We will take that forward both in policing and as part of the work that my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary is doing so that it is much easier to share that information.”
“Baroness Casey’s audit was conducted in just four months but looked at some of the issues in considerable detail. It also sets out the fact that we have had 16 years of different reports and inquiries—that includes some of the issues around the 200-page report that my hon. Friend refers to, and other reports as well. The crucial thing is that we need action. Victims and survivors need answers, and we need to pursue serious failings wherever they are found, but we must also ensure that when recommendations are made, they are implemented.”
“The hon. Member will know that many of the issues around social services provisions are matters for the Welsh Government, but issues around policing are covered by the Home Office. We have already been working with police forces across the country to strengthen the work of the child sexual exploitation taskforce to be able to look at different cases that have been closed, as well as to strengthen their work with local partners to be able to pursue these terrible crimes. As part of the policing operation that will be led by the National Crime Agency and draw on expertise from across the country, we will ensure that that connects with the work being done by the Welsh Government. The Safeguarding Minister is following up with devolved Administrations.”
“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.”
“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.”
“My hon. Friend raises an important issue about victims. Victims in the many communities that he has talked about, including Sikh girls, often lack the confidence to come forward and feel the sense of shame that prevents young people from being able to ask for help when they need it. It is therefore essential that we strengthen the ethnicity data around victims as well as around perpetrators, to make sure that victims and survivors in all communities get the support and safeguarding they need.”
“The decisions about which areas are looked into, and how many, will be matters for the commission. We envisage the commission lasting for three years. I know that the Leader of the Opposition suggested two years, but we think it will need around three years to be able to pursue the scale of work that is needed. I think it is right that the final decisions are ones for the commission and the independent national inquiry itself, and it will be able to look anywhere across England and Wales and to pursue the evidence wherever it sees fit.”
“I respect the hon. Member’s important points. In fact, inaccurate information was one of the issues that Baroness Casey raised. Whether it is about ethnicity or anything else, inaccurate information can cause huge problems, and the more we ensure that information is robust, the better. As the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee said, Baroness Casey will also give evidence tomorrow, so people will be able to hear directly from her as well as reading her report.”
“Baroness Casey was impressed by the work that West Yorkshire police had done using what it called the Smith algorithm; it is included in her report. It looks at risk factors, such as children missing from home or school, those with repeated missing episodes, and children in care, and at areas where risks were high. It uses that to identify people who might be victims of child grooming and sexual abuse and exploitation, and then to pursue that evidence. West Yorkshire police has had a series of effective and successful prosecutions that have put perpetrators behind bars, so I join my hon. Friend in welcoming that work.”
“I welcome the hon. Member’s point. It is immensely important that victims and survivors in every community of every ethnicity can get justice and the support they need, and that issues around race and ethnicity are never used as an excuse to ignore victims or to fail to pursue criminals committing the most terrible crimes. We want to work with the police to ensure not only that we can get effective data and recording on victims, but that the right kind of services and support are in place so that every victim is heard.”
“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.”
“Ten days ago, and this is Baroness Casey’s independent report. Anybody who suggests that she would change her views and reports for anyone has not met her.”
“I welcome my hon. Friend’s point about the need to ensure that victims are not criminalised for the coercion and crimes committed against them. That failure—the tendency to blame victims for the appalling crimes committed against them—has been a pervasive problem through the years. We are looking further at the issues of online grooming and exploitation, which are escalating. In a complication, more teenagers themselves are involved in that exploitation. It is more complicated to identify where people are being coerced and where they are actually criminals committing these crimes.”
“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.”