Lord Pearson of Rannoch – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Pearson of Rannoch on 2016-03-22.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, following the cases of organised grooming and sexual exploitation in Rotherham and elsewhere, whether police forces have been issued with new guidance on responding to allegations of abuse; and if so, what is that guidance.
Lord Keen of Elie
The Government does not hold information on the faith of those accused or convicted of child sexual exploitation (CSE) offences.
CSE is not exclusive to any single culture, community, race or religion, and anyone who abuses children must be stopped. It happens in all areas of the country and can take many different forms. However, the previous Government’s ‘Tackling Child Sexual Exploitation’ report of March 2015 makes it very clear that the issue of race, regardless of ethnic group, should be tackled as a priority if it is known to be a significant factor in the criminal activity of organised abuse in any local community.
The College of Policing (CoP) has issued clear guidance on how police forces should respond to allegations of child sexual abuse and exploitation. This is available on the CoP website at: https://www.app.college.police.uk/app-content/major-investigation-and-public-protection/child-abuse/ .
In addition the National Policing Lead for child protection has taken action to revise the national policing CSE action plan to take account of the learning from the Professor Alexis Jay report and other recent publications. All Chief Constables have committed to this action plan that aims to raise standards in tackling CSE so that the police are providing a consistently strong approach to protecting vulnerable young people. The action plan is available on the CoP website at: https://www.app.college.police.uk/app-content/major-investigation-and-public-protection/child-sexual-exploitation/cse-action-plan/
