Heywood and Middleton MP, Chris Clarkson, spoke yesterday in the House of Commons during a debate which was triggered by two e-petitions signed by over 160,000 people calling on the government to release its review into issue of grooming gangs and child sexual exploitation, which was published last week.
The MP welcomed the recent publication of the Tackling Child Sexual Abuse Strategy but sounded “a note of caution” stating that “this is an excellent first step in getting some measure of justice for the survivors of child sexual exploitation, but it is not an endpoint in and of itself.”
Prior to the debate, Mr Clarkson met with police officers from Greater Manchester Police, Mary Robinson, the Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Whistleblowing and Member of Parliament for Parliament for Cheadle, and whistleblower Maggie Oliver.
The MP remarked that during the meeting Ms Oliver “rightly pointed out, when I talked about historical child abuse, that these crimes are actually still ongoing and are very often unseen, and that is why this new strategy is so important.”
He then highlighted that “the first objective of the strategy is to tackle the abuse and bring offenders to justice. I cannot stress enough how important that is. Justice has to be seen to be done. The people who commit these wicked acts and rob young people of their childhoods should be removed from decent society—including those who would seek to abuse the courts and try to frustrate deportation orders and other sanctions used to protect the victims.”
The Heywood and Middleton MP welcomed “robust intelligence sharing and wider improvements to the criminal justice system such as an additional 20,000 police officers, 10,000 prison places and an extra £85 million for the Crown Prosecution Service” and urged the Home Office “to send a clear signal that the law is there to protect the innocent and punish the guilty.”
He also welcomed “the national vulnerability action plan and place-based strategies that respond to threats within communities, such as child sexual exploitation, by making use of a range of data and local stakeholders and expressed his wholehearted “support for the Home Office’s commitment to educate children and young people about healthy relationships in the digital world.”
Mr Clarkson went on to praise “the courage of a few individuals to stand up for those whose voices the system chose not to hear” but remarked that “not every victim has a Sara Rowbotham or a Maggie Oliver willing to put their own livelihood and reputation on the line just to see justice done” as he urged for the entire system to be reformed.
The MP concluded by stating that “if one child has been abused physically, emotionally or sexually should be a cause for sorrow and anger in equal measure; that these awful crimes should have been permitted on a near-industrial scale, aided and abetted by the practised disinterest of the authorities, should cause horror and serious reflection. I thank those who have dedicated so much of themselves and their time to tackling this hateful behaviour and I stand with them, fully committed to doing whatever it takes to give justice to those so very badly let down.”
