Yvette Cooper says professionals to face criminal sanctions for failing to report child abuse
The home secretary defended her decision not to launch a national inquiry into the grooming scandal
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Your support makes all the difference.The home secretary has announced the professionals who work with children will face criminal sanctions if they do not report child sexual abuse.
Yvette Cooper told MPs that a “significant package of measures” will be announced by the government in the next few weeks aimed at tackling online child sexual exploitation.
She also defended her decision not to launch a national inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal, despite calls from Reform UK and Conservative politicians, as well an online backlash from multi-billionaire Elon Musk.
Ms Cooper raised concerns in the Commons about how police forces collect data, describing it as “haphazard”, before claiming data published on the ethnicity of perpetrators is not adequate.
Announcing new measures, she said: “We will make it mandatory to report abuse, and we will put the measures in the crime and policing bill that will be put before parliament this spring, making it an offence with professional and criminal sanctions to fail to report or cover up child sexual abuse.
“The protection of institutions must never be put before the protection of children. This measure is something I first called for in response to the reports and failings in Rotherham 10 years ago.
“It’s something that the Prime Minister first called for 12 years ago based on his experience as director of public prosecutions, and the case was clear then, but we have lost a decade, and we need to get on with it now.”
She also said that the government plans to introduce a victims and survivors panel to oversee reforms and make grooming an aggravating factor in child sexual offences.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp repeated calls for a national inquiry and was met with shouts of “shame” from the Labour benches as he said: “It is not far-right to stand up for victims of mass rape.”
“Smearing people who raised those issues is exactly how this ended up getting covered up in the first place,” he added.
Responding, Ms Cooper said: “The truth is there just has not been enough action to tackle these vile crimes. There hasn’t been enough change to policies, to the way in which services operate at local level, and that is a deep failing that those changes have not taken place.”
Ms Cooper said Labour called for it to be mandatory to report abuse 10 years ago, adding: “We called for it 10 years ago. He had a decade in order to introduce that, a decade that we have now lost without having those powers and those measures in place.”
She continued: “I would just say to him, his party launched the child abuse inquiry, they set the terms of reference, they provided the substantial funding for it, and he could have raised concerns about its terms of reference, about the scope of it, about the extent of its reports at any point, including at any point since it reported.
“And he didn’t do so until last week.”
Mr Philp also asked the home secretary to confirm if data from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse on the ethnicity of perpetrators will be published.
Ms Cooper replied: “It’s already been published, it was published in November, the latest report was published in November … as a result of the work of the taskforce.
“I would just say to him, though, I don’t think that the data that they have gathered actually is adequate. I don’t think it goes far enough. I think there’s a real problem with the way in which we collect data, and police forces collect data.”
It comes as the prime minister remains embroiled in a row with billionaire Elon Musk over calls for a national investigation into child sexual abuse following his speech on Monday.
Responding to questions about a slew of social media posts from the Tesla and X owner, Sir Keir Starmer accused Mr Musk and others of “spreading lies and misinformation”, adding they were “not interested in victims, they are interested in themselves”.
He also criticised comments in which Mr Musk described home office minister Jess Phillips as a “rape genocide apologist”, saying “a line has been crossed” leading to threats against the minister as a result of the “poison of the far-right”.
Earlier on Monday, Mr Musk had accused the prime minister of being “complicit in the crimes” of child sex offenders.
Mr Musk continued his attacks on Sir Keir following his speech, describing him as “utterly despicable” and “insane” and accusing the prime minister of refusing demands for a national inquiry because it would show he was “deeply complicit in the mass rapes in exchange for votes”.