The below Parliamentary question was asked by Rebecca Long Bailey on 2016-01-28.
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent steps she has taken to safeguard 16 and 17 year olds from child sexual exploitation.
Karen Bradley
Tackling child sexual exploitation is a top priority for this Government. We have prioritised child sexual abuse as a national threat in the Strategic Policing Requirement, setting a clear expectation on police forces to collaborate across force boundaries, to safeguard children, to share intelligence and to share best practice.
The Government has overhauled the legislative options available to the police in tackling child sexual exploitation. Most importantly we have introduced new Sexual Risk Orders (SRO) and Sexual Harm Prevention Orders (SHPO) which the police can now use to manage an individual who presents a risk of sexual harm to a child, including a young person aged 16 and 17. The Government has also removed all references to the misleading and unhelpful terms ‘child prostitution’ and ‘child pornography’ from statute via the Serious Crime Act 2015. The law now explicitly recognises these harmful activities for what they are: child sexual exploitation.
This Government is committed to supporting victims of sexual exploitation, in December 2014 the Government announced a £7 million uplift to services supporting survivors of sexual abuse, including child sexual exploitation. This was in addition to the £1.72 million a year the Home Office provides to part fund 87 Independent Sexual Violence Advisors to work with and support victims. In January 2016, the Ministry of Justice announced that Government will continue the £7 million uplift to support survivors and victims of sexual abuse, including child sexual exploitation.
