Tag: Victoria Atkins

The statement made by Victoria Atkins, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, in the House of Commons on 14 January 2021.

With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a statement. The coronavirus pandemic has presented this country with enormous and unprecedented challenges. In order to control the spread of the virus, we have had to ask the public to follow a simple but crucial instruction: stay at home. Earlier this month we entered a new national lockdown, and while we are absolutely clear that these measures are necessary, it is also important to recognise the potential impact on what we refer to as hidden harm crimes, which include domestic abuse, child sexual exploitation and modern slavery. These are some of the most pernicious, harmful types of offending in society, and they often occur behind closed doors. Given that fact, let me reiterate a crucial message that the Prime Minister delivered to the public last week: notwithstanding the restrictions in place, those at risk of abuse can leave home to seek safety and avoid the risk of harm.

Protecting those at risk of abuse and exploitation remains a priority for this Government, which is why I am so pleased that today I can announce the launch of a new codeword scheme for victims of domestic abuse called Ask for ANI. From today, thousands of pharmacies across the UK will provide this service, enabling victims to seek help discreetly. Through a signal to a pharmacist, a victim will be provided with a safe space in the pharmacy, and taken through the support available to them, whether that is a call to the police or a domestic abuse helpline service. The codeword scheme will offer a vital lifeline to all victims, ensuring that they get help in a safe and discreet way.

Let me set out more of the steps that we have taken to ensure that victims and those at risk can continue to access critical advice and support. We have provided unprecedented levels of additional funding to critical frontline services helping victims of domestic abuse. As part of wider charitable funding, the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government have between them distributed more than £25 million in emergency covid-19 funding for domestic abuse organisations. That has provided almost 1,900 bed spaces in safe accommodation, and enabled domestic abuse organisations of all sizes to provide advice and support to victims. For example, Home Office funding allowed the charity Safelives to train hundreds of frontline workers online, including new independent domestic violence advisers. To help sustain those charities through the second part of the year, we are providing further funding of nearly £11 million from the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office.

Although funding forms an important strand of our response, it is also vital that victims of domestic abuse, and those worried about them, know how to access help and advice. In April, the Home Secretary launched the #YouAreNotAlone communications campaign to do precisely that. The campaign has reached almost 25 million people through paid advertising, and has been supported by a range of celebrities and influencers who have shared its messages with more than 130 million followers on social media. Materials have been translated into 16 languages. The campaign directs victims to sources of specialist help and support. It also makes clear that the “stay at home” restrictions do not apply to those at risk of abuse who need to leave home to seek help or refuge. We have relaunched the campaign over the winter to reaffirm those messages, and I ask hon. Members across the House to do everything they can to highlight that campaign, and make clear to victims that help continues to be at hand, should they need it.

The police have been, and will continue to be proactive in tackling domestic abuse during this period. Courts have continued to prioritise domestic and child abuse cases throughout, as well as civil protection orders relating to domestic abuse, stalking, forced marriage and female genital mutilation. We have seen many innovative police responses to domestic abuse during the pandemic. The Metropolitan police has developed an online function for the domestic violence disclosure scheme, whereby police can disclose previous domestic violence history to new partners. Nottinghamshire police is applying the disclosure scheme in every domestic abuse occurrence. Other forces are able to use discreet technology to take witness statements remotely, without leaving any trace on the victim’s phone. Some forces, such as Gloucestershire police, have used spare capacity to instigate dedicated domestic violence response vehicles, while independent domestic violence advisers are helping to support victims.

There are, sadly, other forms of hidden harms within domestic abuse, and we are acutely aware that the pandemic has increased risks to some children and young people, and reduced their contact with trusted professionals and adults. The Government are committed to doing everything they can to continue to support and protect children at risk, and they have provided more than £11 million since last June to Barnardo’s See, Hear, Respond service, to support more than 50,000 vulnerable or hidden children, whose usual support networks have been affected by national and local pandemic restrictions.

The Home Office has also launched a national communications campaign, Something’s Not Right, to help children who have been exposed to a range of harms, reaching millions of secondary school children in England. At this time, we are particularly concerned about online harms. With children spending more time on the internet, parents have been signposted to materials for staying safe online, including from the National Crime Agency’s Thinkuknow campaign.

A record number of reports of online child sexual abuse have been processed by the UK’s Internet Watch Foundation, including a large increase in self-generated indecent images of children. The Home Office is providing £80,000 to support the development of the IWF’s campaign to support parents in starting conversations with their children around keeping safe online, and to help young people to identify the signs of coercion and to report abuse. In December, we published the full Government response to the online harms White Paper, which sets out our expectations on companies to keep their users safe, especially children. At the same time, we published the interim code of practice on online child sexual exploitation and abuse, which sets out steps that companies can take now to tackle these crimes on a voluntary basis, ahead of any regulatory system being introduced.

Another form of hidden harm is modern slavery. The Government are committed to the safety and security of victims of modern slavery, particularly during the pandemic, by ensuring that victims are provided with the support they need and that those responsible for these crimes are prosecuted. Last year, we made an additional £1.73 million available for modern slavery services in England and Wales. The funding has enabled providers to adapt the ways in which they provide support during the pandemic, including by reducing face-to-face contact where appropriate and ensuring that support can be accessed remotely. The new Victim Care Contract came into force last week and will help to ensure that victims receive the care they need. In early adopter sites, child victims of modern slavery continue to be supported by the Independent Child Trafficking Guardian scheme which is working flexibly to continue to provide effective and responsive support remotely, both to trafficked children directly and to other professionals. Law enforcement agencies continue to pursue high-risk modern slavery cases where there is a risk of harm or detriment to individuals.

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, we have remained resolute in our commitment to tackling abuse that takes place behind closed doors and out of sight. We continue to work across Government to monitor, assess and respond to the ongoing situation, but I ask all hon. Members to consider ways in which they can point victims in their constituencies to support. We will continue to prioritise domestic abuse during and after the pandemic. To do this, we remain committed to delivering our landmark Domestic Abuse Bill to further strengthen protections for victims and bring perpetrators to justice.

In addition, this year we will publish the new Tackling Violence against Women and Girls strategy, which will help us to better target perpetrators and support victims of these abhorrent crimes. We are currently running a call for evidence to inform the new strategy, and I urge hon. Members to share this via their networks within their constituencies to help us reach as wide an audience as possible. This will be followed by a dedicated and complementary domestic abuse strategy that will ensure progress following the passage of the landmark Domestic Abuse Bill. We will soon publish the first-of-its-kind strategy on tackling all forms of child sexual abuse, outlining our long-term ambition to drive a whole-system response in tackling this heinous crime.

In conclusion, I would like to thank everyone involved in helping victims of hidden crimes in this pandemic and beyond, from those working in domestic abuse refuges and community services and in modern slavery safe accommodation, to those scouring the internet to remove images of children being raped, as well as our police officers, our National Crime Agency officers, our Border Force officers and those working in the security services to support this work. I thank them all for what they are doing to help support victims and to stop perpetrators of these terrible crimes. I would like to finish by reassuring all victims of hidden harms that they are not alone, their voices are heard and help will continue to be there for them. I commend this statement to the House.

The statement made by Victoria Atkins, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, in the House of Commons on 22 September 2020.

Today, the Government have published their response to the transparency in supply consultation. A copy of the Government response will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses and it will also be published on gov.uk.

The landmark transparency provisions in the Modern Slavery Act 2015 established the UK as the first country in the world to require businesses to report annually on their work to prevent and address risks of modern slavery in their operations and supply chains. This legislation was introduced to empower investors, consumers and civil society to hold businesses to account, and it has since sparked an international trend for supply chains legislation.

I am proud that thousands of businesses have risen to the challenge of reporting and consistently raised the benchmark for transparency since the Act came into force. This year the Government joined the private sector in opening up about their supply chains, becoming the first country in the world to publish a Government modern slavery statement setting out how we are leveraging public spending to prevent risks in Government supply chains and drive responsible practices. In his foreword to the statement, the Prime Minister made the Government’s ambitions clear:

“It’s not enough for Government and businesses to simply say they don’t tolerate modern slavery. As we take stock of both the challenges faced and achievements made, we must match our words with actions.”

Five years on from the Act, it has become more important than ever that businesses take responsibility for their supply chains, and I am committed to ensuring this Government maintain their global leadership on this agenda. In May 2019, the final report of the independent review of the Modern Slavery Act, led by Frank Field, my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) and the noble Baroness Butler-Sloss GBE, considered the Act’s transparency legislation alongside four other key areas and made a compelling case for change. In response, the Home Office launched a public consultation seeking views on a range of measures to strengthen section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act and enhance the impact of transparency.

I am grateful for the expertise of the reviewers and of those who responded to the consultation. Today, I am proud to announce the ambitious package of measures we will be taking forwards to strengthen and future-proof the Modern Slavery Act’s transparency legislation.

To improve transparency, we will be requiring all organisations caught by the Act to publish their statement to a central Government-run reporting service, to ensure organisations’ work to prevent modern slavery is open to scrutiny. At the same time, we will be introducing ​mandatory topics that modern slavery statements must cover, to increase transparency and encourage year on year improvement in key areas. Taken together, these measures will drive a race to the top, ensuring progress is recognised and gaps are addressed.

To improve compliance, we will introduce a single reporting deadline on which all statements must be published. We are also considering options for civil penalties for non-compliance forwards in line with the development of the single enforcement body for employment rights, led by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

Finally, we will be extending the reporting requirement to public bodies—a global first. Leveraging public spending is a crucial step towards driving responsible practices and identifying risks, and I welcome the voluntary efforts of many public sector organisations on this agenda. Like businesses, public sector organisations have a responsibility to be transparent about modern slavery risks in their supply chains and how these are being addressed. Ministerial Government Departments have already committed to publishing annual modern slavery statements, the first of which will be published in September 2021.

Many of these measures are global firsts. However, I am determined that Government and industry do everything possible to protect vulnerable workers from exploitation. Tackling modern slavery remains a priority for the Government and I will continue to look at what further measures are needed to strengthen our response, in partnership with the devolved Administrations, law enforcement, business, public sector organisations, NGOs, civil society and the independent anti-slavery commissioner.

Below is the text of the statement made by Victoria Atkins, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, in the House of Commons on 3 March 2020.

I am pleased to announce that today the Government will be re-introducing the Domestic Abuse Bill in the House of Commons.​

This landmark Bill will help better protect and support the victims of domestic abuse and their children and bring perpetrators to justice.

The measures in the Bill seek to:

Promote awareness—to put domestic abuse at the top of everyone’s agenda, including by legislating for a statutory definition of domestic abuse, emphasising that domestic abuse is not just physical and sexual violence, but can also be emotional, coercive or controlling, and economic abuse. Statutory guidance will accompany the definition to assist in understanding and dissemination of this important feature of the Bill, including taking account of the fact that the majority of victims of domestic abuse are women.

Protect and support victims, including by introducing a new domestic abuse protection notice and domestic abuse protection order, and placing a new duty on tier one local authorities in England to provide support to victims of domestic abuse and their children in refuges and other safe accommodation.

Transform the justice response, including by helping victims to give their best evidence in the criminal courts through the use of video evidence, screens and other special measures, and ensuring that victims of abuse do not suffer further trauma in family court proceedings by being cross-examined by their abuser.

Improve performance—the new Domestic Abuse Commissioner will help drive consistency and better performance in the response to domestic abuse across all local areas and agencies.

The Bill was originally introduced in July 2019 having had the benefit of pre-legislative scrutiny by a Joint Committee of both Houses, chaired by the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Maria Miller). In the Government’s original response to the Joint Committee’s report (CP 137), we undertook to publish a further response addressing the outstanding recommendations; the Government have today published this further response alongside the re-introduction of the Bill (CP 214). Copies of the further response will be available from the Vote Office and it will also be published on the www.gov.uk website.

Part 2 of the Bill establishes in law the independent office of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner. Clause 10 makes provision for a framework document which, in effect, sets out how the Home Secretary and the Commissioner will work together. The document deals with, among other things, matters relating to governance, and the funding and staffing of the Commissioner’s office. To assist the scrutiny of the Bill, I have today published a draft of the framework document which has been agreed with the designate Commissioner, Nicole Jacobs.

The draft framework document, together with other Bill documents including a revised impact assessment and policy equality statement are available at: https://www. gov.uk/government/collections/domestic-abuse-bill.

Below is the text of the statement made by Victoria Atkins, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, on 27 February 2020.

With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a statement on Her Majesty’s inspectorate of police, fire and rescue services’ thematic report on its national child protection inspection programme. This important report was published today and summarises the findings of 64 inspections and re-inspections of police forces’ approaches to child protection since the programme began in 2014.

Keeping our children safe is an absolute priority for this Government, and we welcome Her Majesty’s inspectorate’s work in this area. Protecting vulnerable people should be of utmost importance to the police, and we are committed to ensuring that police forces demonstrate continued improvement in this regard. The activity of our independent inspectorates is critical to our ability to monitor progress and drive change. In the five years since it began, the national child protection inspection programme has been a vital source of independent scrutiny and challenge, and it has been instrumental in driving improvements in the way the police work with vulnerable children. As we know too well, this is an area of police work in which we have seen some of the worst failures in the past.

The report notes that

“we have continued to see an unambiguous commitment from police leaders, officers and staff to the protection of children.”

The report recognises improvements—in some cases, significant improvements—in the service received by children at risk. In every case, when inspectors returned to a police force that had previously been inspected, they saw progress being made and better outcomes for children. They saw examples of good, innovative work, such as the programme in Wales to provide early support to children exposed to adverse childhood experiences. Officers are better at understanding the signs of vulnerability and recognising children who are at risk. We welcome the positive findings in today’s report.

The report is clear, however, that more needs to be done. Although the police have a better understanding of risk, their resources are too often focused on areas of acute risk. Not enough is being done to spot the earliest signs of risk and prevent those risks from escalating. There are concerning findings around the detention of vulnerable children. Children are too often being detained in custody when they should not be, and they are not being appropriately safeguarded in those situations. There are inconsistencies in how forces manage dangerous offenders, and the escalation in the prevalence of digital technology in offending is a significant challenge, meaning that it is taking too long to identify and safeguard children who have been the victims of sexual abuse online.

These are serious matters, and I want to set out the steps the Government are taking to address them. As the Home Secretary stated yesterday, we are an ambitious and dynamic new Government with law and order at our heart. Our mission is clear. It is to deliver on the people’s priorities: to cut crime and to protect the public. We have recognised the huge demands placed on our police forces, and we are addressing these pressures with the recruitment of an unprecedented 20,000 additional ​officers over three years. We are investing a further £1.1 billion in policing next year—taking the total up to £15.2 billion—with the help of police and crime commissioners using their precepts. The Prime Minister and the Home Secretary are driving a united Government response with a new cross-Whitehall crime and justice taskforce to ensure that we use every lever at our disposal to fight crime. However, as today’s report makes clear, the rise in high-harm crimes such as serious violence and child sexual abuse is having a particular impact on the most vulnerable, requiring more from our police officers. They need to be able to look beyond the obvious and to develop a deeper understanding of risk.

We have worked with the College of Policing and are providing £1.9 million of funding to develop a more comprehensive package of training for first responders, so that they are better able to identify signs of vulnerability and provide support to victims. We have also funded the police’s own vulnerability, knowledge and practice programme to develop policing best practice in response to vulnerability as a whole. The programme is recognised in today’s report for its work to evaluate best practice in early intervention. We have introduced stronger multi-agency child safeguarding arrangements with shared responsibility between local authorities, police and health partners for the local strategic response to safeguarding, including harms such as child sexual exploitation. Again, these reforms, which were implemented in every local area in England last September, are recognised in today’s report as a key opportunity to deliver the kind of systemic change we need to see.

In relation to the inappropriate detention of children, we will look carefully at the recommendation and do what we can to ensure that vulnerable children receive an appropriate service from the police. We will continue to monitor the effectiveness of the 2017 concordat on children in custody, which sets out the statutory duties of the police and local authorities and provides a protocol for how transfers should work in practice.

Today’s report also recognises that the nature of risk is changing, and investment in officers and changing police culture are only part of the solution. That is why we are investing in new capabilities to tackle the exploitation of vulnerable children through crimes such as child sexual exploitation, child criminal exploitation and county lines. Last year we announced a £30 million investment in funding for work to tackle child sexual abuse and exploitation in 2020-21. The new funding will include investment in the child abuse image database—CAID—which the Home Office has developed in collaboration with UK law enforcement. CAID is a single database of indecent images of children which enables UK law enforcement to work collaboratively to safeguard children and bring people to justice. The new funding will allow us to deliver upgrades to CAID, including a fast, forensic tool to rapidly analyse seized devices and find images already known to law enforcement; an image categorisation algorithm to assist officers to identify and categorise the severity of illegal imagery; and a capability to detect images with matching scenes to help to identify children in indecent images in order to safeguard victims.

We have announced £25 million of targeted investment across 2019-20 and 2020-21 to strengthen the law enforcement response to county lines and increase the ​support available to the children, young people and families who are affected. This is in addition to establishing the national county lines co-ordination centre, with £3.6 million of Home Office funding, and providing a range of support for county lines victims. We also recognise that by the time children experience these forms of exploitation, the harm has been done. Police and other services need to spot the signs of risk and intervene earlier. Through our £13 million four-year trusted relationships programme, we are trialling 11 innovative projects in England working to protect vulnerable 10 to 17-year-olds who are at high risk of sexual exploitation and other forms of harm. We want to do more, however, which is why this year we will be publishing a first-of-its-kind national strategy to tackle child sexual abuse and exploitation.

We welcome today’s report. The protection of vulnerable children from harm is of the highest priority to this Government, as it should be to our police forces, and the inspectorate’s work in this area is vital in shaping our work in the future. The Home Secretary intends to meet inspectors to discuss today’s report and understand what more we and the police can do to ensure that children receive the highest levels of protection in the future. I commend this statement to the House.