Government accepts all 12 recommendations in “damning” report from Baroness Casey on group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse

In an address to Parliament on Tuesday (17 June), Home Secretary Yvette Cooper described the report's findings as "damning", noting that "at its heart", the audit identified a "deep-rooted failure to treat children as children. A continued failure to protect children and teenage girls from rape, from exploitation, and serious violence."

Cooper added: "She finds too much fragmentation in the authorities' response, too little sharing of information, too much reliance on flawed data, too much denial, too little justice, too many criminals getting off, too many victims being let down."

The Home Secretary said the national audit detailed cases involving victims as young as 10 – often those in care or children with learning or physical disabilities – being singled out for grooming.

It also revealed "deep rooted institutional failures, stretching back decades, where organisations who should have protected children and punished offenders looked the other way," Cooper added.

Among the 12 recommendations, Baroness Casey called for the launch of a national police operation and national inquiry, which would coordinate a series of targeted investigations into child sexual exploitation in England and Wales.

In its response to the recommendations, the Home Office said it would launch a new national criminal operation on grooming gangs and wider group-based child sexual exploitation, bringing together all arms of the national and local policing response to child sexual exploitation under a single national operation.

An independent commission on grooming gangs will meanwhile have statutory powers to direct targeted investigations in local areas, "with the aim of holding institutions to account for current and historic failures in their response to group-based CSE", the response added.

The commission will have the power to compel local organisations to comply with its investigations, including providing information and summoning witnesses where required to get to the truth and learn lessons from the past.

The Government also agreed to enforce mandatory sharing of information between all statutory safeguarding partners in cases of child sexual abuse and exploitation in its response to the audit.

Provisions in the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which is currently at the committee stage in the House of Lords, will introduce a new duty to share information where it is necessary to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.

"This duty provides a robust legal foundation for safeguarding partners to act decisively and collaboratively," the Government said in its response.

The new duty will work hand-in-hand with the mandatory reporting duty set out in the Crime and Policing Bill, and new statutory guidance on the duty will be published to support practitioners, the Government added.

Elsewhere in its response, the Government pledged to include provisions in The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill that would introduce unique reference numbers for children.

Piloting of the system - which will use a child's NHS number as the consistent identifier - is already underway in Wigan Local Authority, the response said.

The Government has also promised to "urgently" interrogate child protection data to identify the causes of the decline in child sexual abuse and exploitation representation in child in need assessment data.

This review should seek to better understand the decline in child sexual abuse and exploitation representation in child in need assessment data and the reasons for variations across local authorities, the Government said.

It will publish its analysis of the decline by the end of 2025.

In addition, the Government said it would legislate to tackle the inconsistent standards of taxi and private hire vehicle driver licensing, which were criticised in Baroness Casey's audit.

"We will work as quickly as possible and consider all options – including out-of-area working, national standards and enforcement – seeking the best overall outcomes for passenger safety," the response said.

In the interim, the Government said it would consult on making local transport authorities responsible for taxi and private hire vehicle licensing "and determining how existing statutory guidance can be strengthened to further protect the public".

It also said it is reviewing authorities' compliance with existing guidance and will hold those who do not follow it to account.

Responding to Baroness Casey's national audit, Cllr Louise Gittins, chair of the Local Government Association, said councils "stand ready" to assist in the national inquiry.

Cllr Gittins said: "Child sexual exploitation is a horrific crime and one that we must all work together to tackle.  Children's safety is of paramount importance. Councils stand ready to support and play their part in the national inquiry."

Rachael Wardell, president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS), meanwhile said: “Child sexual exploitation is an appalling crime which needs to be rooted out from society and Baroness Casey’s report makes for necessary but difficult reading. There is a lot of detail in it for us to work through as leaders of children’s services, with our safeguarding partners and with the government departments tasked with taking action. 

“The full commitment of all public agencies, government departments and the wider public is needed to tackle this issue, as is a clearer focus on the social and cultural issues surrounding the root causes of abuse and exploitation if we are to disrupt, expose and prosecute the ruthless criminal gangs responsible for these dreadful crimes.”

The full list of recommendations can be viewed here.

Adam Carey