My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, for setting out the case for these amendments. I wholeheartedly agree that nothing is more important than safeguarding children at risk of harm. That is why we introduced reforms to safeguarding in 2017, which led to the establishment of multiagency safeguarding arrangements in 2019. The statutory safeguarding partners responsible for safeguarding—that is, local authorities, clinical commissioning groups and chief officers of police—are also named as specified authorities under the serious violence duty, so I would argue that it is truly a multiagency approach. This demonstrates the importance of safeguarding in protecting children and young people from involvement in serious violence. We expect that
existing work to safeguard vulnerable children will link very closely with local efforts to prevent and reduce serious violence. Therefore, we do not believe that it is necessary to include a separate safeguarding requirement in this part of the Bill, and it would not be possible to do so without duplicating existing safeguarding legislation.
On Amendment 25, which would require specified authorities to prepare and implement an early help strategy, the noble Lord is absolutely right to highlight the importance of prevention and early intervention and this, of course, is the key aim of the serious violence duty. We recognise that early intervention and prevention are essential to reducing serious violence. The duty requires partners to work collaboratively to develop a strategy to reduce serious violence in their local area. We expect partners to work with upstream organisations, such as education providers and children’s social care, when developing this strategy to ensure that it covers actions that relate to early help and considers risks that occur before a young person becomes involved in serious violence. This ensures that any strategy will include early help for this cohort. We believe that it would be less effective to separate this out into an additional strategy.
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It is also relevant that the provision of early help is an important feature of existing statutory guidance, called Keeping Children Safe in Education and Working Together to Safeguard Children. This requires schools, colleges, and organisations and agencies working with children and their families in discharging their functions to have appropriate safeguarding support in place. As such, this should already be built into existing safeguarding practice.
Amendment 27 would require all specified authorities to consult any children’s social care authority for the area, if not already a specified authority under this part of the Bill, as part of the preparation of local strategies. I totally agree that children’s social care authorities have a crucial contribution to make to local efforts, particularly for those young people at risk of being involved in serious violence, child criminal exploitation or other harms. However, it is also clear to me that local authorities are already a specified authority under the duty and have a responsibility for children’s social care services under separate legislation. The duty has been designed this way to ensure that children’s social care services play a significant role in the discharge of the duty, as they have valuable experience in safeguarding issues and tackling a variety of harms, including serious violence. The statutory guidance for the serious violence duty will make it clear that children’s social care services, as well as other services that local authorities are responsible for, should be involved in the development of the local strategy.
I would also like to assure the Committee that the Government are committed to tackling the heinous crime of modern slavery, including by the identification and safeguarding of child victims of modern slavery. Section 52 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 places a statutory duty on specified public authorities in England and Wales to notify the Home Secretary when they have reasonable grounds to believe that a person may
be the victim of slavery or human trafficking. If the potential victim is a child, there is no requirement to obtain their consent to this notification, and the duty is discharged by referring a potential victim to the national referral mechanism, known as the NRM. It is the process by which the UK identifies and supports potential victims of modern slavery by connecting them with appropriate support. First responder organisations, which include law enforcement agencies, local authorities and specified non-governmental organisations, are able to make a referral to the NRM, as set out in the modern slavery statutory guidance.
Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of all children in their area, including child victims of modern slavery, is the responsibility of local authorities. Children’s services should already be working in close co-operation with the police and other statutory and non-statutory agencies to offer child victims of modern slavery the support that they require. In addition to the statutory support provided by local authorities, Section 48 of the Modern Slavery Act made provision for independent child trafficking guardians in England and Wales, whose role it is to provide specialist independent support for trafficked children and to advocate on behalf of the child to ensure their best interests are reflected in decisions made by public authorities. This service now covers in total two-thirds of all local authorities across England and Wales, so I do not think that to include a further requirement in this Bill is necessary, given that it is already mandatory.
Amendment 49 would require specified authorities to prepare and implement a strategy to prevent and reduce child criminal exploitation and safeguard affected children within the serious violence duty. I want to be absolutely clear here that targeting, grooming and the exploitation of children, who are often the most vulnerable in our society, for criminal purposes is wholly unacceptable and this Government fully condemn it. Noble Lords will know that criminals can adapt their approach in response to legislation and government policy, which is why the serious violence duty has been designed to be flexible, enabling areas to tailor the duty to their specific requirements and crime types that are deemed a local priority, as well as being able to respond to emerging and unforeseen threats.
There will also be accompanying statutory guidance, which we have published in draft form, that will make it clear to specified authorities that they will be able to determine what types of serious violence to include in their local strategy based on evidence from their strategic needs assessment. The legislation as currently drafted will allow specified authorities to include child criminal exploitation in their local serious violence strategies, and I am therefore not convinced of the need for a separate strategy at this stage.
Amendment 52 would require the Secretary of State to publish a strategy for providing specialist training on child criminal exploitation and serious youth violence for all specified authorities under the serious violence duty. Training is of course absolutely essential in equipping professionals to strengthen their knowledge and skills so they can provide the best support for young people, but I do not think we need to include it in the Bill.
Existing statutory guidance, specifically Working Together to Safeguard Children, already makes it clear that local safeguarding partners are responsible for considering what training is needed locally and for planning how they will monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of training that is commissioned. There is a requirement to include how interagency training will be commissioned, delivered and monitored for impact in their published local safeguarding arrangements. Annual reports of the safeguarding arrangements must also include evidence of the impact of the work of the safeguarding partners and relevant agencies, including any training undertaken. I think that this existing approach is correct, given that the three safeguarding partners will be best placed to determine the training needs of their practitioners in response to the risks to children in their area according to local needs and circumstance.
Finally, Amendment 50 seeks to establish a statutory definition of “child criminal exploitation”. We have explored the introduction of such a statutory definition with a range of operational partners and have concluded that Section 3 of the Modern Slavery Act, which provides for definitions of exploitation within the Act, is sufficient to respond to a range of child criminal exploitation scenarios. It was also a finding of the independent review into the Modern Slavery Act conducted by the noble Lord, Lord Field, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and Maria Miller MP, who considered the definition of child criminal exploitation under the 2015 Act and recommended that it should not be amended as it is flexible to new and emerging forms of modern slavery.
It is also important to note that child criminal exploitation is already defined in statutory guidance. This includes both the Keeping Children Safe in Education and Working Together to Safeguard Children statutory guidance. It is also included in a number of non-statutory practice documents, including the Home Office child exploitation disruption toolkit for front-line practitioners and the county lines guidance for prosecutors and youth offending teams.
I also assure noble Lords that the Home Office is working collaboratively across government and with operational partners to raise the profile of, and improve local safeguarding arrangements for, child criminal exploitation. That is why, along with the Department for Education, we worked with Liverpool John Moores University to test the effectiveness of the multiagency safeguarding partnerships in dealing with young people at risk or involved in serious violence and county lines. We have recently received the findings from those reviews and are considering the best way to share the learning and practice with local areas.
In addition, as the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, said, the vast majority of child criminal exploitation cases currently occur in the context of county lines. The Home Office is therefore providing up to £1 million in this financial year to provide specialist support for under-25s and their families who are affected by county lines exploitation in the three largest exporting force areas: that is, London, the West Midlands and Merseyside. We also fund Missing People’s SafeCall service, which is a national confidential helpline for young people,
families and carers who are concerned about county lines exploitation. So, while I am not persuaded of the need for a statutory definition, I hope I have provided some assurance that tackling child criminal exploitation is a priority for this Government.
The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, pointed out that the guidance does not deal with safeguards. As he indicated, we have now published the statutory guidance in draft. That is precisely so that we can gather views on how the draft can be improved. We welcome feedback and will consult on an updated draft ahead of implementation. We are working closely with the DfE and the voluntary sector to develop the content on safeguarding in our statutory guidance.
The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, said that the duty is being led by policing and is focused on law enforcement. Tackling serious violence is not a matter for policing alone—it cannot be. To be successful in driving down violent crime we need, as I said at the outset, a multiagency approach. We do not think that the duty is a police-led enforcement approach; that is quite a mischaracterisation, I think, of what the provisions are about.
In summary, I wholeheartedly support the sentiments of all noble Lords. I hope that I have persuaded noble Lords that we do not need these amendments, and that the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, will withdraw Amendment 21.