In November 2021, the Conservative Group of councillors published a report which made claims about ongoing child sexual exploitation in Rotherham and the response of the authorities. No non-Conservative councillors or staff at the council were provided with a copy of the report at any stage.

A motion was subsequently brought to a meeting of the council, which was amended by the Labour Group to ask the Indepenent Chair of the Local Safeguarding Board to consider the allegations (the final report of that work can be found here, and provides significant reassurance about the repsonse of the council).

For the record, these were the remarks of Council Leader Cllr Chris Read to the November 2020 meeting of the council.

 

Colleagues – I want to start by saying what some of you have heard me say many times before: that improving our Children’s Social Care in general, and the response to Child Sexual Exploitation in particular, has been our top priority over the last seven years.

That’s why today we spend £20 million a year more on our Children’s Services than we did when I became Leader of the council.

It’s why we brought in Barnardo’s, whose Reach Out project has worked with every secondary school in the borough and most of the primaries, reaching more than 2000 school pupils, raising awareness of CSE, how to spot the signs, and prevent harm.

It’s why our Safeguarding Children’s Partnership, even in the difficult context of the pandemic, continues to provide training every two months to professionals from schools, colleges, the health service, council and voluntary sector staff to increase awareness of child exploitation and professional responsibilities.

It’s why we maintain our co-located Evolve team, bringing together social work and police professionals, as well as those from the voluntary sector, to bring specialist help to those children who are at risk of exploitation. And we publish the number of children they are working with regular in our performance information – last week it was 40 children.

It’s part of the reason why as we meet today, South Yorkshire Police have 34 active crime investigations into potential CSE.

Why, for example, in the last few weeks Ryan Peet, a man described by the judge as “predatory” was handed an extended 9 year prison sentence last month, for offences against children including some in our borough.

Why more than a thousand survivors of CSE have received support from those the services we commission to help them.

It’s why Ofsted have repeatedly endorsed out approach, why the government brought our intervention to a close, and why some of the people who worked with us most closely on that journey are now leading similar work in other local authorities.

I could go on and on.

So when I read a press release that says we all think CSE is in the past, I don’t know why anyone would claim that.

Does that make us complacent? No, far from it.

You could not live through what we have lived through and be complacent.

We continue to work across our partnership to challenge each other to do better; why we’ve recently committed more resources to respond to the growing threat of child criminal exploitation; why the excellent staff from across agencies on the Child Exploitation Tactical Meeting come together every week to review the intelligence and make sure every tool is used to respond in a timely manner.

But we’ve also learned some lesson for politicians.

I don’t believe for a minute that anyone in this room is any less repulsed by the sexual abuse of children than anyone else. It doesn’t matter what colour rosette you wear, or what colour skin you might have.

We’ve always worked on a cross-party basis for that reason. In addition to Labour people and those of no party, our one-time LGA advisor the CSE is now a Conservative MP. Our former Children’s Services Commissioner is a Conservative councillor. That never came into it.

And we know that the way we talk about child abuse also has consequences.

In the past, Rotherham had a very acute problem with men of Pakistani heritage who groomed children. We’re still dealing with that, through the NCA’s Operation Stovewood. As a result, some people still believe that CSE just means “Asian grooming gangs”.

Extremists have used that as an excuse to promote hate, and our whole Asian community has suffered as a result.

A friend of my family, Mushin Ahmed, an entirely innocent Muslim man, was murdered in cold blood.

But what we see today is that perpetrators of CSE in Rotherham are commonly white British men.

So if we’re not careful about what we say, not only can innocent people get hurt, but we can also miss the threat that is in our midst.

In every way, it couldn’t be more serious.

And it’s in that context that I bring this amendment today.

Not because we claim to know every thing that happens everywhere in the borough – of course we don’t.

Not because we pretend that everyone is happy or satisfied, or that mistakes don’t happen or problems don’t arise, because clearly they do and they will.

But because we should speak both plainly and accurately.

So yes, child abuse is still happening, here as in every community of any size anywhere in the world.

And I want to address this issue of apparent confusion about the numbers here in Rotherham.

Last year I was asked a question in this meeting about how many cases of CSE the council had responded to. And at that time there were 636 children who had concerns about a risk of child sexual exploitation on their files. I explained that that risk was different for different children, and that it should not be assumed that every child had been a victim. That information was and is correct.

But in response to a recent FOI, the council disclosed that it had undertaken 1,600 risk assessments over the same time period. Some people then used that number out of context. So I want to assure members that many of the children at risk will have had more than one risk assessment over time. Some will presumably have had risk assessments that identified no further risk. The number of risk assessments is not the same as the number of children at risk.

The biggest sexual threat to children are people they already know, family members, usually men with the opportunity to abuse.

But non-familial abuse takes place too, despite our best efforts.

And when this motion claims that children are being “trafficked”, that may be true. But those making the claim need to present the information behind it. Over the last year, there have been no referrals to the Home Office’s National Referral Mechanism for child trafficking – the only real measure of whether that claim is correct.

We should not make it the claim of this council unless and until that claim is properly demonstrated.

When the opposition claim that the response to intelligence submitted has been slow, they are of course entitled to their view. We take that seriously.

But the way to ensure it is taken seriously is not through a party press release. It is by making sure that the right information gets to the people who need it.

It is the role of the Independent Chair of the Safeguarding Children’s Partnership to consider potential partnership failings and ensure they are acted upon, and I hope that the Leader of the Opposition will be supplying her with all the relevant information to ensure that work can now be done.

On which note, I’m glad we kept the independent scrutineer in place through Children’s Partnership arrangements in place when the government dropped the requirement for them and removed that safeguard from communities across the country.

And when the opposition makes other claims based on their opinions, they are entitled to do so but they are not the opinions that many others here who have engaged in child protection processes share – and we shouldn’t pretend that they are the settled views of this council.

When those actions are advocated primarily through the media, I hope those making the claims understand the consequences of what is heard in our communities.

I also think it’s important that when we advocate for particular actions, we should first understand whether they are already happening, and the best way to improve them. If I were making such claims to know the answers in the way this motion does, I would have liked to have spoken to the professionals involved first, to appraise myself of the activity before forming a view about it. And then to make sure that the things that need to happen do so.

I think those professionals, who have moved heaven and earth to respond to the needs of our children, sometimes under intolerable pressure, deserve that basic respect – and under this administration they will always get it.

So I am more than happy that the actions the Conservative Group wish to see are properly considered, but we should do that in a proper way, in light of the existing strategy and approach, and the information that they have brought to light, and that is what this amendment will ensure that we do.

That’s what our community, which has already been through so much, deserves – and it’s what our children deserve.

Madam mayor, I move the amendment.