It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey, and it is a pleasure to follow all the other hon. Members here, who have championed with great passion and expertise the need to address this horrendous issue.
I will start by echoing other Members in thanking the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) for securing the debate. I thank everyone else who has participated: my hon. Friends the Members for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) and for Keighley (Robbie Moore); the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi); the hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer); my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford); the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater); my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan); and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon).
The hon. Member for Rotherham is a long-standing leader, as others have rightly said, in campaigning for change in how services respond to CSE, both in her constituency and more widely across the country. There was a huge strength of feeling across the Chamber; one cannot speak about this issue without being affected on a very deep level. It disgusts and appals us all. That is why we commissioned the sweeping report back in 2015 and put resources behind it, and it is why we are considering the findings of the report and all the other reports and mechanisms that have shone a light on this issue.
It is right that we pay tribute to victims and survivors. My hon. Friend the Member for Telford said that they wanted to be heard, and we have allowed them to get their voices on the record. I think that is a vital first stage towards seeing the change that we all want to see. We do not want to see other children going through the horrendous ordeals that those victims and survivors have experienced.
We are committed to tackling all forms of child sex abuse. Our approach is underpinned by the strategy that we published just over a year ago, which sets out firm commitments to drive action across every part of Government. We all recognise that this is a cross-cutting issue; it does not just sit with me in the Home Office. That is why we need a whole-system approach. It is not just about central Government; it is also about those local authorities and agencies up and down the country that have been provided with powers, resources and funding to carry out their statutory duty of safeguarding the children in their community. All of us here, including me, have a responsibility to do everything in our power to protect our children.
We set up this inquiry because we recognised that there were failings. There was no institutional denial from the Home Office; my predecessors were willing to have this report to uncover the abuses that were going on. I thank the inquiry team for the work that they are doing to improve the response to CSE.
I turn to the form of offending highlighted in the most recent report from IICSA, which has rightly generated public concern, as seen in Rotherham. The report highlighted that the impact of this vile crime has been exacerbated by organisations’ and agencies’ widespread failures to respond to and tackle exploitation due to misplaced social and cultural sensitivities. We must not shirk our responsibility to address those failures in an open and transparent way. The hon. Member for Rotherham summarised the key recommendations made by IICSA in the report. Let me reassure her and everybody else that we will consider all the inquiry’s findings, and
will respond—as required—to the recommendations within six months, which is the timeframe that was set out.
The hon. Member looks unhappy. I understand that—of course she does. I wish I could wave a magic wand, but she knows that these are systemic, complex issues that involve local authorities, policing and the Crown Prosecution Service. It would be trite of me to say, “Yes, I can fix that tomorrow.” How can I possibly do that?