My Lords, I feel some trepidation in challenging some of the issues about mandatory reporting, although I think that we need to find a different language. I do not think there
is any difference between me and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and the right reverend Prelate in what we want to find at the end of the day. However, I want to caution them and the Government to ensure that they look at this in great depth—I know that they are doing so in other places—and that there are no unintended consequences from the action that is taken.
I do not have a prepared speech, but I would like to make three points. Of course, it is wrong for anyone in a position of authority or in a church or neighbourhood community to turn a blind eye to known abuse. If abuse is clearly there, then that must be reported. If we have to have a law that says that there are circumstances in which people abused their position and did not come forward, the Government should look at that.
In the work that I am doing, the helpline for the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, in the Stop it Now! programme, has hundreds of people telephoning who are not sure about what they are seeing. I have talked to social workers who have great professional expertise about their not being certain what they are seeing. It is quite clear that we need to continue the professional development of staff in local authorities who work with the police, and also the community programmes which I have mentioned earlier, where children’s services, parents and schools have all been involved in the local community in developing understanding of these issues and therefore are clearer about what action they may or may not take.
I do not have a speech because I spent the morning chairing a conference that included people from Australia and the chair of an international protection of children organisation, looking at eradicating child sexual abuse. There were a lot of experts there. The message that they asked me to bring was that we should not simply bring in this sort of reporting without looking carefully at it. The statistics across the world vary according to whom you listen. I ask the Minister to talk to some of the people I know as well as to those whom the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, knows, because they have different views. Presumably, the Government have it within their powers to get the information pretty clearly from Governments in other parts of the world. I am not making any judgment about the outcome, except to say that people tell me that it has really interfered with good preventive work, because resources have been diverted into investigating hundreds of cases that turned out not to be prosecutable.
I understand why there is a wish, particularly in the church, to get this sort of prosecution. I say to the right reverend Prelate that I have probably talked to more victims than most in my 50 years, many of them children; I know the victims’ groups and I know the pain that they have experienced. But it is crucial that we base whatever we do in the future on what is happening now, and that we prevent children being abused in the present, and learn from those people in the future. They have a lot to offer but sometimes it can be clouded by pain, which I understand.
What we want to do, particularly in churches and similar organisations, is to develop a culture of openness. We know of a recent investigation into a particular area in the Church of England, where misogyny was rife and women’s views—never mind children’s—were not tolerated. I am a member of the Church of England
so I say this in all good heart but that is one institution that really has to look at it itself—as I know it is doing because the right reverend Prelate is the chair of the committee looking at the issues within the church. There are other organisations that need to look at their culture because we are not going to change these issues by the law, although I think in some areas it will help. We need to get a cultural change in organisations and our nation.
The NSPCC has got itself in a bit of a twist, I think. Talking to some of the staff today, there is a very mixed view because they had always been against mandatory reporting—I think that is a very funny term. They run two helplines. They know the implications of blanket mandatory reporting. I have to say that I did not understand proposed new subsections (4) and (5) of the amendment. It just shows how complex this issue is because we are talking about people going for exemptions. I tend to think that you need an opt-in rather than opt-out situation here, and we need to be precise about those people who might come to be prosecuted if reporting is mandatory rather than having to exempt those people who are trying to be helpful.
I am usually briefer than this but your Lordships can see that I feel as passionately as most—