My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendments 6 and 10, which are designed to ensure that children who have been criminally exploited are seen and treated as victims rather than perpetrators. As has already been discussed, I understand the Government’s desire to keep definitions broad and to resist requests for too much specific detail in the Bill, but there is a case to be made about child criminal exploitation.
First, there is a need for clarity. The Government’s own Serious Violence Strategy says:
“In order to support different agencies and sectors working together it is important we have common definitions of the issues we are tackling”.
Yet on the issue of criminal exploitation, there is no common definition. The definition used in that strategy is the same as that in Working Together to Safeguard Children but differs from the definition in Keeping Children Safe in Education. As a result, different parts of the system are working to different understandings of what constitutes criminal exploitation. They have found the current definitions to be not only different but overly complicated.
As one police officer said in the very helpful briefing from the Children’s Coalition, which has already been mentioned:
“What is applying in Newcastle is totally different to Surrey”
and current definitions
“are too open to interpretation and this breeds an inconsistent approach”,
so we need consistency. We also need a statutory definition for criminal law purposes for, as that police officer also explains:
“We definitely need the definition to do our job. It’s a 21st-century crime we are prosecuting with outdated legislation”.
The Government should be given credit for their focus on the growing threat of serious violence, which often gives rise to criminal exploitation but, if I am honest, it feels a bit odd that they would not see that this might be a useful step. It would not only help those victims having to live with a criminal conviction, making life even harder for them in the long run through no fault of their own; it would also send an important message to the real perpetrators in all of this—the people who take away these children’s lives, forcing them to live constantly on edge and in fear. It is a fear of the people exploiting them but also a fear of the authorities, if their situation is not properly recognised or understood.