Chamber and committees

Thank you very much.

I have a special interest in the whole curriculum issue that you mentioned. My personal view—I have expressed this many times—is that we need to work with everyone, but we need to work with boys in particular. Some notable figures—such as David Gandy, who spoke out this week—have talked about boys not having the role models in society that they need. Do you agree that some of the work that we need to do needs to be targeted at boys and needs to talk to them? If we do not tackle the root of the problem, we will not tackle domestic abuse. What are your thoughts on working with boys at any age, given your experiences and expertise?

What response are you getting to that?

Sorry—just to be clear, Colin: in your view as a firefighter, are the locations of those stations important in relation to the response time in getting to major road networks or to the response time for any incident? I know that it is not always just about major road networks.

Until the Scottish Prison Service recognises the Supreme Court ruling on the meaning of sex and the Equality Act 2010, it will not be complying with the decision. That means that it implements a policy that assesses those with a history of violence and manages that at its discretion. We have seen today that Girlguiding and the Women’s Institute have already complied, so why not the Scottish Prison Service?

What mechanisms are in place to monitor and review the current application of SPS policy on the admission of transgender prisoners to women’s prisons? Will the Government publish data on how often that policy has been applied?

Grooming vulnerable children for sexual exploitation is one of the most heinous crimes that can be committed, but for that to be compounded by systematic failures by institutions that are meant to protect those children—after crimes that have been conducted for so long and on such a scale—is unforgivable, and a scar on our society.

The scale of those crimes in Rotherham and Rochdale was unprecedented. Hundreds of vulnerable girls, many of them in local authority care, were systematically groomed, plied with drugs and alcohol, and trafficked. Professor Alexis Jay, who produced the “Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham” report, said that there were 1,400 victims in Rotherham alone, and that a common thread in Manchester and South Yorkshire was the catastrophic failure of agencies, including the police, local councils and social services.

What made the Scottish Government so complacent about the situation in Scotland? What made the Scottish Government think that it could dismiss calls for an independent review? What made the Scottish Government believe that it could dismiss a proposed amendment to the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill, justifying its position by misusing a quote by Professor Alexis Jay, who serves on the national child sexual abuse and exploitation strategic group? The Government was complacent.

The Government has got itself into a complete mess. Today, it has had to cave in and do now what it should have done in the first place: announce an independent review.

Despite that, Scottish Labour welcomes the last-minute announcement that Professor Jay will lead a review of the handling of complaints against grooming gangs, which could lead to an inquiry. We want full and unfettered access for Professor Jay to all the data, and the review must be done urgently. We want there to be independent oversight of Police Scotland’s review of historical and current cases so that it is not, in effect, marking its own homework.

We know that Scotland is not immune to organised grooming gangs. Many of us have seen the interview that was given by Taylor, who relayed a horrific account of what happened to her, aged 13. She said that she was sexually exploited by grooming gangs. ITV’s Peter Smith reports that Taylor’s care records showed that

“staff at the care unit described her as disruptive”

and that

“she was encouraged to wear less fake tan and make up”

and stop “drawing attention to herself.” That is utterly shocking.

Taylor went on to say, importantly, that she was added to a list, kept by Police Scotland, of 45 other children who were vulnerable to sexual exploitation, but no one yet knows what happened to that list or whether further action was taken. In fact, Taylor said that no one at the care unit asked her any questions about it, despite her records clearly documenting that there were concerns that she was being sexually exploited.

Does anyone need any convincing that, from what we have learned in recent weeks, there are similar threads to what happened in Rotherham and Rochdale?

There must be transparency on exactly what we know about the scale of the problem in Scotland. There must be an assessment of how we are protecting children in care, who are the most vulnerable children in our society, and we must ask what changes we need to make to ensure that children’s protection is paramount.

In June this year, Baroness Casey told the Home Affairs Committee that

“People do not necessarily look hard enough to find these children, in particular ... it is clear that it is still happening.”

She said that we do not have enough data in Scotland. We urgently need to change that, because we know very little.

As Joani Reid MP, who has been championing this cause, has said, we need independent experts to look at the case files—whether they are open or not—and to interview victims and speak to the social workers and educational establishments that have supported children and young people when they have made accusations.

This summer, the previous Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, said that the law on rape would be tightened so that adults cannot use consent as a defence against the charge of raping a child who is under 16. Baroness Casey’s report concluded that too many grooming gang cases have been

“dropped or downgraded from rape to lesser charges”

because a 13 to 15-year-old was perceived to have been “in love with” or “consented” to sex with the perpetrator.

As Baroness Casey said, “children are children.” If we also believe that in this Parliament, I would like to draw the Scottish Government’s attention to the reforms that the Parliament made in 2009. Looking back, I think that those reforms were wrong, because the rape of a child who is aged 13 or 14 is no longer considered statutory rape. I ask the Scottish Government whether it will look at those provisions.

As I have said, we must take similar action in Scotland, and so I turn to the amendments. We have one disagreement with the Tory amendment, which is that we believe that there should first be a review, but we recognise that that could lead to a public inquiry. Apart from that, we support what the Conservatives say in the amendment.

We recognise the work that Police Scotland and the National Crime Agency have carried out. However, we ultimately need to show victims—past and present—that we will bring perpetrators to justice, that this Parliament and this Government are not afraid to look behind difficult issues and that we will do everything that we can to show the victims that we brought independent oversight. We must do the right thing and show that, in Scotland, we are not complacent about the exploitation of children in our country.

I move,

That the Parliament believes that there should be independent oversight of the Police Scotland review into group-based sexual exploitation of children, and calls on the Scottish Government to urgently clarify whether it will conduct an inquiry into grooming gangs in Scotland.

Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?

I appreciate that, given the time.

Can the cabinet secretary confirm that she regards the process as an independent review, given that Professor Jay, whom we welcome, will chair the group? Will Professor Jay have unfettered access to all the data that she requires from all the agencies?

Nobody can change that.

I am familiar with the Nordic model. I hosted the Swedish prosecutor about 15 years ago, so I know what claims are being made about their model, particularly for human trafficking. It is accepted that some of those models have reduced human trafficking but did you have any discussions with the national agencies about whether the way that the law is framed is a barrier to prosecuting and investigating human trafficking in Scotland? We have the National Crime Agency, which has a decent record on identifying and investigating human trafficking. Are you saying that the way in which the law is framed is a barrier or are you just saying that the model will help to reduce it?

If you have one, yes.