Failure to report child sex abuse to become a criminal offence
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Professionals who work with children will face criminal sanctions if they fail to report claims of sexual abuse, the home secretary has announced. Yvette Cooper promised to implement the key recommendation from Professor Alexis Jay's child sexual abuse inquiry after Sir Keir Starmer faced down calls from Elon Musk, the Tories and Reform UK for a new investigation into paedophile grooming gangs.
Politics latest updates. Ms Cooper said the mandatory reporting measure will be put in the Crime and Policing Bill due to come before parliament this spring, with professional and criminal sanctions for those who fail to comply. She attacked the Tories for failing to introduce the law while they were in government, saying she first called for it in 2014 after it emerged around 1,400 girls were abused in Rotherham between 1997-2013.
"This is something I first called for in response to the reports and failings in Rotherham 10 years ago," Ms Cooper told MPs. "It's something that the prime minister first called for 12 years ago, based on his experience as director of public prosecutions, and the case was clear then. But we've lost a decade and we need to get on with it now.".
Ms Cooper said this was one of three "key recommendations" the government would implement from the Jay report, alongside making grooming an aggravating factor in the sentencing of child sexual offences and creating a new performance framework for policing "so these crimes are taken far more seriously".
