Yvette Cooper MP Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary has today written to the Home Secretary on tackling child abuse, following this morning’s Urgent Question.

The full text of the letter is below:

Dear Theresa,

Thank you for your response to my urgent question this morning.

I know we agree that action needs to be taken against the appalling crime of child abuse - including the growing problem of online abuse - which hurts vulnerable children and young people and wrecks lives. However I remain concerned that important questions were left unanswered.

The work carried out by the NCA which has safeguarded 400 children and arrested 660 people for child abuse offences is extremely welcome and emphasises the importance of online intelligence and communications data that we debated in Parliament this week.

However, reports that over 10,000 suspects have been identified by this same investigation but that the police lack the capacity to pursue these suspects are extremely concerning.

The NCA have clearly briefed the Times that, “such is the extent of the offending that police cannot arrest every suspect - the criminal courts would be unable to cope with the caseload and prison overcrowding could hit breaking point”.

You will be aware that the deputy director general of the NCA has said; “there are questions here for society, for policy makers… We cannot afford not to look under this stone. But are we going to be able to arrest our way out of this problem? I doubt it…”.

Clearly the NCA are right to target first those who pose the highest direct risk to children. Decisions over whether to arrest or prosecute should be based on the evidence available as well as the risk in each case.

However it is clear from these briefings that the decision to limit the number of cases being pursued is based not on evidence or risk, but on perception of capacity in the criminal justice system.

This is a public policy issue as well as an operational one.

In Parliament you would not confirm those figures and said it was an operational matter.

However, if the police have made a policy decision not to arrest these cases as a result of lack of capacity, even though they believe these people have committed a crime, that is also a matter for the Home Office - especially if they believe that any of those 10,000 people could pose a current risk to children.

Previous CEOP research has suggested that a significant proportion of those who view online abusive images of children also are involved in contact abuse at some point in their lives.

The public have a right to know if the scale of this emerging crime is much greater than previously anticipated, because as the police have recognised that means there are much wider questions for society to address, as you said today.

Please could you therefore answer the following questions?

·         Is it true that the NCA has identified over 10,000 further suspects as part of this investigation?

·         Is it true that the NCA and police do not plan to pursue or arrest the vast majority of these suspects?

·         Have the police assessed the risk of all the suspects they have identified? do the police believe that any of the cases they are not planning to arrest pose a current risk to children? On what basis have they done that assessment? And if they have not completed that risk assessment, when do they expect to do so, given that it has taken 6 months to arrest 660 people?

·         What resources do the NCA and individual forces have to pursue these cases?

·         Is all the intelligence on these suspects being shared with the Disclosure and Barring Service so that where necessary suspects can be barred from working with children?

·         Has there been a 75% drop in the number of people barred from working with children over the last three years?

The newspapers are reporting the view that the police, courts and prisons would be unable to cope if all these cases were pursued.

However the reported scale of child abuse cases remains a small proportion of overall crimes, arrests and investigations that the police, courts and prisons currently pursue, so therefore we need to know why the Home Office is not giving sufficient priority to this crime.

Currently over a million people are arrested each year for different offences, including 230,000 for theft and handling stolen goods. 900,000 people are prosecuted every year. All of these figures have dropped substantially in the last few years, fewer arrests and prosecutions. And the number of people barred from working with children has dropped by 10,000 a year since the election.

So why are the police so concerned that they do not have the capacity to pursue these cases?

Have you discussed resources and priorities with the NCA and police forces?

We cannot be in a situation where the decision not to pursue tens of thousands of people identified as suspects in child abuse cases is taken behind closed doors based on an assessment of capacity in the system that the Home Office is responsible for.

As you know I have been raising concerns with you for over three years about the strength of the child protection system.

There is rightly huge concern about historic child abuse and the damage it has done to people’s lives. But I am also very worried that the Home Office is being too complacent about current child abuse and is storing up problems for the future.

I really urge you to look again at this and to make sure that current investigations get the priority they deserve and that everything is being done to protect our children from abuse today.

I look forward to an answer to my questions before the House rises next week.

Yours sincerely,

Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP

Shadow Home Secretary