"Our children are at risk – it’s time to get tough on county lines grooming"

 

"The collective failure of society and government to protect children from criminal exploitation is contributing to a terrible toll of murdered youngsters, traumatised families and ruined lives...

....The government’s failure to tackle the cost of living crisis has heightened the dangers children face from grooming and exploitation by criminal gangs.

Abusers seeking to lure children into running drugs thrive on the deprivation that so badly scars our society. So much of this vile criminal activity is linked to the supply of drugs along county lines, to suburban areas, as well as to market and coastal towns.

Here in London, we have lost so many children to grooming and exploitation and gang violence in pursuit of profit. Throughout 2021, 30 teenagers are reported to have been killed in London alone, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Then there’s the abject devastation and misery for families of children caught up in the criminal justice system after being groomed and violated, with life chances lost and years wasted in prison.

Youth violence is on the rise, with the Metropolitan Police warning that England could see its highest number of deaths by knife crime in over a decade. The London borough of Newham, made up of our respective constituencies of West Ham and East Ham, has faced a terrible toll of murdered children and grieving families.

As Newham MPs, we have repeatedly raised cases of children whose lives have been ruined because of exploitation by gangs. It’s abundantly clear the current approach is failing vulnerable children across the country and devastating our communities. The under-funding of youth services over the last 12 years, along with the closure of hundreds of youth centres that provided safe spaces for children, has weakened communities’ ability to protect young people from harm.

Meanwhile, the cost of living crisis is increasing the risk to children from criminal exploitation. Experiences of child poverty increase the attraction of the “alternative economic model” that groomers offer.

An extraordinary rise in food bank use, a dire lack of adequate and affordable housing, poverty and racism, all increase children’s vulnerability to grooming. On a daily basis, many children today see their parents working several jobs and still struggling to pay rent and buy the basics. They can see that there is no money, and they are highly motivated to make this easier on their family in any way they can.

That’s why there must be no soft-touch approach when it comes to protecting children and young people from gang grooming. Existing policies are failing these children, who are not being identified or properly supported early enough.

As MPs for communities blighted by grooming, we are seeking support for a blueprint to overhaul the way public services protect child victims of criminal exploitation. At a recent conference, titled “Solving youth violence”, we sought to bring together those working in children’s services, as well as the police, charities and academics.

From our findings, we have produced a prospectus to improve protection for children from grooming, which we hope will open a debate. We will now present these findings in the Commons, with thanks to the chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, Diana Johnson MP.

We believe there must be an early warning system, covering all social media firms, from Twitter to Facebook, with the introduction of a legal duty on firms to report any suspicious activity linked to possible grooming to the police the moment they become aware of it.

It’s not too much to ask that children and young people receive the same level of legal protection as the financial sector, where banks have similar duties to report suspicions about money laundering.

We want to discuss so-called “burner phones”, temporary phones that are discarded soon after use, which have been routinely used in reported cases of grooming and child criminal exploitation by gangs. These unregistered phones are a core tool used for county lines groomers and exploiters to obstruct detection and investigation of their crimes and to escape justice. People buying a mobile phone should be required to provide their name, address and contact details before they can start using it.

Meanwhile, immense pressure on public services, schools and local authorities to fulfil their duties while under-resourced, weakens protection for vulnerable children. This means that cases of exploitation are often missed and that even when the right referrals are made early, the specialist support required cannot be provided by partner agencies in a timely or consistent manner.

These are just a few of the changes needed. The collective failure of society and government to protect children from criminal exploitation is contributing to a terrible toll of murdered youngsters, traumatised families and communities, and ruined lives. However, the new prime minister and her government now have the opportunity for a fresh start. Liz Truss could introduce these new protections for our children in a matter of weeks.

There can be no excuse for failing to act to protect our children.

Lyn Brown is the Labour MP for West Ham and Stephen Timms is the Labour MP for East Ham

Hat tip https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/county-lines-grooming-drugs-facebook-children-b2198777.html#comments-area 

"Opinion: Unison could soon have a female general secretary – about time, too"

The leadership race you may have missed that could have huge consequences for UK workers
Christina McAnea leads the race to become leader of Britain’s biggest union, one representing more than a million people in healthcare, social care, education and local government

(by James Moore The Independent’s chief business commentator)

"The election across the Atlantic that’s been dominating the news cycle means that an important vote being conducted on this side of the pond hasn’t generated the interest it should have.

It is for the leader of Britain’s biggest union, one representing more than a million people in healthcare, social care, education, local government and more. The identity of Unison’s general secretary matters. They play a vital role in fighting for the interests of workers, many of whom have either been working on the front lines of the pandemic or have risked their lives to provide services relied upon by millions of people while it’s been raging.

More than three quarters of those workers are female. This raises a glaring issue: Unison has never had a female general secretary. That is true of all the big three unions (the other two being the GMB and Unite). But it’s particularly problematic at Unison given the profile of its membership and the union movement’s rhetoric concerning equality.

It’s a problem potentially on the verge of being solved. There are four candidates on the ballot, three men and one woman. The one woman is Christina McAnea, who looks like the front runner. As the ballots were sent out, she had been nominated by 216 union branches, nearly as many as the other three put together. She also had the union’s National Executive Council – Cymru/Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and six English regions – and five service (industrial) groups in her corner.

Of course, it requires more than gender to win the job. But the point about McAnea is that she has every qualification necessary to do it well and a back story that should chime with many members.

She was born and brought up in Glasgow, where she lived in the tough Clydeside Drumchapel council housing estate. Her mother was a school cleaner and dinner lady. She left school at 16, putting herself through university at the age of 22, before becoming a housing officer for Glasgow City Council.

If you’ve had any involvement with local government, you’ll know that can be one of the tougher roles in which to start a career. It’s a hard, and sometimes heart-breaking job, where desperate need crashes into a chronic lack of supply. McAnea moved on to the GMB union and from there to NALGO, one of the three unions that merged to form Unison, where she is now the assistant general secretary for bargaining, negotiations and equalities. So no – it isn’t just on gender grounds that she’s a strong candidate for the role.

Having talked to her, she also has a vision for how to drive an organisation, whose membership has grown rapidly through the pandemic, forward. She’s keen on fostering digital engagement to make the organisation more accessible and responsive, which will be important as new ways of working are increasingly adopted, potentially leaving some people feeling isolated.

The front runner doesn’t always win, of course, and the perception of being the establishment candidate doesn’t necessarily help, although the performance of politicians claiming anti-establishment credentials such as Donald Trump or Boris Johnson might prompt some to reconsider that.

Roger McKenzie, second in terms of branch nominations with 131, along with one service group executive and one regional council, is part of the same senior team as McAnea. He’s an assistant general secretary, with a long history in the union movement.

He would be the union’s first black general secretary, which would also be a welcome development, as would Hugo Pierre, who boasts 31 nominations. Nominated by one service group executive, two regional councils and 99 branches, Paul Holmes, who came third in 2010, is the final candidate.

An organisation with a majority female membership never having been run by a woman is a sad state of affairs in the 21st century. Unison’s members therefore have a chance to make some good history in what has been a terrible year. They can correct an injustice.

It ought to be easier for them than it is, but the government cynically still refuses unions the right to conduct digital ballots, which inevitably limits turnout, particularly when people’s minds are often on other things.

This appears to be another example of the dim view the Conservative Party has of democracy. The election should be about the candidate the largest possible number of members feel would best represent them, not the who can persuade enough knackered workers to remember to put their ballots in the post box".