In December I gave a statement to the House on the Metropolitan police investigation into child sexual abuse in Camden. Today, Vincent Chan is due to appear for sentencing at Wood Green Crown Court in relation to 56 offences, to which he has pleaded guilty.

His crimes are absolutely sickening, and our thoughts remain with the children and families affected as they continue to receive the support they need. We will continue to assess what more can be done to stop vile acts like these from happening again.

A Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review is currently being conducted and that must take its course.

Children’s safety is at the very heart of this government’s plan for change. That is why we are taking action to strengthen child protection.

Last September we strengthened requirements in the Early Years Foundation Stage for early years providers to follow robust safer recruitment practices, including appropriate pre-employment checks, ongoing suitability monitoring and clear whistleblowing procedures.

We are putting a renewed focus on strengthening safeguarding across early years with our new expert panel soon to start work on CCTV and digital devices guidance. The guidance will set out best practice, technical information and clear expectations. The expert advisory group will also consider whether CCTV ought to be mandatory in early years settings.

We are also introducing free, universal safeguarding training for staff working in early years settings in collaboration with the NSPCC. This will support staff to meet statutory safeguarding requirements and help embed a strong and open safeguarding culture across early years settings.

And we are working with Ofsted to introduce reporting on larger nursery chains, so that issues that span a group of providers can be addressed. We are funding Ofsted to inspect all new early years providers within 18 months of opening and move towards inspecting all providers at least once every four years. Ofsted will continue to keep all settings under review to ensure that visits take place when risk assessments deem them necessary.

Our Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill marks the most significant reform to child protection in a generation. It will deliver stronger multi-agency child protection teams and better information-sharing between police, education, health and social workers, so that no child falls through the cracks again.

And through the Crime and Policing Bill, we are making it mandatory for child sex abuse incidents to be reported and making it illegal to prevent someone reporting them, so that no child is left invisible when facing child sexual abuse.

In December the government put forward proposals for a new Child Protection Authority to protect children from harms including sexual exploitation and abuse, domestic violence, trafficking, organised crime, and other complex risks.

The CPA will provide strategic oversight of child protection and safeguarding threats nationwide and was a key recommendation of Alexis Jay’s IICSA report on group-based child sexual exploitation.

Keeping children safe is one of the most important duties of any society. I want to thank our early years staff and wider children’s services workforce, who work hard, day in and day out, to give the children of this country the best start in life. This government will work with them, and with the victims and families affected, to continue to strengthen child protection. We will root out abuse wherever it hides, and we will never stop working to rid our society of this evil.

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/wms/?id=2026-02-12.hcws1332.0