Challenge over Child Abuse

The Yorkshire Post
November 12, 2013

http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/debate/yp-comment/challenge-over-child-abuse-1-6237135

IF there was one crumb of comfort to be taken from the appalling litany of abuse committed by disgraced presenters Jimmy Savile and Stuart Hall it was that it starkly underlined the threat posed by prolific child sex offenders, even those who operated in the full glare of publicity.

Indeed, such are the concerns arising from the scandalous way in which so many apparently turned a blind eye to their actions that Keir Starmer, the former director of public prosecutions, has called for a mandatory reporting law which would make it a criminal offence for teachers and other professionals to fail to act over suspicions that a youngster was being targeted in such a way.

Yet there is a nagging sense that the authorities are not taking the scourge of child abuse as seriously as they should. The Government says it has no plans to introduce mandatory reporting legislation, while the response of police forces in Yorkshire has been the subject of no little controversy.

West Yorkshire Police’s investigation into its dealings with Savile, published in May, was roundly criticised for failing to appear sufficiently independent.

Now a report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary says that children in South Yorkshire are “not always being adequately protected” from sexual grooming because of the inconsistent approach to tackling the problem taken by the county’s police force.

While it was noted that an extra £500,000 has been committed to employing 10 detectives and an analyst to tackle child sexual exploitation, so far this has seen “mixed success”, with staff claiming the emphasis of superiors is on offences such as burglary or vehicle crime.

Some case files were found to be incomplete and local resources, such as the teams which gather and analyse intelligence on different kinds of offending, were not fully supporting child sexual exploitation investigations.

Such an uneven approach carries the risk that vulnerable children will end up falling through the gaps. Youngsters in South Yorkshire – and indeed the region as a whole – should not receive a lesser degree of protection simply because of where they live.

The challenge for the police lies in how to achieve greater consistency and focus when it comes to tackling child abuse, at a time when their budgets are falling and they are still expected to continue to cut the rates of more run-of-the-mill crimes.

Built on sand

DAVID Cameron may claim the launch of the Government’s Help to Buy scheme has been an unqualified success, but others are likely to need more convincing.

Pointing to early figures which show 2,000 people have already put in offers on homes using the mortgage guarantee scheme – with three-quarters of the applications having come from outside London and the south-east – the Prime Minister insists this proves that fears it will fuel a housing bubble are misplaced.

Yet that is exactly what is now happening in other areas of the country – only to a lesser extent than that seen in the capital and surrounding areas.

While Help to Buy might help one wave of first-time buyers to get a foot on the property ladder, the effect will simply be to push up the prices for those who follow in their wake.

The danger must be that this ultimately saddles people with debts they cannot afford to repay, repeating the scenario that triggered the ruinous credit crunch and subsequent recession.

Indeed, the number of surveyors reporting house prices lifting across the country has surged to an 11-year high on the back of Help to Buy’s early “success”.

Mr Cameron insists that owning a home is about “independence, self-reliance, moving on and moving up”. Above all, he says, it’s about “aspiration”.

There is nothing wrong with aspiration – a key watchword of the Prime Minister’s speech to last year’s Tory conference. However, it has to be rooted in realism. And, as wages continue to stagnate, there must be a real concern that an economic recovery built on a state-sponsored artifical rising of house prices will simply prove to be a recovery built on sand.

Main attractions

THESE are heady days for Yorkshire’s tourist industry.

The dynamism and ambition of Welcome to Yorkshire chief executive Gary Verity to make the county one of the world’s top tourist destinations has delivered the Tour de France and sent the region’s profile soaring, both at home and abroad.

And the roll call of winners at last night’s White Rose Awards served to further underline just what Yorkshire has to offer.

From the innovative ways in which history is brought to life at Ryedale Folk Museum at Kirkbymoorside to the long-cherished splendour of Castle Howard, the attractions honoured at the biggest tourism awards in the UK showed why Mr Verity is right to be so ambitious in terms of establishing Yorkshire on the global stage.

The hosting of the Grand Départ next summer will bring the world to Yorkshire – but the county’s treasure trove of attractions will help ensure it keeps coming back.