Hansard

I agree with the minister—I hope that I have not been giving a false impression. Any national strategy has to be based on actions, and I welcome what the minister has said about that. If that is what it is about, that is fine—I agree that the last thing that we need now is to have some additional comprehensive review.

The various reviews that have been undertaken will all surely be useful in themselves. However, it is only within the structure of a national strategy that the various conclusions and, even more basically, the understanding of a definition will achieve a clarity of purpose and direction.

The danger with a small d is that, in this subject of intense sensitivities, politicians—unless they come from a background of professional experience, which some do—are inevitably several steps removed from the realities of the issue. The danger is that they wade in with calls for specific actions and recommendations that might make for much action and activity but be misplaced in their purpose.

The committee report notes, for example, that the automatic desire of the committee to meet those who have been affected and to examine their experience at first hand proved impossible, for wholly understandable reasons. Deeply affected and mistrusting, those who have suffered are suspicious and, in many cases, they are still too vulnerable to be subjected to the ham-fisted public or even private examination of well-intentioned politicians. Therefore, it is testimony at second hand on which the committee has drawn and which David Stewart detailed, to an extent, in his speech. Although it is not as satisfactory, it is still compelling.

As David Stewart noted, the intention of the committee was to be helpful. It was therefore careful not to embrace a remit that would have had it chasing shadows down dozens of avenues. In consequence, it has produced a series of practical recommendations and, through its work, has allowed others to ask other searching questions, not least why there has been such an underuse of the provisions of the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009 and the Protection of Children and Prevention of Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2005.

On the other hand, the recommendations of the report somewhat casually stray into one popular area of policy recommendations for politicians: education. In so many areas of policy, whether public health or whatever, we have become fond, as politicians, of recommending that schools and teachers should take the lead, and in a somewhat generalised way. This report does that to an extent, too, and I am less persuaded by it.

Although we have introduced and enhanced the detail of sexual education in the school curriculum, it is impossible to demonstrate that we have been successful in our intention. We still have alarmingly high rates of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease and there is an ever reducing age of reported sexual intimacy. We have provided no end of facts and practical routes for further assistance and support and yet, in an effort not to obstruct, we have, in the opinion of many, eschewed context and value.

If we are to make a valued educational contribution, it must be one that ensures that we do not counterintuitively promote a greater incidence of that which we are seeking to curtail and prevent. Moreover, the report identifies the all-too-depressing incidence among children who are already in lives that demonstrate recognisable chaotic factors.

At no point does the report talk about families or parents as a positive source of support, which I think is an oversight. Annabel Goldie talked in the previous session of Parliament about parenting. We should not ignore the education of parents, the majority of whom have no experience of this issue themselves but are deeply concerned by the modern world and the opportunities for evil that exist within it.

I know of many parents who will be confronted regularly by newspaper or magazine case histories, which are sometimes willingly sensationalised for reasons that we all recognise and deplore. Those histories can alert parents to a particular tragedy without offering them validated best practice for ensuring the wellbeing of their own children.

There is a case for ensuring that any national strategy looks to produce helpful and informed guidance for parents that is endorsed by Government. Otherwise, they rely on the anecdotal and, in so doing, can seem to children as if they are removed from the realities of their world. The world has moved on at such a pace that saying, “My mother always used to say”, “We won’t discuss this further” or “You will not do that” really no longer suffice. Parents need evolving, sensible and practical advice.

On the publication of a report, it can seem that the issue at hand is endemic among the whole population, when in fact the vast majority remain unaffected. The sexual exploitation of children has become widely discussed, just as child abduction was in the past. It is not in any sense a marginal issue, and the report details in the most authoritative and at times harrowing way it can the all-too-often inexplicable dark side of human behaviour.

What I am seeking to say is that any strategy must not become so diluted in order to be national as to lose bite and focus in rooting out actual child sexual exploitation, supporting those affected or prosecuting effectively those who exploit.

I welcome the recommendations on police education, the support of a named individual acting on behalf of children involved in the legal process, the training of front-line police officers to disrupt perpetrators, the greater use of sexual harm orders and, more generally, the effective implementation and use of legal remedies that are already available.

I believe this debate is also an opportunity to pay tribute to the many who have, with the greatest sensitivity, immersed themselves in understanding the world in which this activity takes place in order to lead those who have been traumatised and damaged by it to a safer future. Therefore, I thank Barnardo’s, NHS open road, Who Cares? Scotland, the Aberlour Child Care Trust and Say Women, among the dozens of organisations and individuals who have acted and from which written and oral evidence was received.

Like David Stewart, I think it worth pausing to reflect on the closure—even as the work of the committee progressed—of Scotland’s only refuge for children who have run away from home, which was operated by Aberlour in the Glasgow area. The loss of this three-bedroom unit is surely by any standard a regressive step, and I hope that further work will be done to establish why the unit was not sustainably viable.

Were the central recommendation of this report—that a national strategy be established—to fall on deaf ears, it would be impossible to conclude other than that child exploitation will continue without our proper understanding of its extent and evolution or the effectiveness of any of the actions already taken or envisaged. Countless groups will work on, each gathering further understanding but without the authority that a co-ordinated approach may bring.

This is a report in which politicians have tried, with reticence and humility in terms of our understanding and experience, to advance a policy agenda for the good of those affected and against those who perpetrate evil. It is for the Government to step in and provide leadership and to draw on the talent of those who have the experience and commitment. I welcome the minister’s focus on actions, rather than further reviews.

The report is bristling with practical, commonsense suggestions, which I hope that the Parliament will commend to the Scottish Government tonight for action.