Hansard

I, too, congratulate my colleague Paul Martin on his long-standing commitment to and campaigning on this issue and, of course, Margaret Ann Cummings, who has courageously spent the 11 years since her personal tragedy trying to ensure that no one has to suffer in the way that she has. Paul Martin is also right to identify the sterling work of our local housing associations.

If this Parliament is about anything, it must be about protecting those who are most vulnerable in society and, in this context, that is clearly our children. The 2006 Justice 2 Sub-Committee report made 33 recommendations and was seen as a major contribution to the debate at that time. The fact that some of those recommendations—in particular, recommendation 20, which concerns housing applications—have not yet been implemented is very regrettable. However, that report is now 10 years old and perhaps it is time to have a fresh look at the entire subject.

I want to look in a wee bit more detail at housing and at a particular aspect of housing that happens to be particularly dear to my heart from my own experience. Most sex offenders, when they are released from prison, will avail themselves of social rented housing by the very nature of the individuals and their circumstances. Housing providers are rarely aware of that aspect of an applicant’s background, so people will be housed where there is available accommodation. In my constituency and in constituencies like mine, that might well be in a high-rise block.

Living in a high-rise block is very different from living in any other kind of accommodation. In effect, there is an entire street with one entrance so, on a daily basis, people cannot cross the road to avoid someone they do not want to talk to. It is likely that they will have to travel for a period of time—perhaps alone—in the confined space of a lift every time they want to go into or leave their home.

There is also the added complication of stairwells and fire exits, which are not often used because people want to take the lift whenever they can. Those are all areas in which people become particularly vulnerable. For parents with children, it is often very hard; they let their child go to school in the morning, for example, and once the child goes out the door, the parents do not know what has happened to that child or where they are.

The particular situation that arises because of the specific circumstances of high-rise flats should be taken into consideration. When parents send their children out to play, they often cannot see where the children are and they have very little oversight. That suggests to me that families should not be accommodated in high-rise blocks, but perhaps that is an argument for another day.

We should certainly be looking seriously at the issue that confronts us when we have sex offenders in the community who may well be accommodated in a high-rise block. Christine Grahame is absolutely right to say that the rehousing and resettlement of particular offenders is a complex issue, but we must surely redouble our efforts to find solutions so that no case can fall through any loophole that we have allowed to continue to exist.

There are international examples of good practice that we can call upon and look at. I am sure that the present Government is doing that and is bringing to bear every resource that it has on the issue, but I think that the time has come for us to review what has happened in the past, to look at those international examples, and to do everything in our power to ensure that children in this country are protected to the very limit of our ability to do so.