Meeting of the Parliament 03 December 2025
I thank Pauline McNeill and Labour for enabling this debate to happen. Some of the issues that we are discussing were touched on in yesterday’s debate on violence against women and girls, but it is good that we have an opportunity to focus specifically on this topic, which is certainly challenging.
Group-based sexual exploitation of children, which involves targeting often incredibly vulnerable young people, subjecting them to horrific abuse and isolating them from support systems, is surely one of the most abhorrent crimes imaginable. We were all horrified by the experiences of Taylor, whose heart-breaking testimony shows that there are victims of group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse across Scotland, and for the most part, their stories go untold. They have been let down by a lack of joined-up working between agencies and a failure of safeguarding, and the perpetrators have seldom faced justice. We have a duty to those young people to act.
The motion appears to have been successful in prompting an overdue response from the Government. I welcome the news that Professor Alexis Jay has been appointed to carry out a review and hope that it will lead to wider investigation. Police Scotland has reviewed historic and on-going child sexual abuse in Scotland since 2013. The results of that will be integral to any associated inquiry. Although duplicating Police Scotland’s work serves nobody’s interests, the case for increased transparency and independent oversight is reasonable. The investigations that were carried out in England and Wales by Professor Jay and Baroness Casey show that institutional failures of the police and other public agencies often prevented victims from coming forward to report abuse, delayed appropriate investigation and hindered the eventual prosecution of perpetrators. A subsequent failure to acknowledge those failings has since delayed access to justice for survivors.
Concerns have also been raised about Police Scotland’s approach to data collection in relation to group-based child sexual exploitation. Questions remain as to whether the methods appropriately identify the risk factors in current and historical cases. Pauline McNeill was right to underline concerns that a remarkably low number of children have been recorded on the register of those at risk of sexual exploitation across Scotland in the past year. Can we really be confident that the system is reliably identifying those who require support?
Police Scotland is certainly to be commended for its response to many of the reports of group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse that we have heard about. However, if we are to build a complete picture of the scale and nature of the problem in Scotland, independent scrutiny needs to be built into any review. As the NSPCC warns, Scotland lacks that clear understanding at present.
The Scottish Government points to the Scottish child abuse inquiry and the national child abuse and exploitation strategic group in relation to adopting an evidence-based approach to the issue. Both are undoubtedly important, but they are limited, compared with the approach in England and Wales, in allowing a proper analysis of the extent and scale of group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse in Scotland. Indeed, Baroness Casey told a House of Commons committee that it would be a “missed opportunity” if the national inquiry did not extend across the entire UK, given the importance of a joined-up approach. She also warned that gangs that are identified in England and Wales might very well be operating across borders, including in Scotland.
Even if Scotland is to go down the route of having its own inquiry, there is a strong argument for close collaboration with the on-going inquiry in England and Wales. Such collaboration will be needed if we are to be effective in tackling these abhorrent crimes, ensuring prevention and protection, and doing justice to the needs of some of the most vulnerable people in our society. Scottish Liberal Democrats will support the motion.