2 Matters of concern
Commissioning the Jay Report
10. We start with a commendation. Amid the storm
which has followed the publication of the Jay Report, the fact
that Rotherham itself commissioned the Report has been lost. Given
the pattern of denial of child sexual exploitation exposed by
the Jay Report, it would not have been unexpected for Rotherham
to attempt to bat away further allegations. However, that is not
what happened in 2013. Both the Chief Executive and the new Leader
of the Council provided us with accounts of what happened in 2013.
11. The Chief Executive, Martin Kimber, said that,
when faced with fresh press reports of child sexual exploitation
in Rotherham and a police investigation, he and a Cabinet member
had persuaded the leadership of the Council to commission the
Report. The Chief Executive said that he had acted following a
report[11] in The Times
on 23 August 2013
relating to the experiences of a young female
who had suffered child sexual exploitation in Rotherham [...]
and who had been let down by services at that time. There had
also been previous articles on a similar subject.
The article of 23rd of August was
fundamentally different. It contained inferences that a then senior
politician might have had some knowledge of these historic matters.
I was shocked at this inference and had never heard or suspected
this might be the case. This was a significant moment. I felt
there were issues associated with the history of the town that
were not fully known to me, and also that other officers and members
were not aware of. I was uncertain how this should be tackled
but ultimately advised that an independent examination of historic
cases was needed.[12]
12. Cllr Lakin, who became Leader of the Council
in 2014, said that:
Rotherham was getting hit, year after year, with
the Times reports on sexual exploitation, where we were getting
constantly accused of cover up and failing to listen to the victims.
I had never been party to any political discussion around that,
and it got to a point in September 2012 where I said to the Leader,
"This needs to go into Labour Group. We are being accused
here by The Times." We had had the Times report in 2012,
which was around Child S and moral cowardice. Again, it contained
references to covering up because of ethnicity. "We really
need this debate." To be fair, the Leader did not disagree.
Up to that point, my discussions had not been with the Leader;
they had been with the Deputy Leader.[13]
He continued:
There was no resistance in 2013. In 2013, just
to put the record straight, there was a further Times article
relating to the then Deputy Leader around his alleged involvement
in handover of a young girl named Jessica. At that point, the
Police and Crime Commissioner announced three reviews. He did
the one for the Crown prosecutor; the independent HMI; and he
announced his own review into historic cases of child abuse. I
think this was brought up, if I am right, in the questioning from
Mr Vaz in the Home Affairs Select Committee in January 2013. When
the Chief Executive and then Director of Children's Services went
down there, they were asked why Rochdale had a review and why
Rotherham had not.
It was only right at that time that, if the victims
of sexual exploitation in Rotherham were going to be heard, Rotherham
owed it to them to undertake an independent inquiry. I had a discussion
with the Leader. The Leader was not keen initially. That discussion
culminated in a fairly heated debate, dare I say refereed at that
point by the then Deputy Leader. I was assisted in that argument
by several cabinet member colleagues, at which point the Leader
took on board our comments, phoned the Chief Executive and asked
him to commission the review. I had said to the Leader, "If
you do not have an independent inquiry, I will be walking out
of this room; I will be speaking in favour of an independent inquiry
in Labour Group; and then what you do with me as a cabinet member
is your choice."[14]
13. We have set out at length two accounts of
the circumstances surrounding the commissioning of the Jay Report
to show that in both accounts the stimulus for action was the
press. Significantly, it was not any internal council processes
or external reviews or inspections.
14. We would be seriously concerned if other local
authorities where there are credible allegations or suspicions
of organised child sexual exploitation were to hold off from carrying
out their own investigations because of the consequences of the
publication of the Jay Report in Rotherham or indeed to wait for
the outcome of the Independent Panel Inquiry into Child Sexual
Abuse, which still has not got a Chair in place.
The extent of child sexual exploitation
in England
15. A key issue is the extent to which organised
child sexual exploitation—as exposed in Rotherham—is
prevalent across England. In her Report Professor Jay made a "conservative
estimate" that there were "more than 1,400 victims in
the period covered by the Inquiry, and an unknown number who were
at risk of being exploited".[15]
(Professor Jay supplied us with a memorandum setting out the methodology
behind the 1,400 estimate, which we have published.)[16]
When she gave evidence to us Professor Jay was clear that Rotherham
was not unique and she drew attention to the Deputy Children's
Commissioner for England's report into child sexual exploitation
in gangs and groups,[17]
which confirmed that it occurred elsewhere.[18]
What we learned about organised child sexual exploitation in Rotherham
during this inquiry chimed with the Deputy Children's Commissioner's
principal finding:
Despite increased awareness and a heightened
state of alert regarding child sexual exploitation children are
still slipping through the net and falling prey to sexual predators.
Serious gaps remain in the knowledge, practice and services required
to tackle this problem. There are pockets of good practice, but
much still needs to be done to prevent thousands more children
falling victim.[19]
The Local Government Association (LGA) also said
that the problem was "extremely widespread" and that
"depending upon the demographics of the area, depending upon
whether the area is rural or urban, depending upon the history
of the area, it takes different forms".[20]
16. On 24 September, the Secretaries of State for
Communities and Local Government and Education wrote to the Leaders
of all the Principal Councils in England asking them to "read
Professor Jay's report and consider whether you have adequate
measures in place to ensure that you cannot be accused of similar
failings".[21] When
we asked for a clearer set of benchmarks and national standards
around child sexual exploitation the Secretary of State for Communities
and Local Government said that the statutory guidance Working
Together to Safeguard Children set out what was required of
local authorities and their partners to keep children safe, including
from sexual exploitation. He added that:
Ofsted have announced a thematic review of how
local authorities respond to that guidance in delivering services
to children at risk of exploitation. In addition, the Education
Secretary has asked the Chief Social Worker to consider the lessons
for local authorities from Professor Jay's report and any implications
for her Department's programme of social work reform.[22]
We welcome the Secretary of State's clarification
on benchmarks.
17. On the evidence we took the alarming conclusion
is that Rotherham was not an outlier and that there is a widespread
problem of organised child sexual exploitation in England. It
follows that other authorities not only need to review their own
arrangements in the light of the Jay Report but also the Government
needs to ensure that the guidance and benchmarks are in place
to ensure these reviews are effective and children are identified
and protected.
Local authority systems
18. The Jay Report sets out in detail the weaknesses
in Rotherham Council's systems for identifying and tackling organised
child sexual exploitation. It covers in chilling and comprehensive
detail deficiencies within the Council and the problems it faced.
There are two matters on which we wish to comment.
SCRUTINY
19. First, Rotherham's structure of policies and
plans were divorced from reality. As Professor Jay told us, Rotherham
"had no shortage of policies, procedures or plans. There
were mountains of them, but the weakness was that nobody checked
whether they were being implemented, or indeed whether they were
any good."[23] Rotherham
moved to a cabinet system by 2004[24]
but the scrutiny process, which is an essential component of the
cabinet system, appears to have been ineffectual. Professor Jay
recorded in her Report that:
A presentation on sexual exploitation was made
to a special seminar for councillors in November 2004. This presentation
was explicit about known perpetrators, their ethnic origins, and
where they operated. Similar presentations were made to other
groups, including the Safeguarding Board, over the following weeks.
As a result, the Leader of the Council set up a 'Task and Finish
Group' to consider safe travel, safe houses, witness protection,
training and publicity to raise public awareness of the issue.
Senior councillors attended a conference on child sexual exploitation
held in Rotherham in April 2006. A training session for councillors
was arranged in June 2007 and a further conference in 2011.[25]
The subsequent history of the Task and Finish Group
is confusing. Professor Jay records:
In November 2005, the Chair of the Children and
Young People's Voluntary Sector Consortium wrote to the Chief
Executive, expressing concern at the problem of child sexual exploitation
[CSE] in Rotherham and recalling that members of the Consortium
gave evidence to the Task and Finish Group on March 2. The Consortium
had not been represented at any meetings after that. She requested
a progress report on the Group's work. The Chief Executive's reply
has not been found. In late 2005, the Group agreed that more awareness
training around CSE needed to be provided within the child protection
training programme. There is no further record of this group's
meetings or its outputs or how it ceased to exist.[26]
20. The Task and Finish Group included the Leader
and may have had both executive and scrutiny functions. It is
not clear. There were other bodies which appear to have had been
exclusively for scrutiny. Professor Jay noted in her Report that:
Overview and scrutiny committees may make recommendations
to the Council's Executive. Under other legislation the Council's
scrutiny committee may also make recommendations to other local
bodies. Many scrutiny functions have a process by which recommendations
are monitored to check on their implementation. This is seen as
one of the principal ways in which to ascertain the impact that
scrutiny has on local services. In 2005, the Children's and Young
People's Scrutiny Panel was set up. This included up to 12 elected
members. In 2006, the Looked After Children Scrutiny Sub-Panel
was set up, with 11 elected members. It was disbanded in 2010
and replaced by the Corporate Parenting Group, with six elected
members. There was also an Overview and Scrutiny Management Board,
which reviewed what all the separate scrutiny panels were discussing.
Since 2012, there are four Select Commissions for scrutiny, replacing
the previous panels.[27]
Professor Jay found it significant that there was
an
apparent lack of effective scrutiny exercised
by these several groups or bodies, and least of all by the Scrutiny
Panels. Scrutiny in its widest sense is an essential component
of Cabinet government. Rarely does it appear from the minutes
that councillors have held officers to account by checking the
evidence for proposals or asking whether their ends could be met
in other ways. It may be that the minutes are written in bland,
non-specific, language, but that does nothing to reassure the
public that genuine accountability is being exercised. It is important
that councillors test proposals by reference to their broad experience
and their knowledge of the Borough and their own constituents.
There should be nothing threatening about this; good officers
should welcome challenge as a central part of local democracy.[28]
21. Scrutiny needs to function effectively in an
authority such as Rotherham where often one party holds a predominance
of the council seats and in the case of Rotherham where there
was, as the Chief Executive told us, the "dominance of a
particular personality within the Council who at times could be
very direct".[29]
As with its policies Rotherham has on paper a scrutiny structure
that appears comprehensive[30]
and councillors sat on these scrutiny bodies but child sexual
exploitation has tragically shown the actuality of scrutiny to
be lacking. In our view the circumstances found within Rotherham
Council—policies divorced from reality, single party supremacy
and a dominating personality with predominate influence—are
likely to be found in other local authorities. In the face of
these conditions it is essential that scrutiny arrangements are
effective and separate from the executive functions and that the
executive needs to be challenged when there is evidence of an
acute problem which it has failed to take into account or address.
SENIOR OFFICERS AND COUNCILLORS
22. When she gave evidence to us we asked the then
Strategic Director of Children's and Young People's Services,
Joyce Thacker, for an example of a report on her fears about child
sexual exploitation that she had taken to the cabinet member responsible
for children's services. She supplied two. We, as former councillors,
have some experience of such reports and in our view nothing in
either report would have immediately and unambiguously alerted
the recipient that there was a serious problem.[31]
(There may be other reports prepared by officers of the Council,
or oral briefings, to the cabinet members that did set alarm bells
ringing but we have not seen them.) The two reports we examined
gave the impression that, while there were risks and problems,
the Council and its partner agencies and police were working together
effectively. The problem that was given some prominence was the
child sexual exploitation of boys, not girls, which is the primary
focus of the Jay Report's revelations. Neither report proposed
additional action or resources.
23. When she gave evidence Professor Jay shared our
concern and said that these reports "needed to make unambiguous
statements about the seriousness and scale of the problem, which
they did not".[32]
The inadequate reports prepared by officers are only part of the
picture. Councillors had been alerted to the problems of child
sexual exploitation at the seminar that took place in November
2004 and warnings were repeated at subsequent seminars, but the
elected leaders of the Council appear to have made no effort either
to test what the officers were reporting or, as Professor Jay
notes, to check on or, we note, measure progress, let alone assess
the extent of organised child sexual exploitation in Rotherham.
The quality of the reports from senior officers and the apparent
lack of challenge by councillors raises a serious question about
the adequacy of skills and training of executive councillors.
Whistleblowers
24. When the Council officers gave evidence to us,
they explained that the Council had arrangements in place for
whistleblowers[33] and
they sent us a copy of the policy.[34]
As with other policies at Rotherham there must be a question whether
the policy on paper accords with the actuality. The then Strategic
Director of Children's and Young People's Services told us that
that has been no whistleblowing about child sexual exploitation.[35]
The effectiveness of Rotherham Council's policy on whistleblowers
needs to be tested.
The conduct of former council
officers
25. The former Leader of the Council, Roger Stone,
resigned on the publication of the Jay Report in August 2014.[36]
The Chief Executive and the Strategic Director of Children's and
Young People's Services at Rotherham have left, or are leaving,
their posts as a result of the findings in the Jay Report on child
sexual exploitation within the borough. Given the extent and
consequences of the systemic failures identified in the Jay Report
we must conclude that the departures of the senior officers and
the former Leader of Rotherham Council was the correct course.
26. Professor Jay, however, makes it clear that the
departing officers had taken steps to improve the services at
Rotherham:
There have been many improvements in the last
four years by both the Council and the Police [...] There is a
central team in children's social care which works jointly with
the Police and deals with child sexual exploitation. This works
well but the team struggles to keep pace with the demands of its
workload.[37]
27. Professor Jay's Report covers the period from
1997 and it must follow that the departing officers' predecessors,
during whose tenures the problems appear to have lain unaddressed,
if not disregarded or suppressed, have serious questions to answer
for their conduct during the time they were responsible for children's
services at Rotherham Council. One specific concern we share with
Professor Jay is
about particular missing information around the
time of 1999 to 2003. This was at a period of time when a group
of [...] dedicated professionals were meeting and trying hard
to address the issues, both at an individual level, monitoring
children who were victims, but also to share intelligence about
perpetrators and where they were operating. That included the
police, the health service and [...] children's social care. These
meetings were carefully minuted, as I understand, and those minutes
were never available. I asked for them on several occasions, and
they could not be found.
Some of those who were involved in the meetings
originally were very distressed by the fact that they could not
be found. There was no explanation for this. Indeed, the council's
monitoring officer did approach the police as well and ask if
they had any copies of these minutes. There were four years of
minutes. That is important, not just from the point of view of
the inquiry, but also because they contained information about
how decisions were made about these children's lives.[38]
28. As we explained when we took oral evidence, it
is not our job to apportion blame to individuals, but it is to
examine whether the proper mechanisms are in place to hold any
individuals who may have responsibility for failings, or for successes,
properly to account.[39]
The accountability of those senior staff with responsibility for
the effective operation of a local authority, where, after their
departure from the authority, serious concerns have arisen about
their conduct, gives rise to an important matter of public policy.
On the one hand, where serious weaknesses, such as those at Rotherham,
have emerged the public and not least the residents of Rotherham
can reasonably expect senior officers, as well as councillors,
to be held to account. On the other hand, officers facing these
questions and allegations must have a fair hearing and be able
to defend themselves against any allegations and have access to
all the relevant papers.
29. When we put our concerns to the LGA it replied
in detail setting out how the existing arrangements work across
local government in respect of employees who had moved to a new
employer and also of those who had retired before the concerns
came to light.[40] For
those in a regulated role, such as social workers registered by
the Health and Care Professions Council, they would be subject
to the processes of the regulating body, to establish whether
the individual is fit to perform their current role. For individuals
not subject to regulation, the key tests would be for their current
employer:
a) whether the individual's actions at the council
which used to employ them mean that the employer can no longer
have confidence in them to perform their role; or
b) whether the actions have brought the employer
into disrepute.[41]
30. We found the Local Government Association's
contributions useful and in our view they provide the foundations
for an equitable process for examining the conduct of local government
officers who have moved on from an authority when concerns about
their performance in a previous post emerge. There are, however,
problems. First, there is the need for access to evidence which
will become more inaccessible with the passage of time. Second,
the threshold for dismissal is such that, as Cllr Simmonds from
the LGA explained:
If it comes to light that there are concerns
arising from somebody's past employment that would give rise to
either senior management in a local authority or members being
very uneasy about that person in that role, but those do not amount
to something that, under employment law or the legislation relating
to the Director of Children's Services, the Head of Paid Service
or a Section 151 officer, would allow them to be dismissed in
a straightforward way, then it is likely that that person would
leave the organisation using a compromise agreement.[42]
31. Rotherham Council and the LGA took the view that,
while the Jay Report provided an initial evidence base, it did
not assist in examining the conduct of individual members of staff.
Rotherham is undertaking an independent investigation with an
independent social worker and an independent HR adviser, who will
be looking specifically at the casework in Professor Jay's Report.[43]
This review will "consider all professional staffing issues".[44]
Where potential misconduct has been identified by a person
still working for Rotherham this would be a matter for Rotherham
Council. Where potential misconduct has been identified and the
person no longer works for Rotherham a determination will be made
whether that is a matter that should be referred to the new employer
and whether it is something that should be referred to the appropriate
professional bodies. If information is passed to the new employer,
it will be for that employer to determine whether that is damaging
their reputation or whether that person is no longer fit to practise
in that role.[45]
32. We welcome the action of Rotherham Council
to put in place arrangements to examine the conduct of present
and past employees. It is our intention to review the outcome
of this process, if it emerges before this parliament is dissolved,
or, if not, to suggest that our successor committee in the next
parliament consider the matter. In addition, we consider that
this process in Rotherham would be enhanced and made more equitable
to all concerned if there was a thorough and independent review
to establish why the papers produced between 1999 and 2003, which
Professor Jay sought, are missing. It might start by asking whether
the missing minutes were ever kept and what should have been the
process for preserving them.
Ofsted
33. In her Report Professor Jay summarised Ofsted's
activities:
Ofsted conducted regular inspections, planned
or unannounced, notably a full inspection in 2003, a follow-up
in 2004, a full inspection in 2008, a 'monitoring visit' in 2009,
an unannounced inspection in August 2009, a full inspection in
2010, an unannounced inspection in 2011, and an unannounced review
of child protection services in August 2012. Following the inspection
in 2009, the Minister of State for Young People and Families issued
to the Council a Notice of Requirement to Improve its children's
services. The Notice was removed in January 2011.[46]
Subsequently, in August 2012 Ofsted rated Rotherham's
child protection services as 'adequate' commending 'significant
improvements'.[47] When
we asked Professor Jay whether she considered that Ofsted had
failed the children of Rotherham, she replied: "To some extent,
yes."[48] She added
that Ofsted's reports
continued again and again to refer to the same
issues coming up: lack of monitoring; inadequate supervision;
the absence of sound information systems, etc., but they did not
seem to demand any direct and sustained improvement take place.
They simply reported and then it went onto the next and the next,
so there was no clear message that "We are not going to tolerate
that this has not improved". I thought that was a weakness
in their approach.
[Child sexual exploitation] was not mentioned
in any report until 2006 and then, I would quote, "It appeared
that vulnerable children and young people are kept safe from abuse
and exploitation". As I have said in [my] report, that statement
in itself may have given false reassurance, and in fact was quoted
back to me by some senior people who were around at that time
as proof of their good stewardship of children's services.[49]
34. While concern has rightly been directed at
Rotherham Council (and also at the police), we consider that the
Jay Report provides serious questions about the performance of
Ofsted and its inspection of the Rotherham Council's services.
We therefore consider it important to question Ofsted about its
record in reviewing children's services at Rotherham and, as indicated,
we shall be calling Ofsted to give evidence.
Resources
35. When we took evidence from both the officers
and the current Leader of Rotherham Council and when we wrote
to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government,
we raised the question of resources.[50]
Rotherham has given an indication of some of the costs required
to improve its services and to reach the 1,400 estimated victims
of child sexual exploitation. It said that it would
estimate financial provision for additional post
abuse support, for a dedicated Child Sexual Exploitation coordinator
to work across all agencies and staffing to cope with additional
referrals at least into the medium term. We estimate that the
resourcing requirements for this will amount to approximately
£250,000 in each of the next three financial years. We are
not in a position to quantify the cost of additional external
support we need to assist with investigations flowing from the
Jay report, but a conservative estimate might be up to £100,000
to be met this financial year and next.
In addition, the Council will also need to invest
in systems development to ensure that its ICT infrastructure is
fit for purpose [...] We estimate to implement this effectively
and allow for data migration we will need to make provision for
a capital spend in excess of £1 million over the next two
financial years.[51]
36. We are grateful for the figures Rotherham has
supplied. We also welcome the Secretary of State's statement that
"urgent work is underway across government to understand
how we might most effectively support victims through the agencies
that comprise the Rotherham Safeguarding Children Board".[52]
At this stage and before the inspections have reported and
the Improvement Board has completed its work a budget for the
costs needed to tackle, identify or put right the damage caused
by organised child sexual exploitation in Rotherham is not possible.
There will be costs, and the Secretary of State has recognised
that resources are going to be needed. These costs will include
care, support, counselling and therapy for the victims and survivors
of organised child sexual exploitation, and some of these costs
will not fall on local government. Similarly for England more
detailed estimates may not be available ahead of the outcome of
the Independent Panel Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. If Rotherham
is an indicator, we would expect that substantial resources may
be needed, and resources to implement their recommendations will
need to be found.
11 "The happy teenager who was transformed by Rotherham sex abuser",
The Times, 23 August 2013 Back
12
Letter from the Chief Executive of Rotherham Council, 25 September
2014 Back
13
Q244 Back
14
Q245 Back
15
Jay Report, p 29 Back
16
Explanatory note for the Communities and Local Government Select Committee on the scale of child sexual exploitation,
22 October 2014 Back
17
Office of the Children's Commissioner, "If only someone had listened": Office of the Children's Commissioner's Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Gangs and Groups - Final Report,
November 2013 Back
18
Q195 Back
19
Office of the Children's Commissioner, "If only someone had listened": Office of the Children's Commissioner's Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Gangs and Groups - Final Report,
November 2013, p 7 Back
20
Q253 Back
21
Letter from Secretaries of State for Communities and Local Government and Education to Leaders of Principal Councils,
24 September 2014 Back
22
Letter from the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government,
10 October 2014 Back
23
Q197 Back
24
When he gave oral evidence the Chief Executive was uncertain of
the date but suggested it may have been around 2004 (Q78); Rotherham
Council's website holds minutes of cabinet meetings going back
to 2000. Back
25
Jay Report, para 1.9 Back
26
Jay Report, para 13.46 Back
27
Jay Report, para 13.54 Back
28
Jay Report, para 13.58 Back
29
Letter from the Chief Executive of Rotherham Council, 25 September
2014 and see also Qq178-79. Back
30
Letter from the Chief Executive of Rotherham Council, 25 September
2014 Back
31
Letter from the Director, Schools and Lifelong Learning, Children and Young People's Services, Rotherham Council,
25 September 2014; reports dated 9 July 2008, 28 November 2008;
see also Letter from the Chief Executive of Rotherham Council,
24 October 2014 Back
32
Q187 Back
33
Qq137-40 Back
34
Letter from the Chief Executive of Rotherham Council, 25 September
2014 Back
35
Q137 Back
36
"Council leader Roger Stone quits over child grooming report",
Rotherham Advertiser, 27 August 2014 Back
37
Jay Report, Executive Summary Back
38
Q161 Back
39
Qq 2 and 153 Back
40
Letters from the Local Government Association, 2 and 10 October
2014 Back
41
Letter from the Local Government Association, 2 October 2014 Back
42
Q262 Back
43
Letter from the Chief Executive of Rotherham Council, 18 September
2014; Q266 Back
44
Letter from the Local Government Association, 2 October 2014 Back
45
Letter from the Chief Executive of Rotherham Council, 18 September
2014; Q266 Back
46
Jay Report, para 1.14 Back
47
Jay Report, p 13 Back
48
Q200 Back
49
Q200 Back
50
See Qq 134 and following, 213-15, Letter from the Chief Executive of Rotherham Council,
24 October 2014 and Letter from Communities and Local Government Committee to Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government,
11 September 2014 Back
51
Letter from the Chief Executive of Rotherham Council, 24 October
2014 Back
52
Letter from Communities and Local Government Committee to Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government,
11 September 2014 Back
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