Story updated 2 April 2025
Professionals and others in positions of trust in relation to children will face a duty to report child sexual abuse (CSA).
Home secretary Yvette Cooper announced yesterday that the government would be reviving the mandatory reporting policy, dropped by its Conservative predecessors on the eve of the 2024 election.
The idea was one of the key recommendations from the 2022 final report of the seven-year Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), and was designed to address historic under-reporting of CSA by practitioners and others in a position of trust over children.
Watered down mandatory reporting plans
Though accepted by the Conservatives, the previous government watered down IICSA’s recommendations in two key respects:
- There would be no requirement to report CSA in cases where recognised indicators of abuse were present. Instead, the duty would only apply where a person had observed CSA or a perpetrator or victim had disclosed it, which the inquiry found or implied were relatively rare.
- There would be no criminal sanction for anyone who did not report cases of witnessed or disclosed abuse. Instead, they would be referred to the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) to be potentially barred from working with children, with professionals referred to regulators for further sanctions.
Charities and campaigners criticised the Conservative proposals for lacking teeth.
Pledge to introduce criminal sanction
In a statement to the House of Commons yesterday, Cooper said that the Crime and Policing Bill would make it “an offence with professional and criminal sanctions to fail to report or cover up child sexual abuse”.
However, when the Crime and Policing Bill was published in February 2025, it did not include a sanction for failing to comply with the duty to report; instead, there was only a duty for preventing or deterring a person with complying with their duty to report.*
In its report, IICSA said these included sexualised or sexually harmful behaviour, physical signs of abuse or consequences of sexual abuse such as pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases. While proposing that mandatory reporting should apply when indicators were present, it said failure to report should not be met by a criminal sanction, because of the complexity of identifying these factors.
Political row over CSE
The home secretary’s statement came in the wake of a huge political row over the government’s response to child sexual exploitation (CSE) by organised gangs.
This followed the government’s decision to reject a request from Oldham Council to set up a public inquiry into CSE in the borough to address gaps the authority had identified in a 2022 review into the issue.
In a letter to the authority, sent in October 2024, safeguarding minister Jess Phillips said it was for the authority itself to commission a fresh inquiry, citing the positive impact of previous local reviews, in Rotherham and Telford.
When news of the letter became public last week, X owner Elon Musk posted that Phillips – who had a long career in tackling violence against women and girls before becoming an MP – should be imprisoned for the decision, while the Conservatives also criticised the decision to reject Oldham’s request.
Prime minister Keir Starmer attacked Musk’s intervention – though without naming him – and defended Phillips in a statement yesterday (source: politics.co.uk). Meanwhile, Cooper called on MPs to respect the historic cross-party consensus on tackling CSE and showing respect for victims and survivors, while rejecting online misinformation.
Other pledges on tackling abuse and exploitation
Alongside her announcement on mandatory reporting, she also pledged to:
- Create a new performance framework, with data collection requirements, for the police concerning CSA and CSE. This responds to IICSA’s recommendation to introduce a core data set for the issue, to tackle what it found was a lack of reliable data, particularly in relation to CSE. The inquiry said the data set should include information on the characteristics of victims and alleged perpetrators of CSA/CSE, including age, sex and ethnicity, the factors that make children more vulnerable to abuse or exploitation and the settings in which abuse or exploitation occur.
- Legislate to make grooming an aggravating factor in the sentencing of child sexual offences, a recommendation from IICSA’s 2022 report on CSE by organised networks.
- Set up a victims and survivors panel to work with the government on implementing reforms to CSA and CSE.
*The story has been amended following the publication of the Crime and Policing Bill to make clear that there will be no criminal sanction for failing to comply with the duty to report child sexual abuse.
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I think this could be counter productive in the long run. Children are less likely to report abuse if the teacher, foster carer, (or even to a friend’s parent who is also a professional), are mandated to reporting the abuse whether the child wants it reported or not.
The police could be deluged with suspicions they can’t act on. Not sure it has improved the conviction of perpetrators in countries where it has been implemented.
Sexual abuse is frequently covered up in schools children’s homes and other services provided by the LA. Children displaying HSB are not recognised as being at risk with even violent penatrative assults classified as normal ‘because they are not sexually motivated at that age’. The victims of that HSB are not protected either and the abuse they experience and the child who harmed experienced simply ignored.
Mandatory reporting is a start but the systematic cover ups to protect themselves by local authorities must be stopped.
To the poster above I put it to you that when children report sexual abuse it’s because they want it to stop they want action they want the person to do something to protect them. To say this might prevent disclosure is madness most victims are horrified at the amount of disclosures they have made without action or protection. Feeling they are worthless due to that inaction.
When did sexual abuse be come normalised in social care in this way
the absurdity of the current arrangements is that the trade-offs being made for non-disclosure are rewarded in ways similarly compensated as those by the grooming gangs …
….it’s a systemic problem not only of the insidious nature and damage caused by long run invalidation and the obliteration of the child’s identity but also one of collusion in achieving this as a desired outcome …
…. I am referring to the insider knowledge of sex abuse in-between children and between children and their carers; the forgotten boys is but one project set up for and run by survivors of the English borstal system and out of the shadows another for women survivors …
… the specificalities of the aftermath of the Climbe Inquiry requires attention; the obviously nonobvious issues played by an embedddd and deliberate use of humility, manipulation and cajole by foster carers wasnt given sufficient weight in the wash-up and despite being a prominent part the statutory reviewing findings and subsequently largely ignored …
… the specificalities of the deliberate risk escalation tactics by commercial providers setting up children to ‘act-out’ in anticipation of and using a statutory review to make the case for increased funding; ignored ….
… the specificalities of the insider trade-offs between providers knowingly high-jacking secure reviews as if in a secret bidding war for the ownership to the rights of a child’s care; ignored….
… the absurdity of and deliberate use of the perverse commercial incentives within the English arrangements forming the actual motivation and basis for the MacAlister Review endorsed by Government…
…. it’s a proper shit show and ‘we’ and I mean the ‘royal we’ know it ….
… it’s a shame and blame based system and ‘we’ have again’ simply reinforced this; why? ….
… the coverage of which is provided by Camilla Cavendish in the FT; the feature article saving hundreds of thousands of pounds in avoiding the otherwise requirements for Government to make an Initial Public Offering ie ‘we’ are selling the rights to care for children as public procurement lots …
… I have reviewed the contracting and procurement of Children’s Services repeatedly over the years and save for excception where s75 NHS Agreements have been made the arrangements are poorly constructed; ‘we’ are using highly prescriptive public procurement processes in perhaps the least definable services areas and it simply doesn’t work….
… the choices faced by adult survivors are being reduced to, and damningly so, about what they get out of any disclosure being made; the failings of the Yew Tree Inquiry marred by such trade-offs which for some of the lucky survivors included a guarantee of a PhD level education and subsequent work opportunities with world travel; some survivors are amongst the very best within the NHS and LocGov.some perps are also placed within the NHS and LocGov for ‘safe monitoring’ ….
… it’s maybe time for a, MeToo, type disclosure as was facilitated by the Commission of Inquiry into Child Abuse (CICA) by the Irish who set up a pre- Court facility called the Confidential Committee for such disclosures to be made….
… Wendy is right; the abuse of children and their sexual abuse is directly proportional to the diminished status of the “meaning of the child’ throughout the past 40years and not just at home but throughout our educational systems too ….
…. Austerity, which has been the staple diet for the UK, with temporary relief for part of the noughties, since PM Thatcher …
… it is a shit show; the title for the sequel to Stuart Hall’s The Great Moving Right Show ….
a useful read 📚
https://doi.org/10.12795/arauccaria.2019.142.22
the meaning of the child has never been more important, no?
the absurdity of the current arrangements is that the trade-offs being made for non-disclosure are rewarded in ways similarly compensated as those by the grooming gangs …
….it’s a systemic problem not only of the insidious nature and damage caused by long run invalidation and the obliteration of the child’s identity but also one of collusion in achieving this as a desired outcome …
…. I am referring to the insider knowledge of sex abuse in-between children and between children and their carers; the forgotten boys is but one project set up for and run by survivors of the English borstal system and out of the shadows another for women survivors …
… the specificalities of the aftermath of the Climbe Inquiry requires attention; the obviously nonobvious issues played by an embedddd and deliberate use of humiliation, embarrasment, manipulation and cajole by foster carers wasnt given sufficient weight in the wash-up and despite being a prominent part the statutory reviewing findings and subsequently largely ignored …
… the specificalities of the deliberate risk escalation tactics by commercial providers, and independent advocates vying for attention to secure next years contract setting up children to ‘act-out’ in anticipation of and using a statutory review to make the case for increased funding; ignored ….
… the specificalities of the insider trade-offs between providers knowingly high-jacking secure reviews as if in a bidding war with the incumbent provider for the ownership to the rights of a child’s care; ignored….
… the absurdity of and deliberate use of the perverse commercial incentives within the English arrangements forming the actual motivation and basis for the MacAlister Review and endorsed by Government…
…. it’s a proper shit show and ‘we’, and I mean the ‘royal we’, know it ….
… it’s a shame and blame based system and ‘we’ have again simply reinforced this; why? ….
… the coverage provided by Camilla Cavendish in the FT is illuminating; a feature article saving hundreds of thousands of pounds by avoiding the otherwise requirements for Government to announce in the HofC, then make the public case for privatisation, and then issue an Initial Public Offering ie ‘we’ are selling the rights to care for children as public procurement lots and it has gone through without so much as a whisper …
… I have reviewed the contracting and procurement of Children’s Services repeatedly over the years and save for excception where s75 NHS Agreements have been made the arrangements are poorly constructed; ‘we’ are using highly prescriptive public procurement processes in perhaps the least definable services areas and it simply doesn’t work….
… the choices faced by adult survivors are being reduced to, and damningly so, about what they get out of any disclosure being made; the failings of the Yew Tree Inquiry marred by such trade-offs which for some of the lucky survivors included a guarantee of a PhD level education and subsequent work opportunities with world travel; some survivors are amongst the very best within the NHS and LocGov.some perps are also placed within the NHS and LocGov for ‘safe monitoring’ ….
… it’s maybe time for a, MeToo, type disclosure as was facilitated by the Commission of Inquiry into Child Abuse (CICA) by the Irish who set up a pre- Court facility called the Confidential Committee for such disclosures to be made….
… Wendy is right; the abuse of children and their sexual abuse is directly proportional to the diminished status of the “meaning of the child’ throughout the past 40years and not just at home but throughout our educational systems too ….
…. Austerity, which has been the staple diet for the UK, with temporary relief for part of the noughties, since PM Thatcher is root cause …
… it is a shit show; the title for the sequel to Stuart Hall’s The Great Moving Right Show ….