Mandatory child sexual abuse duty plan dropped in pre-election legislation rush

A planned new duty on staff working with children to report child sexual abuse (CSA) was dropped in last week’s pre-election rush to pass legislation.

The government’s Criminal Justice Bill fell in the so-called ‘wash-up’ period between prime minister Rishi Sunak’s decision to call an election last Wednesday (22 May) and the end of the parliamentary session last Friday.

Ministers had planned to introduce an amendment into that bill to introduce so-called mandatory reporting of CSA, a key recommendation of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA)’s final report, published in October 2022.

But the fall of the bill means that it will be up to the incoming government to decide whether to introduce the measure.

A re-elected Conservative government would likely revive its planned measure, while Labour has previously said it has been supportive of a mandatory reporting law since 2014.

Watered down version of CSA inquiry proposals

However, the current government’s plans are a significantly watered-down version of what IICSA proposed 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 all 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 have criticised the proposals for lacking teeth.

For example, the campaign group Mandate Now pointed out that there was no mechanism in the amendment put forward by the government to require a report to the DBS to be made where a person failed to report CSA when mandated to do so.

For this and other reasons, it described the proposals as “a waste of printer’s ink”.