00:00One very quick question, but you may not be able to answer this.
00:03You might not be fully cited.
00:05You've answered questions before to this committee and in other forums.
00:09It's to do with child grooming and sexual exploitation.
00:14On Sunday, on the politics programme,
00:17there was an interview, an exchange between people in the third sector,
00:23support sector, community-led sector,
00:25in terms of working with young people.
00:28A panel of guests.
00:31It varied between the new taskforce
00:35that I believe the Metropolitan Police Service has set up
00:37to look at historic issues
00:40arising out of the National Inquiry of Child Grooming.
00:44There were some issues around the data issues and the collections,
00:47and I'm not quite clear where the policing were on those data issues
00:53because there was confusions amongst people saying
00:56that one way the police were going to collect the data
00:59and another way they weren't going to collect the data.
01:02It's also...
01:03In terms of setting up the taskforce,
01:07are you clear about the previous statements
01:09that you've made to this committee and to other forums
01:13around the level of that child grooming
01:17that we may see in other parts of the countries
01:19and other towns outside London's?
01:22So, maybe two issues, the threat and the taskforce issue.
01:29The threat issue, so in terms of exploitation of children in London,
01:34we have very significant numbers of missing children every day in London.
01:42Many of them are vulnerable to exploitation, criminal or sexual.
01:47What I mean by criminal exploitation is perhaps being drawn into gangs,
01:51running drugs and that sort of activity,
01:53and sexual exploitation speaks for itself.
01:58And so we follow through with those cases,
02:01we try and debrief the children when they're found,
02:04work with local authority and other partners in terms of those cases.
02:08We have a steady flow of sexual...
02:16So, criminal exploitation we see a lot more of in London.
02:21Our county lines work.
02:23We've done thousands of cases of closing down lines.
02:27The standard MO is there's a manner of violence behind the line
02:31made with a couple of like-minded individuals,
02:35and then there might be some teenagers who are being sort of groomed
02:37who are running the drugs.
02:39And so it's a combination of charging these
02:41and referring these into support bodies
02:44because they've been criminally exploited
02:46and trying to get them out of the criminal world
02:47before they became too dug into it
02:49and become the men of violence themselves.
02:52Sex exploitation we see less of, but we do see it.
02:56In terms of multiple offender...
02:58So, sort of, I hesitate to use the word gang,
03:02but using multiple offender cases, we have a steady flow of those.
03:05We've got current, sort of, several live current investigations.
03:11What we see at the moment is there's a focus on some towns
03:16and a focus on sort of Pakistani heritage groups being involved with it.
03:25What we see in London with our current caseload
03:28is gangs of different heritages
03:37that are more varied and more reflective
03:41of the variety of heritage we see across London.
03:44So we don't see it being as sort of...
03:46as one-dimensional as is presented
03:48for some other locations in the country,
03:50but is a threat we're dealing with.
03:51In terms of the history, historic cases,
03:55so stage one of the national piece of work
03:58is to look back at a certain time period.
04:01I can't pull from the centre of my mind.
04:03It might be a decade. It might be a bit more than that.
04:06And look for all cases that are potentially in scope to review,
04:10so allegations of group-based offending.
04:14And then, having worked out how many cases are in scope,
04:17then the question is what actual formal investigation or review will take place.
04:21The recommendation in Baroness' cases report on that subject
04:24was that it should all be funded separately.
04:29The number of cases is going to be very significant.
04:32If we were to sort of do a full investigative review
04:35and reinvestigations of them all,
04:36that is going to be many, many, many millions of pounds
04:40to be able to do that.
04:42Millions of pounds a year for several years.
04:46I'm not arguing against the principle,
04:49but I will be loathe to take child protection specialists
04:53who are dealing with today's caseload
04:56off today's caseload to look back in history.
05:00So, Baroness Casey recommended it in new additional funding,
05:03and I think that's exactly right.
05:05What I find really difficult in all of the reporting around this
05:08and the comments made by you and the Mayor
05:09is around the lack of acknowledgement of the fact
05:13that this has been pushed underground
05:15and how the description of the action being taken
05:19doesn't sound like it's going to really address that deep culture.
05:22You mentioned briefly a minute ago about more covert policing,
05:26which would be interesting to hear about,
05:28but I feel like it's just been a bit like, you know,
05:30just talking about getting rid of the officers across the Met
05:32but not really acknowledging the fact that the panorama stated
05:35that it hadn't been eliminated, it had just been driven underground.
05:39So I just wondered if you could speak to whether, yeah,
05:42you acknowledge that your perception of how widespread the issue is underground
05:47and what you're doing to address that.
05:53So, firstly, you're not correct to say that I haven't acknowledged that.
05:57In pretty much every briefing and every media thing I've said,
05:59I've referenced the fact that you can see from what Panorama is saying,
06:04they say that some people, because of the Mets approach,
06:07it's been driven underground, and we see that.
06:09I've also, as I referenced earlier on, that fact,
06:11and I referenced another case elsewhere.
06:13In some ways, I think it's a positive because if people don't,
06:19and you see some of the conversations that Panorama programme are saying,
06:22are we safe to talk here?
06:23So they know that their views are not widely accepted,
06:27and you see some evidence of that.
06:30So how do you deal with that?
06:32Well, firstly, we're looking harder at how you increase the levels of reporting,
06:39so it's triple, but clearly you see in that programme one or two colleagues,
06:42the colleague I felt most sorry for,
06:44there was obviously a really principled woman who was a detention officer,
06:49she looked like a more mature lady,
06:51who was basically saying,
06:55basically like throwing her hands up in,
06:57all right, I work for this vile individual,
07:01what can I do about it?
07:02And so her sense of helplessness,
07:06you could feel it in that very brief clip in the programme,
07:08and so whilst we've got lots more people prepared to report things,
07:13there's more to do.
07:14So how do we make people feel more supportive and wrap more around them
07:17is part of what you do,
07:18because when it's underground, fewer people will see it,
07:21but some will still see it.
07:24Secondly, about leadership,
07:26I gathered the 700 top leaders in the Met together two Fridays ago,
07:29and we had a serious conversation about what more we can do
07:34as sort of visible, intrusive leadership from chief inspectors at Wood,
07:38so we're looking at leadership.
07:40We're looking at policy,
07:41what allows networks to thrive,
07:43so policing has for too long avoided the question of masons,
07:47you'll see we've launched a consultation on making,
07:51we have a conflict of interest policy,
07:53we have to declare conflicts,
07:55we're now adding explicitly to that
07:58the requirement to declare if you're a mason,
08:00that's out for consultation,
08:01and on the 11th of November,
08:02the final proposal will come back to our executive committee.
08:10We've been looking at the intelligence on that over the last six months,
08:12and I'm happy there's a case to justify it.
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