At the time of the publication of IICSA’s final report the UK Government said that it would issue its response to those recommendations in April 2023 and so it seems, the government is going to deliver on that commitment.

On 2 April 2023, the Home Secretary announced that the government is going to introduce a legal requirement for people who work with children to report abuse, or face prosecution.

On 3 April 2023, the Prime Minister travelled to the north of England to announce a new taskforce to go after what he described as criminals who sexually abuse children and young women and who often operate in gangs.

However, Mr Sunak’s announcement of this special taskforce was somewhat overshadowed by the fact that he had to defend comments made by the Home Secretary on Sunday last. Ms Braverman said that the groups of men who perpetrate such abuse are often British Pakistani and that in the past a blind eye may have been turned by authorities to this abuse, as authorities feared being labelled as racists or bigots.

When asked about Ms Braverman’s comments Mr Sunak said, “All forms of child sexual exploitation carried out by whoever are horrific and wrong". Mr Sunak went on to say that this government will do “…whatever it takes to root out evil grooming gangs who prey on vulnerable women and young girls".

The new specialist taskforce will be police led but also supported by the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) and those officers assigned to the taskforce will have extensive experience of child sexual exploitation and grooming and will be used to help local police forces to tackle such behaviour.

Data analysis is also going to play a significant part in the work of the new taskforce, which will be supported by data analysts, who will collect data and intelligence to identify the types of criminals who carry out this abuse, including police-recorded ethnicity data.

The new taskforce has already come in for criticism with the Labour Party and others warning the government about overly concentrating on the ethnicity of gangs and individuals involved in this abusive behaviour.

The government have also committed to introducing legislation making being a leader or being involved in a gang that grooms children and young women a statutory aggravating factor during sentencing.

Professor Alexis Jay, who chaired IICSA, has welcomed the recent announcements, however, she goes on to say that “The commitment to mandatory reporting is very encouraging, and I look forward to working with the government to ensure that the full package of the inquiry’s recommendations in its final report is taken forward to better protect children from sexual abuse in the future.”

While the above announcements are to be welcomed, we should remember that this is not the first time the government has promised change in this area which was to be delivered by way a special taskforce.

In June 2015 the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, announced a new Child Protection Taskforce to drive forward fundamental reforms to protect the most vulnerable children in our society and give them the opportunity to succeed. That task force was headed up by the Education Secretary and we were told at that time that it would be responsible for leading improvements across police, social services, and other agencies, would focus on transforming social work and children’s services and improving inspection and it would also complement work of the Home Secretary’s on tackling child sexual exploitation. The Child Protection Taskforce provided for “…the appointment of a Chief Social Worker to champion reform in the profession, a £400 million investment in social work training, and cuts to bureaucracy to free up social workers to do what they do best.”

The jury would appear to be out in terms of whether this taskforce has succeeded in terms of its lofty objectives, but there can be little doubt that in its final report, IICSA was firmly of the view that much work remains to be done before children and vulnerable persons are fully protected.

Neither of the recent announcements have been accompanied by any details of the financial support that the government is going to provide in support of these initiatives, other than limited additional funding to the NSPCC that was announced by Ms Braverman.

As we so often comment in these blogs, while the recent announcements are to be welcomed, in the absence of clear and/or ringfenced resources to deliver, they are no more than good intentions and we know where that usually leads.