On 20th July 2022 Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson tabled a Private Members Bill : Regulated and Other Activities (Mandatory Reporting of Child Sexual Abuse) Bill [HL]
The Bill ran out of time but what it revealed was just how lacklustre the IICSA recommendation was for mandatory reporting in principle.
We are optimistic there will in future be further opportunities to table legislation.
On 20th July 22, Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson introduced a Private Members Bill titled :
It’s available in full here.
It coincided with us updating our model for MR on the 16th July which in summary, mandates prescribed personnel who work with children in ‘Regulated Activities’, to report known and suspected child sexual abuse to specified agencies. Importantly, mandated reporters are also provided with significant protection against ‘detriment.’
It ran out of time.
We are pleased to provide our updated legislative proposal dated 16.07.22 for the introduction of mandatory reporting of known and suspected child sexual abuse by those working in Regulated Activities. Several people have kindly contributed to this important update which conforms to the design expectations of contemporary legislation tabled in Parliament.
Our proposal is available here for download
It’s a timely update in light of the IICSA final report which seems likely to be published in October 2022.
UPDATE: On 16 July 2022 we updated our proposal for the introduction of mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse. A few days later Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson tabled it in her Private Members Bill. Lady Grey-Thompson’s bill would have had a significant positive impact on institutional safeguarding unlike the lamentable IICSA final report recommendation of 20.10.22.
Several times in recent months we have updated our draft legislation for the introduction Mandatory Reporting of known and suspected child sexual abuse by personnel working in Regulated Activities. Mandatory Reporting legislation is long overdue in England and Wales. We are out of step with the majority of jurisdictions in the rest of the world, 82% of which have some form of Mandatory Reporting.
Download our current legislative proposal here
IICSA will release its final report later this year. As we have stated previously we consider it inconceivable that the inquiry will fail to recommend well-designed Mandatory Reporting. The evidence demonstrates it’s a vital component of functioning safeguarding.
The law mandates Regulated Activity personnel to report known or suspected child sexual abuse on reasonable grounds while simultaneously protecting the reporter from detriment.
Mandate Now is an evidence led pressure group. For sometime we have been aware of the attendant risks of including physical abuse and neglect in our legislative objectives. Without evidence that clearly demonstrates physical abuse and neglect are positively addressed by the introduction of law, we have amended our objectives to mandatory reporting of suspected and known child sexual abuse only. The depth of evidence supporting the introduction of well-designed law applied to prescribed ‘Regulated Activities’ is significant. The key extract in our updated legislative proposal is here :
Our submission to IICSA of 27.9.18 in advance of the MR seminars, revealed the direction of travel which today is crystallised in this update.
From evidence given to IICSA , the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the Hart Inquiry and the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry, it is apparent that personnel working in Regulated Activities who do the right thing and adhere to discretionary ‘guidance’ and in some cases professional ‘expectation’ to report known or suspected child sexual abuse, often do so at great personal cost. We have heard of reporters being bullied, alienated from work colleagues, isolated and often forced out of the workplace through a variety of means including constructive dismissal.
To address this practice we took legal and academic advice and have updated our legislative proposal for the introduction of well-designed Mandatory Reporting by those employed in Regulated Activities such as teachers, sports coaches, clergy, healthcare personnel and many more.
The revised draft legislation can now be downloaded here.
For quick reference there are three new clauses to address ‘detriment’ which we feature below :
With mandated reporting of defined concerns supplemented by protection from ‘detriment’, our proposed legislation would put England and Wales on a par with the majority of jurisdictions in the rest of the world.
HoC Library asserts it’s a politically impartial research and information service for MPs and their staff. Yet serious questions arise with this briefing paper because it is based on incomplete research which omits evidence from other jurisdictions. These omissions cause the paper to provide an unintentionally misleading picture of this important subject.
The critique uses our default two column format to highlight the many shortcomings in this ‘strategy’ document. It has the appearance of having been designed to assist government minimise/dismiss any meaningful recommendations IICSA might make in its final report, the big ticket item being mandatory reporting, This is expected in 2022.
Before commenting on the report which was released on 9th June 2021, it is necessary to make you aware that the ‘Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse’ is entirely funded by the Home Office which is trenchantly against the introduction of well-designed mandatory reporting of known and suspected child sexual abuse by those working in Regulated Activities (“RA”).
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