Speeches by Cooper.

“I welcome the hon. Member’s really important point about the response having to be colour-blind and class-blind. It has to see these things for what they are: really terrible crimes, often against the most vulnerable young people, as he says. Young people were dismissed because they were vulnerable due to the difficult…”

“We need to make sure that young people and children are being protected. These are vile crimes against children. Across the country we have seen young girls, teenagers and young boys who have been exploited by perpetrators in the most cruel and horrendous way. We have seen abuse by Pakistani-heritage gangs, we have see…”

“I welcome the work my hon. Friend has done in this policy area. He is right to talk about young people and children being trafficked around the country. There is some concerning evidence that, for example, although work has been done to identify people being trafficked through county lines—often boys and young men—it h…”

“I thank the hon. Member for speaking out about his personal experiences. I realise that is never an easy thing to do, and I respect him for doing it. As he says, there are all kinds of links, and domestic abuse in the household has an incredibly damaging impact on the family and on children growing up. We have to see t…”

“The clear point is, as my hon. Friend says, that victims and survivors need to be at the heart of the work to take forward the implementation of reforms and changes, and we want to work with the new victims and survivors panel to draw up timelines. I recognise that some of the issues around reform are difficult and tha…”

“The hon. Member makes an important point. Alongside pursuing perpetrators—which must always be the greatest priority because it is about protecting victims and ensuring that those who commit vile crimes face justice—there must be a responsibility on people for their public roles, whether in policing, local councils or …”

“My hon. Friend is right to recognise the seriousness of these crimes. The experiences in Rochdale include not just the issues around the Pakistani-heritage gang networks that he talks about, but issues in care homes and others that have been investigated over the years, and the terrible experiences of victims and survi…”

“Appalling crimes have taken place against children in Bradford, Keighley and across the country—truly appalling crimes. All of us have to face up to the fact that child sexual abuse and exploitation continues. This is not just about historical crimes, but continuing crimes and abuse of hundreds of thousands of children…”

“I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to her constituent, and to the more than 7,000 victims and survivors who gave evidence to the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse and exploitation. The inquiry took seven years—many years of people bravely speaking out about some of the most difficult and traumatic things…”

“I welcome the points that the hon. Member makes. Historically, there has been a lot of consensus across the House about the importance of this work, but often there has been very slow progress; we have to change that. She rightly says that this is not just a matter for the Home Office, or even police forces, local coun…”

“My hon. Friend has worked immensely hard to champion the victims and survivors of terrible crimes. She raises important points about the prevalence of these appalling crimes, the need to be vigilant, wherever this abuse is to be found—in any kind of institution, across communities and across the country—and the importa…”

“Child sexual abuse and exploitation are the most vile and horrific of crimes, involving rape, violence, coercive control, intimidation, manipulation and deep long-term harm. The information from the crime survey should be chilling to all of us. It estimates that half a million children every year experience some form o…”

“In the conversations that I had in Italy at the weekend, the shared interest was around going after the illicit finance. The Italian Government have been doing a huge amount. They have parallel challenges with boats across the Mediterranean. Interestingly, the work they have done on a combination of law enforcement, bu…”

“The German Interior Minister, Nancy Faeser, would say that the same criminal gang networks that are operating in Germany, are operating in northern France, organising boats across the Channel and stretching across Europe as well. That is causing challenges in Germany. The smuggler networks, for example, are facilitatin…”

“We are clearly staying out of the EU and that means that we are out of several of their legal frameworks and have to co-operate on a different basis than the one we had before. We are trying to work to get as much co-operation in place as possible. Law enforcement ought to be an area of shared interest across borders. …”

“We had a meeting of the Calais Group last week—the UK with the interior Ministers from France, Germany, Netherlands and Belgium. I met with the Italian Interior Minister at the weekend and have further conversations with the French and German Interior Ministers coming forward. We are very much trying to work to strengt…”

“We are investing £150 million over the next 18 months in establishing the command and strengthening resources. That includes some additional resources for the National Crime Agency and their investigators as well. The model that we based this on was the Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism that was set up under the…”

“We previously had the Small Boats Operational Command. That is a good set of operations led by Duncan Capps that is extremely effective in the work that it does and operates along the Channel. It also does the security check operations at Western Jet Foil. A lot of the work that Duncan does is also directly with immedi…”

“The number does change week by week because of the numbers of people whose permits run out, new ones are granted and so on. Also people leave the country so the numbers are fluid. Overall, however, it is estimated that around 4 million people have biometric permits and need to switch to e-visas. More than 3 million peo…”

“Seema Malhotra, our Minister for Migration and Citizenship, has spent a lot of time working through the detail on this. I think the intention behind the e-visa system is absolutely the right one. Having a digital approach to borders and visas means that you can have a much more streamlined approach to people travelling…”