Teachers in England and Wales will be legally required to report cases of child sexual abuse under government plans announced today.
People with childcare responsibilities in regulated sectors could be barred from working with children if they fail to report a disclosure.
The plan for the new mandatory reporting duty was announced by the Home Office today.
Anyone who actively blocks someone from reporting or covers up a disclosure of child sexual abuse could go to prison for seven years.
Responding to the announcement, Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, said school leaders take child sexual abuse “incredibly seriously” and are frequently inspected on their statutory safeguarding duties.
“However, schools rely on a wide range of other services when reporting concerns,” he added. “We are concerned about the current capacity of services like children’s social care and the police to provide children with the help they need, should mandatory reporting lead to an increase in referrals being made.”
Mr Whiteman said services will need sufficient funding from the government to ensure that they can cope with demand.
The Home Office had previously sought views on its proposal for a mandatory duty to report child sexual abuse.
Home secretary James Cleverly met Commander Kevin Southworth, the Metropolitan Police’s public protection lead, and Detective Chief Superintendent Angela Craggs, also of the Met, in London on Monday to discuss the plan.
Mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse
Mr Cleverly said: “Sadly what we have seen too many examples of is children suffering from abuse and that abuse not being reported, and no child should have to endure that.
“What we’re saying now is that if it has been brought to your attention that abuse is happening, there is now a duty to report that abuse so that the situations we have seen in the past can never happen again.”
The measures will be introduced as amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill currently being considered by Parliament.
Mr Cleverly added: “This is in response to specific calls for change that we’ve received from campaigners, from victims, from people that I’ve met and spoken to, and it’s an important step in the right direction.
“We are making it absolutely clear that you have a moral duty, a professional duty but, of course, now a legal duty to report, where it’s been brought to your attention that abuse has happened.”
The plan comes after the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) uncovered wide-ranging failings in how institutions protected children from sexual harm and exploitation. The inquiry was established in 2015 and its final report - with evidence from 7,000 victims - was published in October 2022.
It set out 20 recommendations for the government. In May 2023 Suella Braverman, who was home secretary at the time, said the government had accepted the need to act on 19 of the recommendations.
The head of the IICSA, Professor Alexis Jay, previously criticised the government’s response to the report. Campaigners have also condemned the length of time it has taken the Home Office to introduce new measures.
Laura Farris, the minister for victims and safeguarding, visited Fulham Cross Academy in London on Monday to talk with students about speaking up about sexual harassment.
Ms Farris, who acted as counsel to the IICSA from 2016 to 2017, said: “If there were common threads that linked all of the children, now adults, who came forward to give evidence to the inquiry, it was either that they had been in a position of such a sort of powerlessness as a child that they didn’t feel they could say anything or that they had said something and they’d been ignored.”
Ms Farris added that it was important for the new legislation to strike a balance between prioritising the safety of the child and also ensuring that it did not risk over-penalising people who care for children in informal and voluntary settings.
“I think finding that right level took some time and it required a consultation, but we’re confident that we’ve judged it correctly,” Ms Farris said.
“Overall, if you look at the final conclusions of that inquiry, the number one recommendation was that mandatory reporting was rolled out as an obligation across the country. And so I’m absolutely delighted that we’re putting that into law today.”
