Speeches by Moore.

“Is there a risk that that could be used against any of the outcomes of the inquiry in three years’ time? Is there any perception of political association that others may wish to use as a narrative further down the line?”

“I want to stay on the theme of local inquiries, if that’s okay. Zoë, you mentioned and you repeated this point that you have all the information available and you are going back into areas to be able to ascertain those key themes. “Themes” has come up quite a few times, but what worries me—my saying this will not surpr…”

“Coming back to my question, how can we be confident about the funding? As a follow up, I hope the funding envelope would not restrict how many local areas can be explored, and which ones are explored. I want to push on the £65 million.”

“But if Bradford council sent you a letter today demanding to be part of that local inquiry, what would you say?”

“You may have done. But you have to do that because the Home Secretary instructed the inquiry to do that. We are now 18 months after the original announcement was made on local inquiries. Why are you not able to right now, on day one, announce that the Bradford district will be included and looked at? I ask because the …”

“It just happens to be the week before we all go off on recess.”

“What if it did today?”

“Last week, I met Alice Jones, the headteacher of Oxenhope primary school, to talk about the funding challenges it is facing in supporting children with SEND and her deep concerns about this Government’s planned SEND reforms, which include shifting ECHPs to individual support plans, therefore limiting protection for ECH…”

“4. What steps the Government are taking to support children with SEND at school.”

“Minister, staying with the VAWG strategy, concerns have been raised over the lack of focus on migrant and asylum-seeking women in the strategy. What assessment have you made of the impact of the changes to the immigration rules on migrant and asylum-seeking women at risk of VAWG?”

“Baroness Casey felt strongly enough to write that as a recommendation for a direction to be issued. Why was no direction issued by Government?”

“That was six months after the publication of the Casey review. That was the first time that it came from the Home Office. It was a further eight months before MHCLG wrote to local authorities with that level of instruction. Given that trust is a key issue here, as you have rightly identified, would the Government not h…”

“One of the key recommendations—it will hopefully come as no surprise that I reference it—is the one on data collection, specifically the requirement on pages 151 and 152 of Baroness Casey’s report that all data must be retained by all organisations: police forces, local authorities and any organisation with a safeguard…”

“In addition, what the Government are doing to help those against whom a false claim has been made? In my constituency, a false claim was made against the mother of a daughter who had come over from Pakistan. The mother was a teacher at one of my schools, who then lost her job because of the false claim and accusation o…”

“The scale is obviously increasing, given the 5,596 I referenced earlier. According to the BBC, 1,424 of those were cases raised by men, a rise of 66%.”

“Concerns have been raised—I have raised them to do with my own constituents in Keighley, and it may be similar in your own constituency; the BBC has also been reporting on this—about false claims by migrants purporting to be victims of domestic abuse to remain in this country. The numbers are quite staggering. Accordin…”

“Applications by women rose 47% in the same two-year period. It is definitely an increasing trend. In addition to raising the evidential bar, what is the Home Office doing about it?”

“I would like to move on to the rape gangs and child sexual exploitation. Do you agree with all the recommendations in Baroness Casey’s report, which was published in June?”

“Baroness Casey’s recommendations specifically say, “Local authorities, police forces and other relevant agencies should in the meantime”—between June, when the report came out from Baroness Casey and the point at which the national inquiry was set up—“be required not to destroy any relevant records.””

“I come back to the point that it was a recommendation within Baroness Casey’s report, and there is real concern that it might be happening, in correspondence I receive from constituents. Given that it was raised in the report, I simply wanted to get to the bottom of that.”