Campaign group welcomes Labour mandatory reporting pledge
Gabriella Jozwiak
Thursday, May 11, 2017
Campaigners calling for mandatory reporting to be introduced in order to protect children from abuse have welcomed a pledge from the Labour Party to strengthen the duty to report if it wins next month's general election.
A leaked draft version of Labour's election manifesto revealed the party plans to "deliver earlier protection to victims of abuse by strengthening mandatory reporting" if it is successful at the polls.
Tom Perry, founder of pressure group Mandate Now, which is campaigning for mandatory reporting, said that Labour had included plans to introduce mandatory reporting of child abuse in its 2015 election manifesto, and was "pleased" to see the pledge repeated.
However, he has raised concerns that, based on its contribution to a current government consultation on the matter, which launched last July, Labour would not introduce tough enough reforms.
The government has yet to set out whether it intends to pursue mandatory reporting.
In its response to the consultation, Labour indicated it would introduce criminal sanctions for professionals who failed to report abuse, but only if they were found to have "deliberately and recklessly failed to report abuse or neglect".
The response also stated that it would not want to see a time limit placed on the duty to report, and suggested mandatory reporting should not apply to individuals until they had received adequate training in how to report.
"Grounded on the submission that Labour made to the government consultation, we believe the objectives are right, but there is significant work to do to make Labour's proposal effective and reliable," Perry said.
"If you limit the criminal sanction only to cases of reckless or deliberate failure, the message sent is that people only legally have to report a concern if it is blindingly obvious that abuse is happening.
"That is not going to provide the protection that reporters need or the impetus to act on some incidents."
In October last year, the Association of Directors of Children's Services and the Local Government Association warned that mandatory reporting fails to address bad practice in reporting child abuse and neglect.
Instead they suggested the government should introduce work programmes and awareness campaigns aimed at workers across local government and schools, as well as the wider community and children, to raise awareness of how to act when safeguarding concerns arise.
