Children are used to reduce the risk to older gang members. They may go unnoticed by local police, particularly if they have no record of offending.

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1 1 I would like to thank the Honourable member for Streatham for securing this debate. In my capacity as Chair of the APPG for Missing Children and Adults, I have a strong interest in the connection between going missing and the risk of harm. Today I want to focus on the phenomenon of County Lines in which urban criminal gangs groom and coerce children and young people into selling Class A drugs, particularly heroin and crack cocaine. The young people have to travel many miles away from their home with the drugs, often to quiet market and seaside towns. They are set up with a mobile phone to deal drugs in a hotel or the flat of a vulnerable person. Last July I attended the launch of the first major report into County Lines. Running the Risks: The links between gang involvement and young people going missing, was published jointly by Catch 22 and Missing People. A month later the National Crime Agency produced an Intelligence Assessment which said that County Lines affects most forces and almost always involves exploitation of vulnerable people. It said children are used as they are inexpensive, easily controlled and less likely to be detected by police. Then this January, the Home Office published a report entitled: Ending gang violence and exploitation. This highlighted the fact that gangs have wised up to police tactics and are operating more covertly, making it harder for the police to disrupt activity and safeguard vulnerable people. The reports also said that young girls are groomed for both involvement in criminal behaviour and harmful sexual behaviour as part of the gang culture. Indeed, the recent Rotherham trial showed the connection between organised crime and drugs and child sexual exploitation. We do not yet know the scale of the County Lines problem and where it is discovered agencies are not clear how to deal with it. I have been told about children from Greater Manchester being found selling drugs in flats in seaside and other provincial towns, including some as far away as Devon. Children are used to reduce the risk to older gang members. They may go unnoticed by local police, particularly if they have no record of offending. The gang leaders are rather like a modern day Fagins or Bill Sikes hard men who groom youngsters and then use them to do their dirty work. There is serious under-recognition of the County Lines phenomenon - which I believe is the next big grooming scandal. Just as with children groomed for CSE, we need to recognise that young people drawn into criminality and drug dealing have, in the first instance, been groomed and manipulated.

2 2 The young people end up being charged with criminal offences putting them in the same relationship with the law as the adults who groomed them. This leaves them vulnerable to further exploitation continuing to be victims at the same time as offending. This needs to be seen in the context of organised crime and systematic grooming of young people. Often the people at the centre are long term hardened criminals. MISSING The Catch 22 report stressed the link between gang involvement and young people going missing and said the young people are too often criminalised rather than safeguarded. The report said that while missing incidents for children and young people are generally under-reported, this is particularly acute for those involved in gangs. It also presented evidence of gang-involved children and young people being placed into care miles away from their home town with little care planning or support, leaving them vulnerable to getting drawn back into gangs. An additional issue with County Lines is that the young people involved may often be aged between 16 and 18. According to the Children s Society, there is evidence of massive underreporting of young people who go missing in this age group. Understanding of County Lines is developing at a national level and the use of young vulnerable people to traffic drugs across county lines is flagged up as a major issue by practitioners. Organisations who work to turn young people away from gang crime, most notably the St Giles Trust, a charity which works with young people to break the cycle of offending, have also been working on this issue for some time and have some harrowing stories to share. The journeys themselves are hazardous for young people who may only very rarely have been outside their local town. I have been told by the St Giles Trust that young people are using the plastic container from Kinder Egg toys to transport drugs inside their own bodies a serious risk to their health. It s hard to imagine a more graphic metaphor for the perversion of childhood. The Trust have also told me about young girls dressed in school uniform being used to mule drugs because they are unlikely to be stopped and searched. The ages that young people get involved with gangs is very concerning. There have been reports of cases in London involving children as young as nine and the Trust have given at least one examples of a child aged 12 being involved in County Lines.

3 3 Increasingly there are stories about gangs setting up their own young members to be robbed en route, and then told that they must work off the debt by trafficking and selling drugs for free or giving sexual favours. This is nothing more or less than slavery. The threat of CSE for girls involved in gangs is known, but the added factor of being trafficked to remote locations compounds their vulnerability. These young people are at risk of physical violence, sexual exploitation and emotional and physical abuse. This model of grooming arguably involves both trafficking and modern slavery. But these children are seen as bad kids who have chosen a criminal lifestyle. For example, a national newspaper recently reported a court case about a 13 year old Manchester boy who was sent to Barrow in Cumbria by a crime gang and set up as a heroin and crack cocaine dealer. There was a quote saying police said the boy revelled in his role as a little gangster!! The recent Home Office report indicates that we still have some way to go in tackling County Lines. Action is needed at national level to clearly set out where responsibility lies within law enforcement for detecting and disrupting County lines, and how information should be shared with local authorities and safeguarding boards so when young people are found they are supported in the appropriate manner. We need to know the scale of involvement of vulnerable young people in County Lines? I asked a number of Parliamentary Questions to try to establish numbers. The Home Office minister responded that because the National Crime Agency does not conduct County Lines operations, they do not hold this information. We also need to know how much use is being made of Anti-trafficking legislation and modern slavery laws to charge older gang members with grooming younger members. And finally, we need to know how best to support these young people once they have been found. The police should be using data on missing episodes, cross referencing it with information about possible gang involvement, not only to understand trends, but to take an early intervention approach, trying to disrupt the involvement after early missing incidents. I have a very practical idea I would like the minister to consider for disrupting the grooming of children and young people to sell drugs.

4 4 Currently we have numerous civil orders available to the police to combat grooming for child sexual exploitation including Sexual Risk Orders, Sexual Harm Prevention Orders and Child Abduction Warning Notices. I would like to see the creation of similar orders to be used where children are being groomed by organised criminals and gangs to act as drug runners. They could be called Fagin orders. The reality is that many children who are initially groomed into criminal activity are often then groomed for sexual exploitation or alternately they are initially groomed for criminal purposes and then for CSE. The two forms of exploitation are often inextricably linked and young people are reluctant and frightened to disclose either. Return interviews with children who have gone missing, are an important source of not only establishing the risk to the young person but also in gathering information about their associates and intelligence about County Lines. It is important that the information is used for safeguarding by police and children s services. Where young people are found and arrested after involvement in County Lines, the approach from agencies should be holistic. St. Giles Trust have suggested a pilot in which their caseworkers, who are exoffenders, accompany police on targeted raids and immediately offer support to young people who are more likely to listen to other young people who have been in the same situation as them. To conclude I want to return to the point I made at the very beginning. We have to learn from the CSE scandals that have ruined so many lives. We can t afford to make the same mistakes again Blaming the young people and saying that they ve made their own bed. Failing to ask the right questions Failing to respond even when we know what s going on. Missing People have been working with a mother whose son started going missing aged 12 and was being groomed by a gang to sell drugs away from home in County Lines operations. The mother was desperate not to lose her son to this and always reported it every time he went missing. And yet it took her six months to receive any support from services. How can that be right? The boy repeatedly went missing for periods of time ranging from overnight to up to three months. He ended up being taken into care and had numerous distance placements. We need a response to County Lines that ensures children are found, safeguarded and supported out of gangs, whilst the adults that groom and manipulate them are punished to the full extent of the law.

5 5 Until then it will continue to be the young victims who are blamed and punished as their abusers and puppet masters continue with a trade that can net them thousands of pounds a day. ENDS