Child protection needs European co-operation

I welcome the inquiry into child sexual exploitation by the UK’s Children’s Commissioner (Yorkshire Post, October 14).

Many dedicated, hard-working professionals devote their lives to working for and with children.

And yet, the statistics are sickening: in England alone current estimates state that over 10,000 children are being sexually abused and exploited at any given time. These are the figures for the whole of England – what about the UK? What about Europe?

The idea of working together across Europe does not always go down well but this is one area where we should work together to eliminate such abuse.

I was one of the MEPs who wrote the Directive on Combating Sexual Abuse, Sexual Exploitation of Children and Child Pornography which will be adopted in the European Parliament on October 26. Rightly so, the text proposes an ambitious common legal framework which will make it easier to fight these crimes.

Amongst many other areas, the draft sets out minimum penalties for about 20 criminal offences to do with sexual abuse, sexual exploitation and child pornography – far more than are usually provided for in EU legislation.

I fought strongly for tougher penalties across the EU, especially in cases of abuse by persons in a position of trust over a child or abuse of particularly vulnerable children.

For the first time in EU legislation, grooming will become a criminal offence. The UK inquiry’s focus on criminal gangs who set out to groom and entrap is most timely and urgently necessary.

I know there are many people and organisations working to protect our young people but on this subject there has never been a better time to think of working closely with our European neighbours as well.