Missing Persons (Hansard, 23 March 1993)

§ Mr. Michael Connarty (Falkirk, East)

I am pleased that I have been given the opportunity to air on the Floor of the House the vexed question of missing persons in the United Kingdom.

I make no apology for asking the Minister to consider the debate first from a personal and emotional viewpoint. I ask him to consider the anxiety of my now deceased constituent, Janette Hamilton, of Falkirk, when her 14-year-old daughter Vicki failed to return home from a weekend trip to visit her sister Sharon in Livingston, Scotland on 10 February 1990. I ask him to contemplate the growing despair as the police diligently pieced together Vicki's movements: from Livingston to Bathgate, West Lothian; from the bus station to a fish and chip shop in Bathgate; and from the fish and chip shop to where?

More than two years on, no one has been able to unravel the mystery. No one has ever been able to enter the labyrinth into which more and more young people are disappearing and to answer the question, "What happened to Vicki Hamilton?"

Will the Minister ponder the overwhelming despair that engulfed Vicki's mother as the days grew to weeks, then to months and then stretched beyond a year? If he can do so, he will realise why I speak here tonight, and hopefully it will help him to frame his reply.

In July 1992 Janette Hamilton was a broken woman when she approached me for help in persuading the Government to do more to trace missing children like her daughter Vicki. She also wanted Government help for the counselling and support for those who are left behind and who wrack their brains for clues and warning signs that they may have missed. They pray and hope that there is some sign to show that their child is still out there.

The final help for which Janette Hamilton asked was that I should tell the nation through debates such as tonight's that she believed that her daughter was still alive in the hope that the media in England and Wales would display one more photograph of her daughter with the simple message, "If Vicki is out there or anyone knows what happened to her—get in touch." I record that message unashamedly as, sadly, Janette Hamilton died on 12 January 1993, never knowing what happened to her daughter. One year and 11 months after Vicki's disappearance, Janette Hamilton was a broken woman. In the words of Vicki's sister, Sharon, Janette died of a broken heart.

The Government know that the scale of the problem is not measured in ones—tragic though each case may be. The 1988 report of the Association of Chief Police Officers, entitled, "Working Party on Missing Persons", shows that there have been three missing person cases unsolved from my region of central Scotland since before 1988. There were 60 unsolved cases from Scotland. The report recorded 1,642 persons missing for 28 days or more in the United Kingdom in 1998. There have been 2,678 unsolved missing persons cases on record since before 1988. That is the last such report that I have been able to find. It appears that such statistics are not easily collated or found.

The number of instances of missing children in the United Kingdom was estimated by the Children's Society 898 —after conducting a survey of all chief police officers in 1988—as 98,000 incidents each year. In 1992, the survey of the National Children's Home estimated that there had been 100,000 incidents of missing children, involving 443,000 different children under 18 in England and Wales, and under 16 in Scotland.

My investigation and correspondence since July 1992 revealed, first, that the Government gave no financial assistance to provide counselling for missing persons' relatives such as Vicki Hamilton's mother. In a letter of 24 August 1992, Earl Ferrers, for the Home Office, said that he recogised that the Suzy Lamplugh Trust has been able to offer comfort and support to my constituent.

Surely the 2,678 families of the untraced missing persons since 1988 deserve some support through grant assistance to allow a development of the missing persons bureau and the Suzy Lamplugh trust. Surely an amendment to the social work legislation should be considered if direct funding is denied. That would at least allow local concerns to be turned into local support for such worthwhile organisations.

The greatest deficiency that my investigations have discovered is the lack of success in establishing a national computerised database of missing persons. That was first agreed by the United Kingdom Government when they adopted the Council of Europe recommendation R79(6) in April 1979. The crime committee of the Association of Chief Police Officers submitted a report early in 1989 to the Home Office, recommending such a database. In the House of Lords on 6 November 1989, Earl Ferrers said that the Government were discussing such a database with the Metropolitan police.

Early-day motion 1159, calling for such a database, was tabled on 26 June 1990 in the House of Commons, and signed by 219 Members. On 5 July 1990, the then Home Office Minister replied to a parliamentary question that the Home Secretary hopes to announce his conclusion shortly."—[Official Report, 5 July 1990; Vol. 175, c. 640.] On 12 July 1990, the then Minister said: We intend to introduce such a register."—[Official Report, 12 July 1990; Vol. 176, c. 444.] It is now 23 March 1993. Earl Ferrers once again pledged the Government to introducing such a database in a letter to me on 21 August 1992.

The SO5 procedure—the card index system held by the Metropolitan police—is clearly inadequate for the task of tracing missing persons, particularly young people. The procedure used by police forces to notify and seek information on missing persons is, to say the least, less than uniform. In many cases, it is totally inadequate.

In a debate in another place on 6 July 1992, Earl Ferrers said: It is unlikely to be done before 1995."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 6 July 1992; Vol. 538, c. 1050.] I have also received reports of a meeting between Earl Ferrers and other interested organisations that was held in November 1992, in which he stated that there were further delays in upgrading of the national police computer 2, which would carry such a database. Does that mean further delays beyond 1995?

I hope that tonight the Minister will show that the Government understand the need for action. I ask that they commit the resources needed to move forward the database development much faster than the planned 899 completion date of 1995. I also ask the Minister seriously to consider how the Government might better support those who appear to be voluntarily counselling the relatives of missing persons. That should be the responsibility of the Government in a truly caring society. I look forward to being given some reassurances for the relatives of Vicki and of other missing people.

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Charles Wardle)

I congratulate the hon. Member for Falkirk, East (Mr. Connarty) on obtaining this debate and on raising the complex and sensitive issue of missing persons. I share his feelings about the tragedy of Vicki Hamilton and about the terrible anguish that her mother must have suffered in the months leading up to her tragic death at the beginning of the year.

The subject of missing persons has, in recent years, aroused considerable and justified public concern, and I am grateful for an opportunity to describe some of the initiatives which the Government are currently pursuing to address it. I am thinking in particular of the development of a national computerised register of missing persons.

The police service is invariably the first agency to which the family of a missing person will turn, whether or not there is reason to believe that his or her disappearance is linked to the commission of a criminal offence. The speed, efficiency and professionalism which characterise the police's response to missing persons inquiries, particularly the mercifully few criminal abductions which they are called upon to investigate, are familiar to the House. The overwhelming majority of people are found, safe, well and usually fairly close to home, within about 48 hours their having been reported missing.

Impressive though this record is, it has to be said that the existing arrangements for recording missing persons afford the police only limited support in their efforts to trace and identify those who have disappeared from home. Responsibility for investigating reports of missing persons is an operational one for chief officers of police. Records of missing persons are held locally and may be circulated to other forces, or to the Metropolitan police's missing persons bureau at New Scotland Yard—it offers a goodwill service to provincial forces—as chief officers consider necessary, but there are no nationally agreed standards for referral between forces or to the bureau.

This lack of comprehensive, centrally held data on missing persons may mean that a person or body recovered in one part of the country is not readily identified as someone who has been reported missing to the police elsewhere in the country. The additional distress which this delay and uncertainty may cause to anxious relatives can be easily imagined, although a tragic discovery will mark the conclusion of only a very small proportion of missing persons investigations.

At the moment, the police national computer—the PNC—holds details of missing persons, including those under 18 and adults who have disappeared in circumstances which indicate that they may have come to some harm. During the course of the year, the details of some 120,000 missing persons are entered on to the PNC, although at any one time only about 2,500 records are actually held on the system.

A major drawback of the current PNC application is that the records stored on it are retrievable by the police 900 only on the basis of a name—which, as I have said, is obviously not much help when they have an unidentified body on their hands. Very little detailed information is currently held which might give the police some lead in tracing a missing person.

Progress is being made, however. I am pleased to report that there are at the moment some encouraging trials taking place of a new facility to retrieve records from the national file on the basis of descriptive detail. This has already been used in two operational inquiries. There is scope to make it more flexible. Under the present system only batch processing is possible, and the system will not allow the descriptive details to be modified once a search has begun. However, it is clearly a useful tool and a real step forward in streamlining police procedures. I hope that the facility will shortly become available on the PNC.

A separate initiative, using the data from the PNC, has recently been undertaken by the North Yorkshire constabulary, who may be able to offer support to other forces who are attempting to trace missing persons or identify bodies. All that adds up to increased efficiency—making the job of the police easier and, in some cases at least, easing the anxiety of relatives and friends of missing persons.

The development of a much more sophisticated missing persons application is one of a number of proposals that the police have submitted to improve the range of services that the PNC provides. The proposed application would be designed to hold more information, so that police could search across a wide range of descriptive fields—such as hair and eye colour, or clothing—and the facility would allow the retention of records for the purpose of further analysis.

The data protection registrar has agreed that records can remain on the system even though the subject may subsequently have returned home. That is because it is regrettably the case that some children run away from home or care on more than one occasion. Access to the history of previous incidents could be extremely valuable to the police in the event of that child going missing again.

However, there is still some way to go before we introduce the more sophisticated national missing persons register. The priorities identified by the police themselves are of fundamental importance in dictating which new services should have first call on resources. I have to say that the police have said that they look to the PNC to meet other, more pressing needs before an enhanced missing persons application can be brought on stream. They have shown their preference to have the national criminal record system completed, the police national network implemented, a national automatic fingerprint identification system developed, a system built to assist them in handling major disasters such as the tragedy with the Zeebrugge ferry, as well as a development to provide the police officer making a roadside vehicle check with more information about the driver of the vehicle.

The combined effect of accommodating those competing priorities is that the new missing persons facility is unlikely to become available until 1995 at the earliest, as the hon. Gentleman acknowledged.

The Government are aware that the delay in providing a national database has been a disappointment to a number of organisations that have campaigned vigorously and persuasively over a number of years for the introduction of nationally standardised procedures for reporting and recording missing persons.

901 For that reason, we have been looking very carefully at how, in the meantime, we might improve the way in which the existing regime operates. We have been talking to the police about ways in which they might be able to make more effective and co-ordinated use of the facilities that are at present available to them, so that we might bring about some worthwhile improvements to procedures in the short term. I hope that we shall shortly be in a position to announce our plans for promoting a more standardised approach to the problem of missing persons, which will provide useful interim progress until the enhanced computerised register is serviceable and on stream.

The hon. Gentleman will doubtless be aware that the police in Scotland have set up a national index of persons who have been missing for more than one month. The index is held centrally on computer at the Scottish Criminal Record Office and can be accessed by all Scottish police forces. A correspondingly entry is also made on the PNC. The Scottish index is overseen by the Scottish Criminal Records Office, which operates a reminder system, so that forces are advised at regular intervals of those persons in their areas who are registered as missing on the computer.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the important work done by the National Children's Home. That research has prompted us to consider whether existing arrangements are sufficiently sensitive to pick up less immediately obvious warning signals, which may show that something is seriously wrong in the life of a child, that he or she may be the target of hitherto unsuspected abuse, of whatever type or degree, or other criminal behaviour.

Home Office officials are consulting their colleagues in other Government Departments on proposals for developing a strategy that will ensure that the needs and problems of returned runaways are properly identified and, where appropriate, drawn to the attention of the relevant statutory authorities to initiate whatever remedial action is judged to be necessary.

I referred earlier to the representations which the Government have received in recent years from groups and individuals who maintain a special interest in missing persons. None has been more active or committed in this respect than the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, to which the hon. Gentleman referred. My right hon. and learned Friend and I greatly value the trust's continuing work on behalf of missing persons and those they leave behind who, I know, are often beset by overwhelming feelings of helplessness and isolation.

The trust's application to the Home Office for funds for the missing persons helpline, which it operated until the middle of last year, received careful consideration, but, the Department's commitment to improving police procedures for dealing with missing persons precluded the provision of financial assistance to the helpline. Helping people to avoid becoming the victims of violence is a primary aim of our crime prevention effort, and the Suzy Lamplugh trust's contribution towards that aim is significant and welcome.

Support for those people who do become victims of crime is central to the Government's policy on law and order, and has led to the development of a range of services to meet their needs. The victims charter, which was published in 1990, describes the level of service which 902 victims of crime should expect from the criminal justice agencies. We liaise regularly with those agencies to encourage compliance with the aims and provisions of the charter.

There are also, of course, the local victim support schemes, some 380 of them across England and Wales, covering 97 per cent. of the population, whose 8,000 volunteer visitors provide emotional help and practical assistance for about 750,000 victims of crime a year, including 130,000 victims of rape and other crimes of violence. There is a similar organisation in Scotland—as my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton), will confirm—which is receiving a grant of more than £640,000 from the Scottish Home and Health Department in the current year.

Local scheme workers or volunteers contact all victims of crime referred by the police in their own homes. Contact is made by letter, telephone or a personal visit. Workers provide emotional support, a sympathetic ear and practical help, such as assisting with criminal injuries or other claims forms, advising on housing difficulties, accompanying victims to court and, if necessary, referring them to other sources of more specialised, long-term help.

The Government fund the national charity Victim Suppport generously. We are providing £7.3 million this year and £8.4 million next year—a 15 per cent. increase. In addition to local victim support services those funds also help to provide more than 30 Crown court witness schemes to support witnesses in the more serious, and inevitably more traumatic, criminal trials. Victim Support offers its services not only to the immediate victim, but to relatives and friends, who are, of course, the indirect victims of crimes.

I hope that what I have said this evening demonstrates the Government's commitment to making progress in the difficult area of missing persons. As I said at the outset, it is a problem which throws up a number of sensitive issues. Although the police are invariably unstinting in their efforts to recover vulnerable missing persons, or those whose disappearance suggests that they may be at risk of harm, not everyone who goes missing will fall into those categories; nor will the circumstances of their departure be at all straightforward.

The problem of missing persons is a deeply complex one which, if its causes are to be understood and effectively addressed, must draw to it the collective efforts and expertise of all the statutory and voluntary organisations which share a responsibility for the welfare of those members of our society. It will never be enough simply to identify symptoms here and there, and then to treat them selectively and in isolation.

The value of sensitive and informed inter-agency co-operation has been increasingly recognised in recent years, and is now brought to bear on a range of difficult social problems which need to be tackled on a number of fronts. For example, joint working procedures are now mandatory in child protection cases, and are encouraged in other areas, such as domestic violence. I have no doubt that only by harnessing this spirit of co-operation and sharing of information shall we succeed in finding a way through the difficult and disturbing area of missing persons. I assure the hon. Gentleman that the tragic lesson of Vicki Hamilton will not be lost as progress is sought.

What is clear is that we must direct all our energies and resources toward protecting the vulnerable members of 903 our society from those who would harm and exploit them. I hope that the most important end will be materially served by our plans to refine and rationalise procedures for recording and tracing vulnerable missing persons.