Today in the House of Lords, Baroness Joan Walmsley and the Lib Dems secured an agreement from the Government on the Serious Crime Bill, for a major consultation on introducing rules on mandatory reporting of child abuse.

At our recent Federal Conference in Glasgow, Liberal Democrats passed new Party policy in support of requiring those who work with children and vulnerable adults to be required by law to report to the authorities if they have any suspicion that abuse is taking place. However, despite debates on this and other amendments concerning child abuse being debates, Ukip members of the House of Lords failed again to participate in this work.

Ukip’s hypocrisy is breath-taking. They issue a photograph of a girl with the headline ‘There are 1400 reasons why you should not trust Labour again’ in Rotherham, but their record on tackling serious child abuse issue is disgraceful.

The only record of Lord Pearson of Rannoch (the former Leader of UKIP & their leader in the Lords) asking a question on child abuse is on 13 October this year, after the Police and Crime Commissioner by-election was called.(Link here.) He has been in the House of Lords since 1990. Even this question is focused entirely on the Ukip obsession with Muslims, ignoring the fact that child abuse happens in all areas of the country and is not exclusive to any culture, community, race or religion.

And, once again, when we discussed child abuse in the Lords today, no Ukip peers were present.

But it isn’t just Ukip in the Lords. Ukip in the European Parliament abstained in a vote to strengthen legislation about sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children and child pornography in 2011. (Link here)

Further, Winston McKenzie, the Ukip candidate in the Croydon North by-election in 2012 that gay adoption was child abuse. (Link here.) And Gordon Gillick, a Ukip Cambridgeshire councillor told a meeting of some children in care that “they were takers from the system”, wanting to know “what they would give back to society.” (Link here.) Not the party policy you want when young people in care want to report their worries.

In November 2013, senior Ukip member David Gale resigned in a high profile letter to Nigel Farage (see link here and here), citing concerns about the way that Ukip operates. The letter raises the issue that the party continues to associate with a known paedophile.

None of this sounds like a party prepared to listen to the voice of children who have either been abused, or are at risk of being abused. It certainly isn’t a party who should be trusted with tackling the deep rooted problems of child abuse in Rotherham, Rochester or the country as a whole.

* Baroness Sal Brinton is President of the Liberal Democrats. She is a working Lib Dem peer, and was the candidate for Watford at the 2010 and 2005 General Elections.