As Westminster continues to dissect the truly troubling findings laid out by Baroness Casey’s report into Britain’s grooming gang scandal, the crossbench peer has now given her thoughts on the political reaction to the review. Speaking to the BBC’s Newsnight programme on Monday, Casey hit out at parliamentarians for how they’d responded to the project, saying she was ‘disappointed’ with the way it had been used for political point-scoring. Ouch.
When quizzed on the ‘politicisation’ of her review, Baroness Casey remarked:
I’m disappointed by it, to put it mildly. I really hoped – and hope still – that the report is so clear, it’s so straightforward. We need to change some laws. We need to do a national criminal investigation. We need to get on with the national inquiry with local footprint in it. And ideally, wouldn’t it be great if everybody came behind that and just backed it and got on with it?
On the Commons session yesterday, the crossbench peer took aim at the Tories in particular. She told the Beeb:
I just felt, dare I say it, I felt the opposition could have just been a bit: ‘Yes, we will all come together behind you.’ Maybe there’s still time to do that. I think it’s just so important that they do. It almost doesn’t matter right now what political party people are part of. We’ve identified there’s a problem, it’s been a problem there for a long time, and it’s about time we drew a line in the sand.
Her remarks were made just hours before the Leader of the Opposition’s press conference on Tuesday morning. It seems likely Badenoch will celebrate the initiation of a full national statutory inquiry as a ‘victory’ and, if her tweets are anything to go by, slam Labour for the party’s reluctance to have another probe in the first place. Will Casey’s comments persuade Badenoch to soften her tone in today’s speech? Stay tuned…
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