Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has finally bowed to pressure and announced five local reviews alongside a ‘rapid national audit’ into grooming gangs. But the plan falls short of the national inquiry that many, including some Labour MPs, want. Cooper’s plan is insufficient.
Labour may well pay a hefty electoral price for it
Cooper’s statement in the Commons yesterday encouragingly included a pledge to enact recommendations made by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), which concluded with its flagship report published back in October 2022. These include the creation of a single core data set which covers the characteristics of victims and alleged perpetrators of child sexual abuse, including age, sex, and ethnicity. The government-backed three-month audit, which will be led by Dame Louise Casey, will look at “cultural and societal drivers” of child sex abuse – a positive development in the area of group-localised child sexual exploitation (GLCSE), where prosecutions have been dominated by men of Pakistani Muslim heritage. The Home Secretary’s intention to introduce tougher sentences for sexual crimes against children should also be welcomed.
But there is no hiding the fact that a series of government-supported local inquiries does not amount to the national public investigation needed. It is simply a continuation of the UK’s historically fragmented, disjointed, and perfunctory approach to understanding the nationwide phenomenon of GLCSE. Dozens of towns and cities have been identified as locations affected by street-based grooming by organised networks. Without having statutory powers in line with the 2005 Inquiries Act, these local reviews will not have the ability to compel witnesses to attend public proceedings and take evidence under oath. This means that the reviews will be largely toothless in terms of determining accountability when it comes to cases of institutional mismanagement. In any case, there is the risk that potentially ‘compromised’ public institutions could ultimately be marking their own homework under such local exercises. The appointment of Dame Louise Casey – who is already leading a major government review on adult social care reform – to lead on this so-called ‘rapid national audit’ resembles an ‘in-house’ one based on convenience.
What is needed is a statutory inquiry into grooming gangs that is not only serious about understanding the sociocultural drivers of GLCSE and exploring the extent to which such heinous activities were racially (and religiously) aggravated, but also investigates the reasons behind gross institutional failures and who should be held accountable for them. This means looking closely at local councils, police forces, and social services, as well as inspecting the role of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the courts over the degree to which appropriate justice has been delivered for grooming-gang victims. A national investigation with teeth needs an experienced network-analysis expert who is not squeamish about ‘mapping’ potential family and social ties between local councillors, police officers, social workers, and those who have been involved in these predatory enterprises. The sad reality is that GLCSE is a nationwide problem which implicates various organs of the British state. Because of this, there is an understandable case for a national public inquiry with a foreign chairperson and an international panel – otherwise known as ‘wing members’ – from Anglosphere Commonwealth partners, such as Australia and quasi-Anglophone European ‘cultural neighbours’ like the Netherlands.
With a new survey finding that three-quarters of the British public support a national inquiry into grooming gangs, holding just five local inquiries and conducting a rapid three-month national audit – on a shoestring budget of £10 million – falls short of what is needed. Without a proper review, gaining an in-depth understanding of the cultural, social, and economic drivers of GLCSE will be impossible; it seems unlikely that those responsible for blatant institutional failures will be held properly to account.
Victims and survivors of street-based grooming which has taken place over decades, deserve to be treated with greater respect and dignity. Labour has failed to do the right thing and be respectful of mainstream public sentiment by refusing to commit to a national public inquiry into the grooming gangs. And it may well pay a hefty electoral price for it.
With the news that Labour will allow limited inquiries into the grooming gangs, Oscar Edmondson speaks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman on the latest Coffee House Shots podcast:
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