We do not know exactly how many girls have been raped by so-called ‘grooming gangs’. We do not know the full extent of police and local authority involvement in covering up these rapes. We do not know where these rapes are still continuing. We do not, in reality, know anything beyond the facts of the individual cases and towns that have so far emerged and which have been properly investigated.
And it seems that if Jess Phillips has her way, nor will we ever.
In a Commons statement yesterday, the minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls announced that the government may no longer be proceeding even with the five pathetic, utterly inadequate local inquiries that the Home Secretary announced in January. Instead, a ‘more flexible’ approach will be taken, with the £5 million made available for these inquiries potentially spent on ‘more bespoke work, including local victims’ panels or locally led audits of the handling of historical cases’.
In January, Yvette Cooper’s decision not to set up a national inquiry was met with anger and outrage. This is a national scandal of epic and astounding proportions. It is inconceivable that the British state should point blank refuse to try to find out the full extent of what happened, why it happened and what can stop it happening with a national inquiry. And yet that appears to be the government’s unshakeable position.
It is impossible to know how many grooming gang victims there are. We don’t know, because there has not been any formal inquiry looking specifically at the rape gangs (let us do away with the euphemistic ‘grooming gang’ label). The idea that five isolated local inquiries would suffice was a grotesque response to the scale of the scandal. And now even those may not happen.
As Jess Phillips told the Commons, ‘We are developing a new best practice framework to support local authorities that want to undertake victim-centred local inquiries or related work, drawing on the lessons from local independent inquiries such as those in Telford, Rotherham and Greater Manchester.’
Yes, you read that correctly. The government’s response is to set up a ‘best practice framework’ for those authorities ‘that want to undertake victim-centred local inquiries.’ And for those that don’t want to inquire into their own behaviour – because, perhaps, their own members are deeply implicated in the cover up and protection of the rapists? Have a lovely day and enjoy the sunshine.
Oldham Council has asked for a statutory inquiry into child abuse in the area. There had been a local review in 2022 but it was restricted to 2011 to 2014 and the abuse did not end then. Ms Phillips rejected the proposal. It was, she said, a local matter for the council to deal with. Even when a local council wants to be investigated, the government says no.
The journalist Charlie Peters has been investigating this for years and has identified over 50 areas where rape gangs have operated – and, sickeningly, continue to do so. In 2023/24 there were 7,365 sexual grooming offences recorded by the police in England and Wales. In 32 per cent of cases investigated, no suspect was identified. The need for an inquiry is not even just to identify what happened in the past; these crimes are still happening.
In her response to Ms Phillips’ statement yesterday, shadow minister Katie Lam laid out the horror of what the victims have endured. It is too graphic to repeat here, but I do urge you to read her speech in Hansard if you have the stomach for it. It matters that we understand just how unspeakable these crimes were.
The two key questions underlying all this are how rape gangs have been allowed to operate – and why there is such resistance to uncovering the full facts. These are, in reality, the same question, the answer to which was provided in a simple statement of the facts by Ms Lam yesterday:
‘The girls we are talking about are predominantly white. The men who preyed on them were predominantly Muslim, generally either from Pakistan or of Pakistani heritage.’
The look on Phillips’s face when Ms Lam dared to state this typified the problem – as if she had said something that should always remain utterly unsayable. The Lib Dem education spokeswoman, Munira Wilson, then spelt it out:
‘I share her [Phillips’s] disappointment that the Conservatives have sought to pick out one particular community. Day after day in this Chamber, they vilify Muslims. As somebody who has Muslim family and brown skin, I say that we feel increasingly uncomfortable in our own country, given the attacks that we hear, day after day, from the Conservatives on all Muslims. It is an absolute disgrace.’
For years, anyone who pointed out the facts – the story of white girls being raped by Pakistani heritage Muslims – has been accused of being racist.
In many cases, the gangs have been allowed to operate because the police and the authorities believed it would damage ‘community relations’ if the crimes were investigated, let alone prosecuted – and that the ethnic backgrounds of anyone involved should never be discussed as relevant.
So cowed were the police by the fear that they might be accused of institutional racism that they started to invert reality. Professor Alexis Jay’s report into Rotherham shows one detective waving away the complaint of a girl, who was 12 when the abuse began, as ‘100 per cent consensual’.
A further report into Rotherham by Dame Louise Casey found that the council deliberately covered up the rapes because it was worried about racial tensions. Professor Jay’s inquiry also reported that a senior police officer told a victim’s father that the town ‘would erupt’ if the routine abuse of white children by men of Pakistani origin became widely known. Political correctness was placed above protecting girls from rape and torture. The same story was repeated elsewhere.
The existence of the rape gangs shame Britain. But the decision that there must never be full accountability or a full understanding of why and how they have been allowed to operate is, in its own way, no less contemptible.
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