There are now two debates underway about grooming gangs and how the government should investigate them further. The first is the one raging on social media, largely conducted by people who haven’t up to this point shown much interest in the issue but who are busily accusing others of not doing enough. The second is a more fruitful one between the politicians who actually have engaged with the inquiries that have happened over the years, and who are now trying to work out what should happen next.
Some MPs have been plugging away at the grooming issue for years, long before talking about it garnered them likes and retweets
A few weeks ago, there were no debates at all, and it is notable that last night the government appeared to be pushed by events into announcing it was implementing some of the recommendations of the inquiries that have already taken place. Yvette Cooper told the Commons that so far ‘none of the 20 recommendations from the independent inquiry into child abuse [IICSA] has been implemented.’ She announced that the government would use the crime and policing bill coming to parliament in the spring to make it mandatory to report abuse. There will be professional and criminal sanctions for those who fail to report or cover up child sexual abuse. There will also be legislation making grooming an aggravating factor in the sentencing of child sexual offences, and ministers will ‘overhaul the information and evidence that are fathered on child sexual abuse and exploitation and embed them in a clear new performance framework for policing, so that these crimes are taken far more seriously.’
Cooper was also justifying why her Home Office colleague Jess Phillips had refused Oldham council’s request for a national inquiry into grooming gangs on the basis that it should be held locally instead. It was this refusal, or rather the reporting of it, that sparked the social media storm that has dominated the government’s new year. The Conservatives had to justify in their response why they hadn’t implemented any of the IICSA recommendations (the election they called got in the way, and so on), but also press for a full national public inquiry. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp insisted that the IICSA ‘was mainly directed at other child sexual abuse and exploitation issues, and it covered only six of the towns involved in the gang rape scandal – it did not cover everything.’ He demanded a ‘national statutory public inquiry, which can compel witnesses to attend, requisition evidence and take evidence under oath.’
None of these demands – or indeed the government’s response – are unreasonable. The debate in the Commons last night was tense but it at least focused on what has actually happened in this area, rather than the bizarre spectacle on social media of campaigners claiming that nothing has happened at all, or that the previous reports into grooming were a ‘whitewash’. That last claim was made by Nigel Farage, who didn’t take part in the Commons debate last night, and who is also dampening Elon Musk’s involvement in this by pushing back against the suggestion that Tommy Robinson should be welcomed into Reform UK. The problem with the reports is not that they were a whitewash – they were detailed and largely had the support of victims – but that their recommendations have not been acted upon, and that they may well not have covered the full picture of abuse.
Whether or not there ends up being a full national inquiry, the government has been pushed by the row into acting far quicker than it had originally intended, and its actions on child sexual abuse will face far greater scrutiny than before. Some will argue that this is a good thing and shows the power of social media. An alternative perspective is that what has happened in the past few days is in fact a damning indictment of how Westminster works – or doesn’t.
The IISCA recommendations didn’t become urgent this week. Grooming gangs didn’t even become a scandal this week. They have been reported on for years – most notably by Andrew Norfolk of the Times – and have been a source of shame to those who ignored them for years too. All that has changed this week is that the issue became salient, which is a grim truth for victims who have given evidence to previous inquiries. We see this time and again with national scandals: the journalists covering the Post Office scandal found for many years that they were the only ones in courtrooms or interviewing the hundreds of victims, and feared that little would be done to change the toxic culture of the Post Office – until suddenly the issue became salient and everyone was jumping all over it like fleas. The suffering of the victims and the need for change had not altered one bit – it was just that for a short while the attention span of Westminster was focused on them.
Some MPs have been plugging away at the grooming issue for years, long before talking about it garnered them likes and retweets. Former Labour MP Ann Cryer was praised in the Commons yesterday for having ‘bravely persevered despite accusations of racism and worse, including from her own colleagues.’ Some of the Labour frontbench might have the more recent memory of their colleague Sarah Champion having to resign as a shadow minister because she wrote the following sentence in the Sun in 2017: ‘Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls.’
She was a shadow equalities minister under Jeremy Corbyn, and apologised as she quit that role for her ‘extremely poor choice of words’. She has not returned to the Labour frontbench since. Since the row became popular again this week, Champion has conducted herself with characteristic dignity, merely pushing for the changes recommended by the IICSA to be implemented, and arguing that there does not need to be another inquiry. Yet she, unlike so many in Westminster, chose to pursue the issue when it was not helpful to her career to be seen to be doing so. Indeed, she continued to pursue it when the attention had moved elsewhere.
Now, you could argue that the attention span issue is just the way politics works, given there are always a thousand competing priorities and scandals. It might be the way that social media works, sure, but politics should surely be as much about the quiet plugging away as it is about the dramatic moments. Ministers should work on addressing problems whether or not they are trending or on the front pages. Cooper herself said that what was important was ensuring that change actually happened, ‘rather than just thinking, “well, an announcement has been made”, but nothing changes and nothing is actually done.’ And yet the government has been moved along by the tide of attention to make an announcement, showing that even those who identify the problem are not immune to it themselves.
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