Labour government announces new grooming gang inquiries

Yvette Cooper has announced a “rapid national audit” into the scale and nature of grooming gangs across the country amid growing calls from MPs for a new inquiry. The home secretary also pledged five new local inquiries backed by government funding in a statement to the Commons on Thursday. The “no holds barred” rapid review, which will report within three months, will be led by Baroness Casey and will “look at the cultural and societal drivers for this type of offending”, Ms Cooper said.

The partial climb down comes after three Labour MPs from the north west and Manchester mayor Andy Burnham broke ranks to demand a rethink. Last week the government, in particular safeguarding minister Jess Phillips and the prime minister Keir Starmer, came under furious attack from right-wing figures, led by X owner Elon Musk, after they decided not to hold a national inquiry into the scandal.

But with pressure mounting the government has instead agreed to a series of local inquiries into failures, with an additional budget of £5 million. However, those demanding a full national inquiry made it clear that the government needed to make a full U-turn and the local inquiries were not enough. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp called the announcement “wholly inadequate” and said the local probes would not have the power to compel witnesses to appear. Labour MP for Rotherham Sarah Champion said the inquiries would only have the power to stop cover-ups if they had statutory powers.

Elon Musk responded to Ms Cooper’s announcement by writing on X, formerly Twitter: “I hope this is a proper investigation”. While Reform MP Rupert Lowe demanded an investigation that “spread into all corners of the country”, saying: “Nothing less is acceptable”.

Ms Cooper also announced she wanted police forces to reopen “cold cases” relating to child sexual exploitation and abuse of young girls. Police chiefs have been ordered to review any grooming gang investigations that were closed down, and victims will get new powers to demand an independent review into decisions made to stop investigating alleged crimes. She told MPs that all police forces will be expected to make “problem profiles of the grooming gangs in their area”. And promised that Baroness Casey’s review would “properly examine ethnicity data and the demographics of the gangs involved and their victims”.

Ms Cooper added that the government will set out before Easter how they will take forward all 20 recommendations from Professor Alexis Jay’s independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, which concluded in 2022. Ms Cooper’s decision followed Ms Champion, Liverpool Walton MP Dan Carden and Rochdale MP Paul Waugh all demanding that an inquiry was held. Local inquiries into the grooming gang scandal were also condemned by the former Leader of the Welsh Conservatives Andrew RT Davies who said they were “not sufficient”.

“This dreadful scandal was able to continue because of huge issues within our institutions, so we need to understand how the culture within those institutions worked. Only with a national inquiry can we join the dots and really get to the bottom of this issue for victims.” Sir Keir ordered his MPs to vote against a national probe in the Commons last week, arguing that victims wanted action rather than another lengthy investigation. But it later emerged that the PM and many of his senior ministers did not take part in the vote themselves.

Ms Champion has warned that child sexual abuse is “endemic” in the UK and had to be “recognised as a national priority”. Mr Musk called on the King to step in and dissolve parliament after Labour rejected a call for a national inquiry into child grooming. The tech billionaire triggered an explosive row over Sir Keir‘s handling of the scandal after he suggested the prime minister had failed to bring “rape gangs” to justice when he was director of public prosecutions. While the monarch does have the power to dissolve parliament, this power is a formality and is done so upon request of the prime minister. For the King to dissolve parliament against the wishes of the prime minister would cause a constitutional crisis in the UK.

The Independent