Prime Minster Sir Keir Starmer has apparently u-turned on the decision to hold an enquiry into grooming gangs, accepting the recommendations of Baroness Louise Casey and announcing a national inquiry will be conducted.
The Prime Minister had previously indicated a national review into child sexual abuse by Professor Alexis Jay published in 2022 was sufficient to not need a statutory national inquiry; but on the advice of Baroness Casey has now formally launched a full national statutory inquiry into grooming gangs in England and Wales.
“I’ve never said we should not look again at any issue.”
said Starmer ahead of the G7 summit;
“She’s (Baroness Casey) come to the view there should be a national inquiry on the basis of what she’s seen… I’ve read every single word of her report, and I’m going to accept her recommendation. I think that’s the right thing to do, on the basis of what she has put in her audit. I asked her to do that job, to double-check on this. She’s done that job for me, and having read her report… I shall now implement her recommendation.”
Starmer added it was the view of Baroness Casey a new inquiry was not needed but she had subsequently changed her mind.
In 2014 an independent review by Professor Alexis Jay identified an estimated 1,400 girls had been abused in Rotherham. She would later go on to lead a national review into child sexual abuse, which lasted seven years and made 20 recommendations when it was published in 2022. IN January of this year Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced an audit would look at the ‘array of existing and new data’ including the ethnicity and demographics of gangs and their victims, and the cultural and societal drivers for this offending.
Updating the House of Commons on the results of the report Cooper said the government would take action to ‘tackle this vile crime’ and bring about justice for victims. Outlining how it accepts the 12 recommendations in the report Cooper added there had been a ‘deep-rooted failure to treat children as children’; and institutional failures “stretching back decades.”
Amongst the 12 recommendations are changes to the law so intentional penetration of a child under 16 receives a mandatory rape charge; mandatory collection of ethnicity and nationality data for all suspects in all child sexual abuse cases; mandatory sharing of information for safeguarding; introducing unique reference numbers for children to better enable collaboration between police, social servcies and educators; and improved licensing of taxi drivers given the report identifies taxi ranks as an common location for initiating child sexual exploitation.
Baroness Casey also recommends commissioning research into the drivers for group-based child sexual exploitation, including online offending, cultural factors and the role of the group. Addressing the house Yvette Cooper said a ‘continued failure to gather proper robust national data, despite concerns being raised going back very many years’ and fear of ‘appearing racist or raising community tensions’ had hampered efforts to tackle child sexual exploitation – findings Cooper described as ‘deeply disturbing.’
