This is a hugely important issue for me. As a Member of the Women and Equalities Select Committee, tackling violence against women and girls is one of my biggest priorities in parliament.
Did I vote against a national inquiry into grooming gangs?
No.
It’s hugely disappointing that opposition parties have tried to exploit this issue for cynical political gain. The Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, despite previously serving as Minister for Children and Minister for Women and Equalities, never raised this issue in the Commons before January of this year. The motion she tabled in parliament – which is what I voted against – would not have created a national inquiry, but passing it would have immediately killed the government’s Children’s Welfare and Schools Bill which contains important child protection measures that were, in part, recommended to prevent future appalling crimes against children, including failures that enabled the shocking murder of Sara Sharif.
That amendment was a shameful and opportunistic attempt to generate social media likes at the expense of genuine action to tackle child abuse and, in my view, was a dismal reflection of the Tory party’s direction under her leadership.
The government has launched a national inquiry – you can read more about that below.
The findings of Baroness Casey’s rapid review of the evidence
As you may remember, in January the Home Secretary commissioned Baroness Louise Casey to carry out a “rapid audit” on grooming gangs, with the intention of pulling together all available evidence on these crimes and to make recommendations. Despite some criticism at the time, I believe this was the right course of action for ensuring the government response was led by evidence and could deliver genuine change quickly. As someone known for not pulling their punches on the most difficult issues in public life, Baroness Casey was exactly the right person to lead this review.
Baroness Casey’s report has now been published, and you can read it in full by clicking here. Perhaps the most important of the report’s findings are:
- A lack of available data means at present it is impossible to assess the scale of group-based child sexual exploitation.
- From the data that does exist, the evidence is that 78% of victims are girls, with 57% of these being between 10 and 15 years old. The use of drugs and alcohol to control victims is a common feature of grooming, with grooming behaviour beginning online also an increasingly prevalent problem.
- 76% of perpetrators of group-based child sexual exploitation are men.
- Questions around the ethnicity of perpetrators have been shied away from and is still not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators. There is enough evidence available from three police force area’s data to show disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds amongst suspects for group-based child sexual exploitation – warranting further examination.
- A lack of examination of ethnicity has done a disservice to victims and law-abiding people in Asian communities and has played into the hands of those who want to exploit the issue of grooming gangs to sow division.
- Child protection plans to prevent sexual abuse have fallen to their lowest level in 30 years, and there has also been a decline in the number of serious case reviews about child sexual exploitation in recent years.
- Ambivalent attitudes to victims have harmed the response to grooming gangs. Young girls – particularly those in the care system – have often been judged as adults rather than children, with some criminalised for offences they committed while being groomed.
- Current age of consent laws have led to charges being downgraded or dropped when a victim under the age of sixteen was considered to be ‘in love with’ or ‘had consented to’ sexual contact with an adult.
Baroness Casey made a number of recommendations, including:
- Launching a time-limited national inquiry, running for three years, that can compel witnesses and launch and direct local inquiries.
- Changing the law so that so adult men who groom and have sex with 13–15-year-olds receive mandatory charges of rape.
- Introducing mandatory reporting for grooming crimes with ethnicity and nationality data and improved data collection.
- Improving coordination between government agencies.
- Conducting further research into grooming offences.
Immediate government action to tackle grooming gangs
The Home Secretary has called Baroness Casey’s report “damning”, issued an unequivocal apology to victims of grooming, and committed to implementing all twelve of Baroness Casey’s recommendations.
This builds on the government’s existing commitment to enact the recommendations of the previous Alexis Jay previous public inquiry that reported in 2022. That inquiry made more than 20 recommendations, none of which were implemented by the previous Conservative government. It beggars belief that the Conservatives are criticising the government’s response to grooming gangs, when they had fourteen years to take action and did absolutely nothing.
The government is also taking strong action to strengthen child protection. The Children’s Welfare and Schools Bill – which I voted for but which the Conservatives and Reform voted against – contains measures including setting up a register of children being homeschooled to prevent them falling off the radar of child services, the removal of the right to home school a child if they are subject to a child protection order, and the strengthening of council child protection services.
The government are also introducing new mandatory reporting requirements for child abuse, making it a criminal offence to fail to report suspected abuse to the authorities. This is something Keir Starmer – as a long-standing advocate for action to tackle child exploitation as a former Director of Public Prosecutions – has been calling for for more than a decade.
Coordinated police action
The National Crime Agency (NCA), the UK’s top law enforcement agency, has been tasked by the Home Secretary with leading a coordinated national push to look at historic group-based child sexual abuse cases that were dropped and identify child abusers who slipped through the cracks of previous investigations.
That work began in January, but is now being stepped up by the government on Baroness Casey’s recommendation. Since the Home Secretary asked police forces in January to identify possible grooming cases that had been closed with no further action, more than 800 cases have been identified for formal review, with the figure expected to rise above 1,000 in the coming weeks. I am hopeful that this review will identify perpetrators who previously evaded justice and put them behind bars where they belong.
National inquiry into grooming gangs
I understand and am sympathetic to those who say that a national inquiry should have been launched immediately by the government in January, but I stand by the decision the government made to order Baroness Casey’s rapid review of the evidence first.
Now that Baroness Casey has determined through her expert review that a national inquiry is necessary, the government has confirmed that it will be launching a statutory public inquiry, with powers to compel witnesses and direct local investigations.
The inquiry will scrutinise how institutions – including local councils, police forces and elected officials – failed vulnerable girls across the UK, with a specific focus on mishandled or ignored complaints. It will be able to compel local deep-dive investigations into historical cases and demand answers where complaints of wrongdoing or cover-ups have been made, under powers granted by the 2005 Inquiries Act. The inquiry will be chaired by a single figure and report independently, with the power to compel testimony and access to institutional records.