From the London Evening Standard, GB News and Sky News
The long-awaited inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal will “explicitly examine” whether the ethnicity, culture or religion of perpetrators directly influenced offending, the Home Secretary vowed today.
Shabana Mahmood said the statutory independent investigation will be “laser focused” on grooming gangs as she insisted there “will be no hiding place for the predatory monsters who committed these vile crimes”.
The inquiry published its terms of reference on Monday, which will be laid before Parliament when it returns from recess on April 13.
It will look into how the gangs operated and how public institutions, including police forces, councils, health services, social care authorities and schools, responded to abuse.
It will then begin its full investigation into the group-based sexual exploitation of children in England and Wales.
It will have the legal powers to compel witnesses to give evidence and require organisations to hand over documents. (If they have not been hurredly destroyed already)
In recent days, Conservative MP Robbie Moore has expressed concern that evidence may have been destroyed because of the length of time it took for the government to instruct institutions to preserve records.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Since Baroness Casey’s National Audit, we have worked across government to ensure records relevant to the draft Terms of Reference are appropriately retained by public sector organisations.”
In what seems like a criticism of previous investigations, the inquiry team said: “These are questions that previous reviews chose not to address. This inquiry will not avoid them.” Baroness Longfield added: “Children across England and Wales were – and still are – sexually abused and exploited by grooming gangs. Raped. Trafficked. Threatened into silence.
“That is not disputed. What has been disputed, what has been minimised, explained away, or buried for far too long, is why the institutions that exist to protect them so often chose not to act.”
While Baroness Longfield is not a judge, she will use some of her budget to employ legal assistance, and the Inquiry will have statutory powers which can force reluctant witnesses to give evidence.
There is an emphasis on the experience of the Baroness and her two panel members: Zoë Billingham, who has spent much of her career inspecting public services and Eleanor Kelly, the former Southwark chief executive who oversaw the response to the Grenfell disaster.
Any evidence of criminal conduct by professionals will be referred to Operation Beaconport, the national policing operation launched last year to review hundreds of previously closed investigations.
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said: “This appears to be a significantly strengthened terms of reference for the national grooming gangs inquiry. The initial draft did not, amongst other things, examine ethnicity and religion, nor did it ensure those in positions of authority like politicians or police officers would be investigated. . . ”
‘Survivors have been let down for far too many years. This is the last chance. It has to work’, writes GB News’ National Reporter Charlie Peters
This is one of the worst scandals in our country’s history since the Second World War. The Government has to get this right. But after the release of the draft terms of reference last year, the language and direction suggested that the team behind the probe had not recognised the scale of the crisis ahead of them, nor the hunger for justice and full examination. The only pressure applied to this problem from the start came from GB News.
The team, headed by Baroness Longfield, has now formally recognised this shortcoming.
In a lengthy statement announcing the new terms of reference, Baroness Longfield said that “it was also clear that we needed to at ethnicity, culture and religion – not just through the lens of how the state responds – but also at the role they might play as a driver of abuse.”
With this update, the state cannot hide from the difficult questions. And there are many for them to press on with answering.
GB News has gathered countless bundles of evidence pointing to the grooming abuse network not being a scandal of isolated communities, but rather a nationally connected network of organised criminal gangs.
Such a sophisticated and powerful network could only operate with the links of in-group loyalty and bonds.
There is no doubt in my mind that this has been furnished through a dangerous mixture of so-called “Biraderi” brotherhood culture, common among Mirpuri communities, and extreme criminality, particularly involving Class A drugs such as heroin, and the trafficking of weapons.
Reporting from dozens of towns and cities across the country, I have seen links between perpetrators and victims alike.
The same men, the same locations, sometimes even the same vehicle trafficking them across the country.
The extreme violence and control and the interlinking families of abusers all point to something far darker and insidious than has been probed by the Government so far.
Most shocking has been the information we have revealed that police officers in some districts weren’t just covering up the abuse but directly involved with it themselves.
I am limited to what I can say at this stage due to live legal issues, but the role of brotherhood and in-group loyalty has played a key role in both examples of cover-up and complicity.
I know from speaking to several victims and survivors that have met with Baroness Longfield’s team that these concerns have been raised directly with her. It is clear that she has heard them and taken it on.
Credit for this shift must also go to Tory MP Katie Lam, who insisted on it in a campaign earlier this year. She also met with Baroness Longfield’s team to raise them directly, which undoubtedly had a major impact.
This inquiry is now due to return before March 2029, before the next General Election.
If Baroness Longfield and her team can stick to the standard they have set with this update, then confidence in them among the thousands of survivors, who have waited for this moment for far too long, will grow.
They have been let down by countless state apparatchiks, lazy lawyers and duplicitous politicians for far too many years.
This is the last chance. It has to work.
Attention now turns to the locations that will get local investigations feeding into the national inquiry.
Oldham is guaranteed, and has been politically impossible to ignore since GB News revealed last year that Jess Phillips had rejected their request for a Government-led inquiry.
The Oldham Times reports
Oldham has been confirmed among the first areas. The inquiry will then begin its full investigation into the group-based sexual exploitation of children in England and Wales.
But where else will it go? Based on conversations with survivors who have met the inquiry team, I am highly confident that Bradford and London will be included.
Wales also seems highly likely. There could be up to 10 specific locations.
But it can’t be a postcode lottery of investigations. The inquiry has committed to follow the evidence, whatever it reveals, and that means that no area must be written off for investigation.
“The children who were abused deserved better,” so ends the inquiry’s latest statement.
It is true, as a grave understatement.
Only now they might hope that change is finally coming.
