“Horrific details of systematic child abuse in Oxford,” tweeted Lucy Powell in May 2013. A vile Oxfordshire grooming gang had just been convicted of the rape and sexual torture of six girls aged as young as 11, all of them in care; the following month, five of the seven men would receive life sentences. Their crimes had a “resonance [with] cases in Rochdale, Rotherham & elsewhere”, noted Powell – as she would know, having been elected the Labour MP for nearby Manchester Central the previous year. The horror – and the grisly pattern of clearly racialised abuse it reflected – showed the political system urgently needed to act: “[These] issues need wider inquiry now,” was her clarion call.
It was the depraved details of that very trial which earlier this year brought the rape gangs to global attention, sparking a national debate that was long overdue. Back in 2013, Powell had been a mere opposition backbencher; today she’s the Leader of the Commons and Lord President of the Council – and in a position to do something about the rape gangs. Yet she seems to have decided that her one-time call for justice isn’t as urgent as it was. The Labour Government she is a part of is blocking a national public inquiry and instead – after political pressure – committing just £5 million for a handful of ‘flexible’ local inquiries. Lacking the authority to compel witnesses, the inquiries are expected to be toothless. And this will barely scratch the surface of a problem that has blighted more than 50 towns and cities across the UK – and, shockingly, is still afflicting them today.
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