London will be among the first areas investigated by a national inquiry into grooming gangs, alongside Oldham, Bradford and Keighley. Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan previously denied that such gangs operate in the capital. The Mail has the story.
The £65 million probe is investigating how the grooming gangs operated and how public institutions including the police, councils, health services, social care services and schools responded.
Today’s announcement confirms which areas will first face so-called local investigations – where serious failures have been identified in response to child sexual exploitation by grooming gangs.
Former children’s commissioner for England Anne Longfield is heading up the inquiry, which has the legal powers to compel witnesses to give evidence and requires organisations to hand over documents.
Any evidence of crimes uncovered will be referred to Operation Beaconport, the national police operation launched last year to review hundreds of previously closed investigations.
Baroness Longfield said: “The inquiry’s task is to find out why this catastrophic failure of the state happened and continues to happen, to establish why victims and survivors of abuse were failed, and to hold to account those institutions and individuals who failed them. Our national accountability hearings will begin before the end of the year.
“There have been many inquiries and reviews into grooming gangs and child sexual exploitation and abuse over the past 20 years, putting forward more than 800 recommendations, many of which have not been implemented.
“These hearings will help us to establish what national institutions and services should have been doing to implement these findings and to protect children from abuse and harm – and what, if any, progress has been made in areas where investigations have taken place.
“We are determined that our work ensures that no further inquiries into grooming gangs will ever be needed.”
Baroness Longfield has vowed to hold police forces who failed to investigate grooming gangs accountable, as well as the council workers accused of covering them up.
“Any evidence” of criminal conduct by professionals will be referred to a specially launched national operation to review hundreds of previously closed investigations, she said.
In its terms of reference published in March, the inquiry said it would “investigate how grooming gangs operated and how institutions, including police, local authorities, health services, social care services, and schools, responded to abuse”.
The inquiry, which is set to conclude no later than March 2029, “will examine why children were so often disbelieved, dismissed or blamed for their own abuse”.
It added: “The inquiry will directly examine whether the ethnicity, culture or religion of either perpetrators or victims influenced patterns of offending, and whether these factors shaped the institutional response.
“These are questions that previous reviews chose not to address. This inquiry will not avoid them.”
But the solicitors representing victims of child sex grooming and the survivors remain unhappy about the scope of the inquiry – which is currently limited to just five areas.
And Sarah Champion, Labour MP for Rotherham, who first called for action on grooming gangs, has criticised the amount of time the inquiry has taken to get going and believes its budget would be better spent on supporting the National Crime Agency bringing gangs to justice.
Worth reading in full.
Last June, Khan was asked by London Assembly Member Susan Hall whether any grooming gangs had been identified in London boroughs like Tower Hamlets and Lambeth. Khan said police had found no indications of such gangs operating in the capital:
My understanding from speaking to the police, and she will appreciate, I have done on a regular basis, is – and I choose my words carefully for the reasons she will understand – there are no reported cases and also no indication of the grooming gangs that she is concerned about in London. That is not to say it could not have happened for the reasons she has said, but the MPS has been quite proactive in trying to see if there are any issues in relation to the stuff reported in other parts of the country.
What is important is that when the public inquiry is set up, the MPS and others, including MOPAC and local authorities, must cooperate fully with the public inquiry. She will be aware there have been cases across the country where people were NFA’d and no further action was taken or action was not taken. What Dame Louise Casey is saying is some of those cases should be revisited as well. I have no indication of them being in London, but the MPS understands the importance of checking for the reasons that she knows. …
We do have issues in relation to child sexual exploitation. We do have issues in relation to child sexual abuse. It is dissimilar to the cases that are being reported. There are no reported cases, but it is important that the police are vigilant and there is no complacency. The police will carry on being vigilant.
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The picture shows SK holding his knuckles…why do all politicians do this nowadays? I realise they have been media trained but what is the explanation for the weird hand grips/folds/gestures? They all look like automatons. Where are their thumbs for instance?
I’m going to make a wild guess at the outcome of the Inquiry.
Anyone very senior who is a member of, or an elected representative of, the Labour Party will be exonerated. “They couldn’t possibly have known what was going on.”
But “Lessons will be learnt.”
Just as the SNP leader didn’t know her husband had bought the motor home parked in plain sight!
Utter waste of time and money. Conclusion already written: Nothing to see here.
I want to see the investigation look at those in positions of influence who have used that influence to deliberately hide these acts from investigators and prosecution, however high the rot goes, they must all be brought to book.
Simply put, given how widespread this abuse has been found to be, it is inconceivable to me that this was not, and is not, happening on some scale in London.
I very much doubt I’ll get my wish!
We don’t want or need another Pakistani Rape Gang inquiry, we know who the perps are – the clue is in the title. We cannot have plod involved because they are up to their necks in it as also social services. The only course is to hand over the funding to Rupert Lowe’s enquiry and rely on Rupert to sort this out. His enquiry is the only one carrying an ounce of honesty and one committed to achieving justice. Anything under the auspices of central government is nothing more than an excuse to fleece taxpayers and laundering money for politicians.
Not wishing to be cynical (much) but how long before this enquiry gets shut down?
Who nicked all the little khant’s hair ?
He shaved it, for the haj… unfortunately, it makes him look like the Mekon.
😂 Yes, I was also wondering why he looks so kind of shrivelled up, like people who inject themselves with Reptile Venom to lose weight … Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro…
Anne Elizabeth Longfield, Baroness Longfield CBE (born 1960) is a Labour member of the House of Lords
I do not think Khan[t] will have much to worry about.
I heard this morning on GB News that they sneakily ‘stopped’ investigations by starving them of funding so they effectively could not continue. Just the sort of thing these council scum would do.
There is no point in this enquiry whatsoever. All the Asians will be exonerated except for a few high profile cases for the sake of the optics. No police, politicians or social workers will be jailed or sacked and whatever is needed to “calm people down” will be put out in the press so we can reset to business as usual.
The idea that the police can have anything to do with keeping the law in these cases is just laughable. For gods sake, they were complicit in all areas and in some cases joined in!
it’s looking more and more like we cannot look to public institutions for fair dealing and justice.
Seconded 👍
Wasn’t there a line in Yes Minister, that said never have an enquiry if you don’t know what the outcome will be? I suspect they will do this with this enquiry.
Kahn should be the first to be charged. Just show the youtube video of his stonewalling in the London assembly when he denied knowing what the term “grooming gang” meant.