Grooming Gangs: Independent Inquiry

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if she will make a statement on the progress made since the publication of Dame Louise Casey’s review into group based child sexual exploitation, and the impact of recent developments on confidence in the Government’s statutory inquiry.

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. Tuesday marked one year since the publication of Baroness Casey’s national audit on group based child sexual exploitation and abuse. The House will recall that the Government accepted all 12 recommendations of what was a landmark report, exposing more than a decade of failure and inaction on the part of the state. Scandalously, the most vulnerable in society were let down by the very institutions that should have protected them.

As the Home Secretary made clear in her written statement to the House earlier this week, this Government are determined to directly and decisively confront the failings that occurred. We have made good progress against the mandate for change set out by Baroness Casey, with action taken or ongoing in relation to all 12 of her recommendations. We have changed the law on rape to remove any ambiguity about the ability of 13 to 16-year olds to consent to sex; established a new national police operation, Operation Beaconport, overseen by the National Crime Agency and backed by £38 million of funding this year; legislated to disregard any convictions for so called child prostitution; and commissioned new research into the drivers of these heinous crimes, including ethnicity, religion, cultural factors, group dynamics and the role of online technologies.

Central to our response is the statutory independent inquiry into grooming gangs. Having been formally established in April, the work of the inquiry is under way and it will shortly announce the first local areas that will face investigation. The terms of reference have been shaped by the testimony, priorities and lived experience of victims and survivors. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to them, and to all who have campaigned to get us to this point.

The inquiry will have a laser focus on grooming gangs, including the role that ethnicity, religion and culture played in these terrible crimes. Our message is clear: we will do whatever it takes to secure justice for those who were so badly let down—pursuing the evidence wherever it may lead, exposing failings and taking every necessary step to protect the most vulnerable in our society. For too long, questions about what was and will forever be one of the darkest moments in this country’s history have gone unanswered. That must change, which is why the Government have established a full independent inquiry to shine a light on past horrors. That is happening alongside our wider work to tackle exploitation and abuse, backed by a record £100 million in Home Office funding this year, in an unrelenting effort to keep our children safe from harm.

I thank the Minister for her answer. It has been one year since Dame Louise Casey’s stark and deeply troubling review of group based child sexual exploitation, known rightly as the rape gangs. She exposed what we now know was a culture of institutional blindness, weak data and fragmented accountability and a reluctance to confront uncomfortable truths and ultimately to stand up for women and girls who have been systematically abused, or a culture where people simply chose not to act for the bigger fear of being labelled racist. It is disgraceful. Deep concerns remain that progress on justice has been too slow, and in some areas is simply superficial.

The Minister has rightly warned of a box ticking culture. This Government talk a good game, but recent ministerial Home Office resignations have raised serious questions about what they are delivering in practice. How does the Minister respond to the deeply distressing but bold testimony of Fiona Goddard, who has bravely highlighted that some of the men convicted of abusing her have been released early, with others potentially due for release soon? These are Labour’s choices, and we warned about them. What action is being taken to rebuild the confidence of the victims in this process? Does the Minister deeply regret opposing measures to prevent early release in such heartbreaking and horrific cases?

Finally, how are the Government ensuring that sentencing and post release supervision reflect the severity of these crimes? I remind the House that we warned them about the consequences of their dire choices for the safety of women and girls. What are they going to do about it? Will anything change before the next election, or is this issue simply in the long grass? Survivors’ voices and community concerns need to be heard. This is a matter of justice, accountability and trust. This Government need to step up and protect our women and our girls.

I think we can agree on some of what the hon. Lady has said. She is right that there was institutional blindness. We have seen that in other ways across the state, and not just in these horrific cases. It is something that we know we need to change. She is right to speak of the victims and the horrors that they have suffered, and she is right to keep a focus on that.

The hon. Lady said that the Opposition warned us about the prison situation; I gently say that we warned them, for very many years, about the state of our prison estate. When we came into government, we found a catastrophic situation: simply not enough prison places, and the whole system at the point of collapse. We have had to respond to that. As Policing Minister, I have a duty to ensure that our police are policing our streets and keeping everybody safe. We always ensure that we keep an eye, in the right way, on former criminals who come out of prison, and I spend a lot of my time talking to the police about how we do that.

We all greatly admire Louise Casey and are very grateful for the work that she continues to do. Of course she is right to push us to go faster, as she always will. That is why we asked her to do the job: because she demands the best from us. She has also praised the progress made by the Government in establishing the inquiry and in the work that has been done to date. She is understandably pushing us on three areas: the non child prostitution convictions of some people who have been groomed, having the right information flows for Operation Beaconport, and Whitehall treating this issue with the urgency that it needs.

On all those issues, we are going as fast as we can and responding to the questions that Louise Casey has rightly asked. We are pushing to get all that work done as quickly as possible. She was clear that the inquiry should be relatively speedy. That was one of the challenges of the Professor Jay inquiry, which took many years, excellent though it was. The inquiry will be concluded by 2029. It has £65 million of funding. We will get to the answers.

The Spicer review of 2018 into the handling of the widespread sexual exploitation of children and vulnerable adults in Newcastle found a culture that enabled and did not investigate the exploitation and rape of children and vulnerable adults, and a culture of victim blaming. It also praised Newcastle city council and Northumbria police’s actions following the investigation.

I have repeatedly contacted Northumbria police to raise issues around child exploitation and to seek reassurances about its actions. Given the comments in the Casey review, how can I ensure that Northumbria police has the resources and support it needs to identify and support victims, believe them and encourage them to come forward, and to create a culture of investigation, openness and transparency to reassure my constituents?

I am happy to facilitate conversations, but it sounds like my hon. Friend is already having them. As she will know, we are working on police culture. The Hillsborough law and some of the wider work we are doing across Government aim to ensure that we have the right openness, transparency and culture of being professionally curious and seeking out solutions. That is very important. All forces across the country have had a funding increase this year, and Operation Beaconport has its own fund of £38 million. The funding should be there, but I am happy to have further conversations with her about that.

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

It is deeply disheartening that, a year on from Baroness Casey’s audit, the Government have not made greater progress. The victims have already been failed once; they must not be failed again. Previous inquiries have produced more than 800 recommendations, most of which have not been implemented. We see this over and over again across Departments: inquiry launched, recommendations produced and accepted by the Government, and then nothing—while victims continue to suffer.

I wholeheartedly support the independent inquiry into grooming gangs, but it must not become an excuse to delay implementing the changes that we already know are needed. Will the Minister set out a clear timeline for implementing all Baroness Casey’s recommendations in full, and make clear to every organisation with a duty to safeguard children that the hundreds of recommendations from previous inquiries are not “nice to haves” but must be implemented at pace and without further delay?

The inquiry, led by Anne Longfield, will look at previous inquiries and recommendations and bring them all into the inquiry’s remit. I encourage the hon. Lady to sit down and talk to Anne Longfield, if she has not done so already, to ensure that her concerns in that space are felt.

indicated assent.

I see that she has done so already.

The hon. Lady’s point about inquiry recommendations is not unreasonable. I recently gave evidence to the Nottingham inquiry which, among other things, is considering the fact that Government inquiries happen over many years, recommendations are made, and then there is no oversight. The Cabinet Office is acting on that, bringing bodies together and ensuring that it can drive things forward, and that whatever the Department and whatever our role, we prioritise those recommendations from inquiries.

We are making progress on all of Baroness Casey’s recommendations—I would say we are making good progress. The hon. Lady is right, of course, that we need to push as fast as we can.

Victims and survivors absolutely must be at the heart of this inquiry. How are they being put at the centre of this work in practice, are they being provided with access to support, and what meaningful opportunities do they have to shape the outcomes of the inquiry?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the role of victims and the need to be survivor focused and trauma informed throughout—that is exactly what the inquiry is focused on. The inquiry is working on a victims charter that it will publish soon, which will set out answers to all the questions she has asked about how we ensure that we are both supporting the victims and hearing their voices front and centre, when we know they were not listened to for so long.

I sat on the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee for 14 years. We saw the first exposé of the scandals of the grooming gangs, particularly in Rochdale and other places in the north of England. Dame Louise Casey came in front of us and made recommendations that have still not been carried out, so full power to the Minister to actually make this happen.

The sad reality, as I understand it, is that police forces are resisting the collection of ethnicity data, and indeed resisting investigations into those who turned a blind eye to what was going on with the grooming gangs. Will the Minister ensure that police forces carry out their duties properly and that those who turned a blind eye to what was going on are brought to justice and suffer the consequences of not protecting vulnerable girls?

I would be happy to have a conversation with the hon. Gentleman about any information he may have about police forces and what he has heard on that front. It would be very worrying if what he describes were the case. We have made it clear that ethnicity needs to be reported for the grooming based CSE that we are dealing with here. In addition, in the police reform White Paper, which was announced in the King’s Speech and will be introduced soon, we committed ourselves to doing that across the board, so ethnicity reporting will be mandatory for the police.

The Minister mentioned institutional blindness to these horrific crimes. Will she outline how this vital inquiry’s terms of reference have been designed to ensure a thorough examination of those institutional failings, which meant that action was not taken to protect children?

The terms of reference are very wide and very clear. They will look at culture, ethnicity, race and any kind of bias that was in the system. There is a wider question that Louise Casey has talked about many times, and which I am trying to drive through in policing, and others are trying to drive through in other areas of work, which is about professional curiosity: keeping an open mind; problem solving; looking and finding; being curious to get to the bottom of what is happening; and finding those connections. There is also a big piece of work around information sharing across different organisations, because there is a blindness that comes from all the different institutions not talking to each other in the way that they should and not picking up vulnerability where we should. We saw that with Southport and Nottingham, and we see it here. There is a big job to be done there, too.

The abuse of children is the most disgusting of crimes, and anyone who is involved in it, or who protects someone involved in it, must face justice. The hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe), who I note is not in his place, published his report this week, and my constituents are eager to understand why the statutory inquiry will take three years—[Interruption.] Another two years—several years. Why is the Government backed inquiry going to take so long?

The hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) has done a piece of work. I welcome the work that he has done, and hope that he will pass on to the police and the inquiry any evidence, criminal or otherwise, that he has gathered. This is an independent statutory inquiry—it is a very different thing. It will be absolutely ruthless in making sure that we can outline every single part of what has gone wrong here and learn every single lesson that we have to learn, so it is a completely different thing.

Statutory inquiries have taken years and years in the past, and Louise Casey was very clear that she wanted it to be time limited, so we have said that we want it finished, which is unusual for an inquiry—some inquiries that the previous Government set up are still ongoing. It will be done by 2029, but it is a completely different piece of work. It will be enormously thorough, get to the bottom of what happened, and bring us the answers that I know victims and the whole country want to see.

The grooming gangs represent the most profound betrayal of some of the most vulnerable people in our society, and the victims were failed by the very institutions that should have protected them. Justice was denied, while perpetrators escaped accountability. The vile individuals who systemically groomed, abused and violated these girls must face the full force of the law. Can the Minister provide an update on Operation Beaconport and explain how its work is helping to identify offenders, secure justice for victims, and strengthen the national response to tackling these heinous crimes?

Operation Beaconport is being led by the National Crime Agency, which is the very best of our serious organised crime operators, and we are treating this issue as we would treat serious organised crime, which is what it is. We are treating it with the utmost seriousness. The NCA is working with local police forces around the country to review of closed cases. It made an announcement yesterday—Members can see it online—about reopening cases, and this year it has received £38 million of funding, which is a substantial amount of money and will enable the NCA to uncover, go back over and reopen cases where it feels that injustice has been done and that they need to be opened again.

For the inquiry to secure justice for victims and survivors in Wales, it is essential that it fully understands the devolved context in Wales and the various lines of accountability that arise from it. One way to achieve that would be for Wales to receive a specific investigation as one of the inquiry’s designated local areas. Will the Minister consider that?

As the hon. Gentleman knows, the inquiry is entirely independent, so it is not for us to say where it should lead. I know that the inquiry will shortly announce the first tranche of areas that it will go to, so he will be able to see the that soon.

Does the Minister believe that the inquiry has the appropriate powers and flexibility to allow it to follow the evidence, wherever it leads, so that the recommendations can drive lasting improvements in safeguarding and child protection? Is she in dialogue with the Scottish Government on these matters?

My hon. Friend can be reassured that this inquiry has all the powers it needs to go, without fear or favour, to find the answers we all seek. This issue is too important for us not to have ensured that, so we absolutely have. I know that the Minister for Safeguarding will be in contact with her counterparts in the Scottish Government to make sure we are joined up in in our approach.

I echo the comments about how disgusting these particular crimes are. Lady Casey has identified how, in quashing convictions, the Government have failed to take account of the whole picture. Quashing convictions for under age prostitution is laudable, but there are other convictions such as for possessing the drugs given to those who are abused by their abusers or carrying them under coercion. The Minister referred to professional curiosity. Could she encourage people around her to engage in exactly that, and to look further than just the very first or main conviction to sort this out?

As the hon. Lady says, we have quashed convictions for people under 18 who were tried for prostitution—a very important part of this picture—and Louise Casey is suggesting that we go further. At the moment, victims can come in and apply, and I think she wants a more proactive response, so we are working on more proactive guidance for victims.

I thank the Minister for her response, and for her reassurance that this inquiry will have the powers to go wherever and to whomever it needs to get the answers for families in Redditch and other areas affected by these heinous crimes. When the initial set of inquiries are announced, if the area I represent is not included, but I still want to persist and ensure families get the justice they require, how am I best placed to do that via the Department and the Minister?

As I have said, the inquiry is independent of the Government, as is right and proper. I suggest he speaks to Anne Longfield, who is leading this work, or her panel. When they make their announcement, I am sure people will say, “Well, what about other areas?” I am sure they will be working through that and dealing with the priorities as they see them, and I am sure they would welcome input from my hon. Friend.

The Minister has referred to the grooming gangs inquiry carried out by our friend, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe), and early day motion 380 makes a number of recommendations. Will the Minister engage with the hon. Member to ensure that his ideas and recommendations can be taken forward, because we do not want to have to wait until Baroness Casey’s report in three years’ time?

First, I reassure the hon. Gentleman that we are not waiting three years until the inquiry’s report to act. We are already doing a lot of work, as I have outlined—such as Operation Beaconport to reopen cases—and we are using the legislative process to do what we need with data collection and ending the statutory rape definition. We are doing a whole raft of work, and we of course have our wider piece of work on violence against women and girls, with our ambition to halve it in 10 years.

I hope the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) is talking to Anne Longfield, who is chairing the independent inquiry and will take all information from all places. I hope he is feeding his information to her, and that if he has criminal evidence he is passing that to the police. I am sure he has uncovered the most grievous harm and talked to victims of it, and we want to make sure that they see the Government are acting in the most appropriate way.

My thoughts are with the victims of the despicable grooming gangs. Does my hon. Friend agree that, despite the numerous actions that this Government have taken to protect women and girls, hon. Members sometimes use language, both inside and outside the House, that allows the spread online of tropes about my party and hon. Members on this side that—I speak from personal experience here—have real world implications? Those online tropes affect the behaviour of people in the real world. Does she agree that it is incumbent on right hon. and hon. Members, both inside and outside the House, to use temperate language? Opposition is needed and expected, but politicising such an important issue can create real risks for hon. Members and others in the real world.

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. We all have a duty to try to use language in a way that does not incite hatred and division. Of course, there are very strong feelings around this area in particular, because the crimes are so heinous and there was so much that was wrong about the way that the state, in all its forms, responded to those crimes. I understand the anger, but I urge all hon. Members to be careful with their language. We have all seen, in real life, the impact of what we are seeing online. That can be very scary and very dangerous, so I urge everybody to treat this issue with the respect it deserves.

I thank the Minister very much for her encouraging answers, and put on record that no one doubts her commitment to delivering justice. We thank her for it. What urgent steps will the Government take to action the recommendations on the mandatory ethnicity recording of offenders and the deportation of all foreign national perpetrators, and those relating to the full institutional failures by the police, the social services, local authorities and the NHS? Will she follow through with a national public inquiry, with subpoena powers?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. On ethnicity, we will legislate in the police reform Bill, which will come before Parliament shortly, to ensure ethnicity is recorded in the way that I think everyone in this House wants. He will know that we have increased very substantially the number of foreign national offenders being deported. Since the previous Government, there has been a big increase. That is quite right, and we will continue with that. We will continue to do the work across all our Departments to make sure that people are acting in the way that they should. There is a whole raft of work under way across multiple Departments to make sure of that.