Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has told MPs the Government supports Baroness Louise Casey’s call for a full national inquiry into grooming gangs to ensure lessons are learned
A “damning” report into grooming gangs found the UK has “lost more than a decade” in protecting children, Yvette Cooper has said.
The Home Secretary told MPs “vile” abusers will have “nowhere to hide” as she vowed to finally bring hundreds of evil predators to justice. She told the Commons the Government will bring in a string of new laws after Baroness Louise Casey unearthed chilling failures.
In a report published this afternoon, Baroness Casey called for a full national inquiry to highlight the harrowing abuse suffered by hundreds of children, and ensure it never happens again. Ms Cooper said: “We have lost more than a decade. That must end now.”
The Home Secretary told MPs: “The sexual exploitation of children by grooming gangs is one of the most horrific crimes. Children as young as 10 plied with drugs and alcohol, brutally raped by gangs of men and disgracefully let down again and again by the authorities who were meant to protect them and keep them safe.
“And these despicable crimes have caused the most unimaginable harm to victims, victims and survivors throughout their lives.” She said victims are owed an apology for the years of failure.
The Home Secretary said the law will be changed to ensure that adult men who have sex with under-16s will be charged with rape. It comes after the report found many face lesser charges due to a lack of legal clarity.
She added that victims who were convicted of child prostitution offences while their rapists walked free will have the offences torn up. Ms Cooper added that laws would be toughened up to ensure those who carry out sickening abuse will be barred from claiming asylum in the UK.
Ms Cooper said she had asked police chiefs to look into the number of cases dropped with no further action. The Home Secretary said: “More than 800 cases have now been identified for formal review, and I expect that figure to rise above 1,000 in the coming weeks. “
Baroness Casey’s report found there were “disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds” among suspects of group-based child sexual exploitation. But the report said data around the ethnicity of offenders is unclear.
It states: “Despite reviews, reports and inquiries raising questions about men from Asian or Pakistani backgrounds grooming and sexually exploiting young White girls, the system has consistently failed to fully acknowledge this or collect accurate data so it can be examined effectively.
“Instead, flawed data is used repeatedly to dismiss claims about ‘Asian grooming gangs’ as sensationalised, biased or untrue. This does a disservice to victims and indeed all law-abiding people in Asian communities and plays into the hands of those who want to exploit it to sow division.”
At the weekend Keir Starmer committed to a statutory inquiry into the scandal of sexual exploitation of young girls in a number of English towns. Local authorities and institutions that failed hundreds of victims will be held to account through a probe with the power to haul in witnesses.
Earlier it was confirmed that that inquiry will see more than 800 cold cases followed up on by the National Crime Agency(NCA). The inquiry will build on the seven-year national inquiry by Professor Alexis Jay.
A No10 spokesman said: “It will be a full statutory inquiry. What this inquiry will do is build on the work carried out by Alexis Jay and her independent inquiry to child sexual abuse, but look specifically at how young girls were failed so badly by different agencies on a local level, strengthening the commitment we made at the start of this year to carry out locally-led inquiries.
“By setting up a new inquiry under the inquiries act with statutory powers to compel witnesses, the local authorities and institutions who fail to act to protect young people will not be able to hide and will finally be held to account for their action.”
This morning the MP for Rotherham said she was initially reluctant about another grooming gangs inquiry – but said she now supports it after listening to the public. Sarah Champion told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme: “The thought of having another filled me with horror, and I was reluctant, but when I realised the overwhelming public concern, there’s a real sense justice has not been handed out fairly and there has been a cover-up and intense frustration that there are still victims and survivors who haven’t received justice.”
She added that the biggest failing was that “no-one has joined the dots up” when it came to grooming gangs of a Pakistani heritage. Are there any links between those different groups and gangs? Personally, I think it’s highly likely that there will be,” she said.
However Nazir Afzal, who was chief crown prosecutor for the North West from 2011 to 2015, told the Today programme he had “pragmatic doubts” about the new national inquiry. Mr Afzal said: “Only criminal investigations can bring real accountability. That’s what needs to happen. Not just for those who offended, but also those who stood by and didn’t do what they were meant to do,” he said.
“Unfortunately my experience with national inquiries is that they take forever and don’t deliver accountability.”