The UK government has appointed former children’s commissioner Baroness Anne Longfield to chair the long-delayed national inquiry into grooming gangs.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced the decision, pledging that the investigation will finally move forward after months of chaos.
The inquiry will consist of local investigations, backed by full statutory powers, allowing witnesses to be compelled to give evidence. These probes will examine
the background of offenders, including their ethnicity and religion, and whether the authorities failed to properly investigate what happened out of a misplaced desire to protect community cohesion.
Mahmood confirmed a three-year time limit and a £65 million (€74 million) budget, emphasizing the urgency. She condemned past failures, noting children had been subjected to
beatings and gang rapes, many contracted sexually transmitted infections, some were forced to have abortions, [while] some in positions of power turned a blind eye to the horror, even covered it up.
The inquiry follows damaging revelations regarding its troubled start. Earlier this year, survivors Fiona Goddard and Ellie Reynolds quit the liaison panel, accusing officials of pushing to downplay the ethnicity and religious background of the predominantly Pakistani heritage perpetrators in order to preserve ‘community relations.’
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp called on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to apologize for the earlier handling of the inquiry, saying: “The truth is, this should not have taken several months and the threat of a vote in parliament to agree to this inquiry in the first place, and it should not have taken another six months to appoint a chair,” before adding
The fact is, these crimes were deliberately covered up by those in authority who were more interested in so-called community relations, and in avoiding being called racist, than they were in protecting young girls.
