Son of MP who first highlighted Bradford grooming gangs accuses council of 'cover up'

ITV News

30-07-2025

The son of a former MP who first raised concerns about Pakistani grooming gangs in West Yorkshire more than 20 years ago has accused Bradford Council of a "cover up" over the issue.
John Cryer, an ex-MP who now sits in the House of Lords, said the authorities dismissed his mother Ann Cryer when she raised claims of child sexual exploitation in Keighley as early as 2002.
Ms Cryer was Labour MP for Keighley when she was approached by seven mothers who said their daughters were being systematically exploited, drugged and raped by men in the town.
But when she raised the issue with West Yorkshire Police and Bradford Council, Mr Cryer said her concerns were disputed.
"The council just wanted to ignore it, pretend that it wasn't happening," he said. "Their reaction was this was a myth she shouldn't have been perpetuating.
"With the police, they took the view that because they couldn't get the girls to testify, they didn't have the evidence. So their position is more of a sustainable one."
He added: "There has never been an independent inquiry into Bradford and I am absolutely certain there has been a cover up on a local level."
Despite complaints about grooming in the Bradford area, neighbouring Rotherham became the focus of the debate about child sexual exploitation after the first convictions in 2010.
An inquiry into grooming in the South Yorkshire town revealed an estimated 1,400 girls were exploited by gangs of predominantly British-Pakistani men.
Mr Cryer said the inquiry, by Prof Alexis Jay, left his mother feeling "vindicated".
"The victims were always the first thing in her mind," he said.
"And this was first and foremost for them. But I remember having conversations with her in the years after and she would say things like 'the people who were slagging me off, who were having a go at me about this, funny how they've all gone quiet'."
In recent years, dozens of men in Bradford have been convicted of child sex offences.
There are now calls for the city to face similar scrutiny to Rotherham as part of a nationwide inquiry into grooming gangs announced by the prime minister in June.
In a report published last month, Baroness Casey said the ethnicity of perpetrators had been "shied away from", with data not recorded for two-thirds of offenders.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said officials had dodged the issue of sex offenders' ethnicity for fear of being called racist.
Mr Cryer said: "That inquiry needs to get underway. This has been in gestation for quite a few weeks and they need to get on with it.
"It wouldn't surprise me if one of the worst places turns out to be Bradford and it needs to be examined as part of this inquiry."
There have been claims that the number of victims in Bradford could turn out to be several thousand.
The current Keighley MP, Conservative Robbie Moore, said he believed the scale of the issue would "dwarf" that of Rotherham as well as other towns like Rochdale, Telford and Oldham where there have been inquiries.
"Indeed when you look at those inquiries they reference young children being trafficked through Bradford," he said.
"This is about right and wrong. We need to make sure survivors and victims and their families are reassured that the state... is doing their job as they should be and at the moment there is a huge degree of uncertainty around that."
In a statement Bradford Council leader Susan Hinchcliffe said more than 50 offenders had been jailed in Bradford over grooming.
She added: 'John refers to a time before the great majority of councillors in Bradford district were elected. We will ask John if he is willing to be connected with the authorities so that he can relate his longer memory of events to them directly.
"We've already said to the current Home Secretary that Bradford is willing to participate in the national inquiry. We await the terms of that inquiry and have asked for an early meeting with the Commissioner once appointed.'
A West Yorkshire Police spokesperson admitted there had been "failings in the past".
They added: 'Since the publication of the Jay report in 2014, West Yorkshire Police has taken a proactive stance in exploring previous incidents and disclosures relating to non-recent group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse.
'This work has been underway over the past decade, resulting in hundreds of perpetrators now serving lengthy prison sentences totalling thousands of years. Many investigations are still underway, with trials scheduled throughout 2025 and 2026. "