Michael Gove: Whitehall officials tried to suppress grooming gangs scandal

Telegraph

5 hours ago

Lord Gove has claimed that Whitehall officials tried to suppress details of the grooming gangs scandal.
The former Cabinet minister said he overruled government and council officials who were seeking to block the publication of information about a victim in Rotherham.
As the then education secretary, he said he rejected the attempted legal action on the basis that it was better to tell 'the truth'.
Lord Gove also warned that the proposed structure of a new national inquiry into the scandal might limit its ability to scrutinise the failings of police and government at a national level.
His comments, made on GB News, come days after the publication of a report by Baroness Casey which found that police and councils avoided pursuing child sex grooming gangs for fear of being viewed as racist.
Even though there was evidence that a disproportionate number of Asian men had been responsible in such cases, their role was covered up by successive governments and authorities over concerns about raising community tensions, the review concluded.
Lord Gove recalled a request by Rotherham council to block an investigation by Andrew Norfolk, a reporter for The Times newspaper, into the scandal in 2011 by mounting a legal challenge against his attempt to publish details of a 'particularly tragic case'.
He said he had examined the material alongside Dominic Cummings, who was working in the Department for Education at the time, and some other staff. 'We contacted Rotherham council, and we said: 'Yes, we will intervene in this case, but on behalf of The Times, because it's absolutely vital that the truth be told',' Lord Gove said.
'It was absolutely the case that there were those who thought that it was appropriate for us not to intervene.
'So the documents in question revealed some details about one particular victim, and it was argued by the council, and by some officials who were sympathetic to their case, that revealing everything about the case might mean that other potential victims, other family members, might be adversely affected.
'And there was also an argument that the council itself was making improvements, and that as a result of these improvements being made, that would be imperilled potentially if there were adverse publicity.
'I think those arguments were made in good faith, but my view, Dominic Cummings's view, was that it was far more important that we told the truth.'
He said he adopted the same approach to serious case reviews into the failings of councils, which were heavily censored until he intervened to require 'the greatest possible transparency'.
Lord Gove said a proposed national inquiry into the scandal should be 'much more than what it might appear to be at the moment'.
'It appears that the Government may default and make the national inquiry simply a sort of umbrella for lots of specific local inquiries,' he said.
'There are as many as 50 towns and cities across the country in which these gangs have operated or continue to operate, there are failures in policing at a national level that need to be addressed. It is also the case that decisions made within the Home Office and other government departments do need to be scrutinised.'
He added: 'One of the things about this whole story, right from the very beginning, has been that there have been people who, for admittedly noble reasons, because they didn't want to see the details being exploited by the very far-Right, have tried to manage the information.'