Televise grooming gang inquiry given public interest, Labour peer urges
Speaking in Parliament, the Muslim Labour peer again apologised for the crimes carried out by 'wicked, wicked men' and said many in her community felt 'deeply ashamed'.
Responding, Home Office minister Lord Hanson of Flint also said he would like to see the inquiry 'speeded up', but this would be subject to discussion with the chairperson, which the Government was looking to swiftly recruit.
The full-scale investigation was announced by the Prime Minister following a major review by Baroness Casey into grooming gangs, leading to accusations of a U-turn by Tory critics.
Her report, published on Monday, found the ethnicity of perpetrators had been 'shied away from', with data not recorded for two-thirds of offenders.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper claimed officials had dodged the issue of ethnicity among the groups of sex offenders for fear of being called racist, even though available data showed suspects were disproportionately likely to be Asian men.
Labour peer and broadcaster Baroness Hazarika was previously a political adviser to former prime minister Gordon Brown, Baroness Harman and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband (Alamy/PA)
Lord Hanson told peers on Wednesday: 'The Government is determined to root out the horrific crimes of grooming gangs and secure justice for victims.'
He pointed out all 12 recommendations made by Lady Casey had been accepted by the administration, including the establishment of a national probe.
The minister added: 'The inquiry will be time limited, have statutory powers to direct targeted investigations into local areas with the aim of holding institutions to account for current and historic failures in their response to group-based child sexual exploitation.'
Lady Hazarika said: 'I welcome this inquiry. And I just wanted to say that, as a Muslim woman, I want to profoundly apologise for what these wicked, wicked men have done to white working class girls.
'Many of us feel deeply ashamed, and let's not call them grooming gangs. These are rape gangs which operated on an industrial level.
'I hope the inquiry will also hear the voices of Muslim girls who were also abused by these animals.'
She added: 'The minister talks about a time limit. Could the inquiry be capped at two years because justice delayed is justice denied?
'Given the public interest, can this inquiry be televised?
'And finally, given the incredible work that Baroness Casey has done, can she be appointed the chair? Because in a world of appalling systemic failure, she is the only public figure that many victims trust.'
Lord Hanson said: 'She asks about the timescale for the inquiry, Baroness Casey has indicated it would be around three years. I would like to see it speeded up, but we have to discuss that matter with the potential chair of the inquiry.
'And the Government intends to try to recruit the potential chair of the inquiry as a matter of some speed, and we are in the process of doing that now.
'Baroness Casey herself is currently now going to be engaged in a further report, but we will appoint a chair as soon as possible.'
He added: 'As to the matter of televising the proceedings, again if she will bear with me, that again will be a matter of discussion with the chair to determine.
'We want to ensure that we take action speedily on this issue.'
He pointed out other recommendation made by Lady Casey would be implemented 'in very short order'.
These included making it mandatory to collect ethnicity and nationality data of all suspects in child sexual abuse cases, a change in the law so that all adult sex with under-16s was considered rape, and a review of the criminal records of exploitation victims.
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Spectator
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The right rape gang inquiry
Another inquiry into child sexual abuse, another minister insisting that this time it will be different. Yvette Cooper promises arrests, reviews, a new statutory commission and the largest ever national operation against grooming gangs. But for the victims there is only one question that matters: what will this new inquiry do that the last one didn't? The last one, of course, was IICSA: the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, led by Professor Alexis Jay. It took seven years, £180 million and 15 separate investigations to complete. And yet for survivors and campaigners, the abiding feeling at the end of it all was futility. IICSA had all the grandeur of a public reckoning but little of the justice. It was supposed to examine how institutions failed victims. Instead, it often resembled a procedural exercise: detailed, solemn, but ultimately toothless. Grooming gangs – the most politically explosive scandal of all – were only one part of the report, and not even the most central part. It's worth remembering what IICSA didn't do. It didn't summon senior officials under oath from the councils and police forces most complicit in cover-ups. It didn't re-open the Rotherham files or interrogate why officers in Rochdale turned a blind eye. It didn't assign blame. No one was sacked or prosecuted. And the abuse of white working-class girls by Pakistani men has continued. What went wrong? In part, the answer lies in IICSA's vastness. It was tasked with investigating abuse 'in any institution'. It tried to do everything, and so did very little. Dame Lowell Goddard, its first substantive chair, resigned after a year, amid press reports alleging she had in private connected paedophilia in Britain to the prevalence of 'Asian men'. Although she denied this, some commentators suggested she was pushed out of her position because she was willing to pursue the racial aspect of the scandal too vigorously for the Establishment's taste. When Professor Jay took over, the inquiry quickly became a compromise. Less testimony under oath, more closed sessions. More 'survivor forums' in place of public hearings. The kind of scrutiny that might have terrified local councillors or police officers – some of whom we now know were complicit – never materialised. Jay was praised for her 2014 report into Rotherham, but under her leadership IICSA avoided detailed scrutiny of grooming gangs and limited the use of public hearings or sworn testimony. Instead we got another nod to 'institutional failure', another recommendation for a new 'Minister for Children'. It was bureaucratic musical chairs, the default response of the British state when it is confronted with a horror it would rather avoid. Then, in January, Baroness Casey, a former Victims' Commissioner, was commissioned by the Home Secretary to carry out a rapid national audit into grooming gangs. Her findings included a recommendation to hold a full national inquiry, which was duly announced by Cooper on Monday. Her report did what IICSA refused to: it focused on the racial dimension and acknowledged institutional evasion. Casey confirms that Pakistani men are disproportionately represented among grooming gang offenders, and that many local agencies avoided confronting the issue for fear of being called racist. For all the praise her audit has earned, it still falls short. It is full of faddish red herrings about the 'adultification' of adolescent girls. Did the perpetrators target pubescent white girls because they were subconsciously 'adultifying' them? Of course not. 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Instead, it will look like accountability in parts of the country which we know to be afflicted by racialised rape gangs. Take Bradford. It has never had a full public inquiry, yet its story is one of the most shocking. Fiona Goddard, a survivor, says she was raped by more than 50 men while living in a council–run children's home. David Greenwood, the solicitor who played a key role in exposing Rotherham, believes Bradford could be worse still. Based on safeguarding statistics, he estimates up to 72,000 children may have been at risk of exploitation there since 1996. That figure seems implausible until you learn that in just eight months, 2,500 children were classed as 'at risk' by local authorities. Yet Bradford's institutions resist scrutiny. 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