a day ago
This must end the grooming cover-up for good
For decades, officials and politicians have systematically turned a blind eye to the horrific grooming gangs operating across Britain. It is therefore welcome that after months of pressure, Sir Keir Starmer has felt forced to announce a national inquiry into the full extent of the scandal. It is also long overdue.
A culture of cover-ups and dismissive attitudes have concealed the true scale of offending from the public, extending from local council officials and police officers fearful of accusations of racism to national politicians like Lucy Powell, who in May felt able to call references to the scandal a 'dog whistle'.
Even in January, when Elon Musk and others brought renewed focus to the issue on social media, Sir Keir Starmer's first instinct was to kick the issue into the long grass, commissioning a fresh review from Baroness Louise Casey and resisting calls for a full national inquiry.
It is hard not to suspect – as Sir Trevor Phillips, former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, has claimed – that Sir Keir's reluctance was 'political', motivated by the extreme discomfort that a full inquiry will bring to the Labour party.
Some of the highest profile scandals took place under the view of Labour councils, amid Pakistani-heritage communities seen as reliable Labour voters, and it is likely that any full inquiry will bring to light yet more damning evidence of the party's effective complicity.
No matter how awkward, however, the inquiry must be given the freedom to ask all necessary questions. Those reviews and reports which have taken place to date have found that officials up and down the country felt under pressure to put 'community cohesion' ahead of the need to save children from sexual abuse. It is likely, moreover, that many in government will still be susceptible to this pressure, and wish to ensure that any inquiry is sufficiently sanitised to be 'safe' for public release.
They must not get their way. There can be no more cover-ups. The inquiry must be broad enough to capture the full extent of offending, hold to account those politicians and officials who let the scandal go on, and given the resources and a timetable that brings the truth to light rapidly rather than dragging as the Covid Inquiry has.
The grooming gangs scandal lay in plain sight for decades. Official inaction, through inertia and through deliberate choices to turn a blind eye, allowed abuse to continue unchecked. This cover-up must end once and for all, the officials and criminals responsible brought to justice, and the unvarnished truth laid before the country, no matter how damaging to our national self-image it may be.
