The Government have announced a National Inquiry into Grooming Gangs

The Prime Minister has announced that there will be a full national statutory inquiry into grooming gangs after accepting the recommendations of a report by Baroness Louise Casey on the data and evidence on “the nature and scale of group-based child sexual abuse.” 

Yesterday, the Home Secretary made a statement in the House of Commons on the Government’s response to the report of Baroness Casey and made a commitment to implement all the recommendations.

Baroness Casey’s report makes 12 recommendations:

1. A change in the law so that adults who intentionally penetrate a child under the age of 16 will receive mandatory charge of rape.
2. A national police operation and national inquiry, coordinating a series of targeted investigations should be launched into child sexual exploitation in England and Wales.
3. Review of the criminal convictions of victims of child sexual exploitation. Disregard any convictions where the Government finds victims were criminalised instead of protected.
4. The Government should make mandatory the collection of ethnicity and nationality data for all suspects in child sexual abuse and criminal exploitation cases and work with the police to improve the collection of ethnicity data for victims.
5. Mandatory sharing of information should be enforced between all statutory safeguarding partners in cases of child sexual abuse and exploitation.
6. The Department of Education should improve opportunities for agencies to share information about children at risk of child sexual abuse.
7. Police information systems should be upgraded.
8. CSE investigations should be approached like serious and organised crime.
9. An urgent review of child protection data.
10.  The Government should commission research into the drivers of group based CSE.
11.  The Department for Transport should legislate to tackle the inconsistent standards of taxi and private hire vehicle driver licensing.
12. The Government should commit to dully resourcing the implementation of these recommendations.

When questioned Yvette Cooper confirmed that the national inquiry should take 3 years to conclude, no time limits have been placed on the other recommendations.

This is clearly a comprehensive report which has levelled criticism on the Government. A national inquiry was recommended by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in 2022 and the decision to hold an inquiry should have been made months ago. 

Survivors of sexual abuse have been fighting for this inquiry for many years. Whilst we welcome this inquiry and the implementation of the other recommendations from Casey’s report, we feel that there must be a real commitment for change, as many survivors have already shared their experiences. A reasonable time for these recommendations must be stated and adhered to.

This inquiry must not be an exercise of gathering evidence and producing recommendations from which no real action is taken.

A national inquiry into child grooming gangs was only one of the recommendations of IICSA and we would continue to urge the Government to implement all the recommendations, including a national redress scheme and reforming the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority scheme.