A national inquiry into child sexual exploitation by grooming gangs has announced its first areas of investigation: London, Oldham, Bradford, and Keighley. The £65 million probe aims to understand how these gangs operated and how public institutions, including police, councils, health services, social care, and schools, responded to the abuse.
Focus of the Inquiry
The inquiry, led by former children's commissioner for England Anne Longfield, will have legal powers to compel witnesses and request documents. Its mandate includes determining why catastrophic failures of the state have occurred and continue to occur, and to hold accountable the institutions and individuals that failed victims. National accountability hearings are slated to begin before the end of the year. Baroness Longfield stated that the inquiry intends to establish what national institutions and services should have done to implement previous recommendations, many of which have gone unimplemented over the past two decades, and to assess any progress made.
The inquiry's terms of reference, published in March, indicate it will investigate how grooming gangs operated and how institutions responded to the abuse. It is also set to examine why children were often disbelieved, dismissed, or blamed for their own abuse. The inquiry will directly address whether the ethnicity, culture, or religion of perpetrators or victims influenced offending patterns and institutional responses, issues that previous reviews have not tackled.
Referrals and Delays
Any evidence of criminal conduct by professionals will be referred to Operation Beaconport, a national police operation launched last year to review hundreds of previously closed investigations. The inquiry is expected to conclude by March 2029.
Concerns have been raised regarding the inquiry's scope, with some victim representatives and politicians questioning the limitation to just five initial areas and the time taken for the inquiry to commence. There are also concerns about potential bias due to the involvement of the Home Office in selecting examination locations.
Furthermore, the inquiry risks being hampered by evidence gaps. MPs have expressed fears that records may have been destroyed due to significant delays by the Home Office in ordering their preservation. A letter in March from Dame Karen Bradley, chair of the home affairs select committee, to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, highlighted that the Home Office took seven months to instruct relevant agencies to retain material related to grooming gangs. This delay, which began after Baroness Casey of Blackstock's national audit in June, could mean that relevant documents have already been lost.