Watch GB News National Reporter Charlie Peters’s reaction in full as he announces Keir Starmer’s plan to launch a national statutory inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal.“This channel has found consistent evidence of a nationwide cover-up”, he tells People’s Channel viewers.“This scandal has not gone away and Keir Starmer’s announcement today is a dramatic reversal of his position in January.“The Government said local inquiries were enough, but since then there has been more pressure. In April, after they announced those inquiries, the Conservatives said they had been watered down after Labour said they would be locally led.“We don’t know if that is still the position, but we know there will be a judge-led inquiry, being led with statutory powers.”WATCH THE CLIP IN FULL ABOVE
00:00The Prime Minister, Sakhir Starmer, has ordered a full-scale national inquiry into the grooming gang scandal.
00:08Announcing it on his way to Canada, the Prime Minister has made a dramatic reversal with his government's position at the start of this year
00:16and will now accept the prime recommendation of Baroness Casey from her review, her national audit, ordered by the government earlier this year.
00:25Now, crucially, the Prime Minister said that the inquiry will be statutory, which will mean that it will have powers to compel witnesses to give evidence and are independent of government.
00:36The inquiry will be similar in terms of powers to compel witnesses to the ongoing inquiry into the Post Office Horizon scandal, which has seen executives and ministers grilled in front of TV cameras.
00:47Many of the cases in this grooming gang scandal involve Pakistani heritage men raping white children, predominantly girls.
00:56Concerns about the grooming gang scandal have been highlighted repeatedly by GB News since we were founded four years ago today.
01:04Now, this inquiry will, according to reports, examine the issue of perpetrators' race and allegations of a cover-up by authorities who were not keen to inflame racial tensions.
01:15Now, Sir Keir Starmer has made this announcement while speaking to political journalists en route to the G7 meeting of world leaders in Canada.
01:23Mr Starmer said that he had asked Casey's position when she started the audit in January was that there was not a real need for a national inquiry over and above what was going on.
01:35The Prime Minister said she has looked at the material she has and she has come to the view that there should be a national inquiry on the basis of what she has seen.
01:45He said, I have read every single word of her report and I am going to accept her recommendation.
01:52That is the right thing to do on the basis of what she has put in her audit.
01:57Now, the Prime Minister also said that I asked her to do that job to double check on this.
02:02She has done that job for me and having read her report, I respect her in any event.
02:07The Prime Minister said, I shall now implement her recommendations.
02:11Now, Sir Keir Starmer said that the national inquiry would be statutory under the Inquiries Act.
02:16That will take a bit of time to sort out exactly how that works and we will set that out in an orderly way.
02:22Now, Mr Starmer's announcement has come after GB News revealed in 2023 that over 50 different towns and cities have been affected by this national scandal.
02:35Now, this channel has repeatedly championed survivors' voices, the voices of victims, their families and the campaigners who have promoted their cause for many years.
02:46And, Alex, I'm just going to go back to the start of this scandal.
02:50Now, reports of this sort of abuse occurred in the northwest of England from the 1960s and 1970s.
02:58But it wasn't until the 2000s when the Labour MP Anne Cryer, who was the MP for Keithley, raised concerns about schoolgirls being targeted outside school gates, that there was a first national reckoning with this issue.
03:13Now, that Labour MP was attacked by her own party and government.
03:18She was derided as a racist and the story fell silent.
03:23It was revived by a reporter at the Times called Andrew Norfolk, who was investigating crimes that were raised to him in the South Yorkshire town of Rotherham.
03:33His reporting led to an independent government-led and authorised inquiry, which was announced by Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council and was returned in 2014.
03:45That report by Professor Alexis Jay, a social worker, found that over 1,400 children had been abused in the town by these predominantly Pakistani gangs from 1997 to 2013.
03:59Now, that report sent shockwaves around the country and, indeed, around the world.
04:04And then another key voice was asked to come forward and make a report.
04:09Baroness Louise Casey, in 2015, filed a report into Rotherham Council, finding that the cover-up there was endemic.
04:17The entire council leadership had to resign.
04:20In the coming years, there were more reports.
04:22The Greater Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham, launched a reassurance review in the Greater Manchester Combined Authority area, first looking at Rochdale and also at Oldham.
04:35He launched those reports after a whistleblower called Maggie Oliver from Greater Manchester Police, who had resigned as a detective constable to make some allegations and reports, came forward with shocking, shocking reviews.
04:48Now, those reports also found a similar pattern of abuse that was found in Rotherham.
04:55They have already published.
04:56And we also then had similar reports in Telford, in West Mercia.
05:01Now, the Telford Review, published in 2022, found that thousands of children had been abused in that town for several decades.
05:09At the same time, Professor Alexis Jay, who did the original Rotherham report, then put forward her investigation in the Independent Inquiry to Child Sexual Abuse.
05:19That also returned in 2022.
05:22But many survivors and campaigners said that that review and that investigation did not look at the grooming gang scandal properly.
05:30It was over 500 pages long, but it mentioned Rotherham just once.
05:33In the grooming gang section of that report was a subsection of a sub-report on organised networks.
05:39It looked at six areas, including Warwickshire and St Helens.
05:44None of those areas had an investigation or a crime type of a pattern that we had seen in Rotherham, in Telford, in Rochdale and in Oldham.
05:55So many thought that that investigation was insufficient for looking at the grooming gang scandal.
06:00Since then, GB News and many other outlets have been investigating this scandal.
06:05As I said, we found over 50 different towns and cities affected by this abuse for the last 30 years.
06:12In analysis shared by this broadcaster last month, we found that there had been 400 successful prosecutions since 2000.
06:20But we also found that there had been just one deportation since 2011.
06:25We also found that there were widespread trafficking and organised crime networks stretching all the way from Plymouth to Glasgow.
06:32Now, since Baroness Louise Casey had her review launched in January, this channel has found consistent evidence of a nationwide cover-up.
06:41We have found new allegations from Oldham, new allegations from Telford.
06:44We have spoken to a retired police detective inspector from Bradford who found that he was threatened with arrest when he raised concerns about abuse in that West Yorkshire town.
06:57This scandal has not gone away.
06:59And Sir Keir Starmer's announcement today is a dramatic reversal of his position since January.
07:04You'll remember that when pressure erupted on this issue, it was because GB News revealed that the government had rejected a request from Oldham Council for a government-led independent inquiry.
07:16They felt that the previous independent report was not enough.
07:21The inquiry that was requested was rejected.
07:24And when we revealed that, it sparked widespread public outrage.
07:28Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, shared our reporting and also shared some extremely sharp and negative commentary of the government,
07:37commentary that has been disparaged widely across all sides of the political divide.
07:43But it did start a national conversation.
07:46It led to Sir Keir Starmer announcing that they would have five local inquiries.
07:52The government said that local inquiries were enough, that in Telford, it made situations work.
07:57In Telford, there was justice and in Telford, things had changed.
08:02But since then, there has been more pressure, as I've said.
08:05In April, months on after they announced those local inquiries,
08:09the Home Secretary of Et Cooper and the Safeguarding Minister, Jess Phillips, made an update to that announcement.
08:15The Conservatives said that that announcement in January had been watered down
08:19because the locally-led inquiries were now going to be locally-led work.
08:24They said that still five inquiries would happen, but they couldn't say where they would be.
08:31Since then, the Home Office has consistently told GB News that there will be at least five inquiries.
08:36We don't know if that is still the position.
08:38We do know now there will be a judge-led national inquiry into the grooming gang scandal being led with statutory powers.
08:46We do know now there will be a judge-led national inquiry into the
