00:00The government has launched a public inquiry into the grooming gang scandal in England
00:05and Wales, coinciding with the publication of a review by Baroness Louise Casey.
00:10The Prime Minister commissioned Baroness Casey, seen here in the middle, to carry out an audit
00:15into the nature and scale of child sexual abuse in January, following months of pressure
00:20from his political opponents and even tech billionaire Elon Musk.
00:25Reports of systematic child abuse by grooming gangs began in 2000, but it wasn't until
00:30a major police investigation in Rotherham in 2009 that the scale of the abuse began to
00:36emerge.
00:37Between then and 2022, there were shocking disclosures of gang-led child grooming in dozens of other
00:43English towns and cities, including Rochdale, Oxford, Derby and Oldham.
00:48The government had initially dismissed calls because the scandal in Rotherham had already
00:52been examined over seven years by Professor Alexis Jay, who had come up with 20 recommendations
00:59in 2022.
01:00There have also been other local inquiries into grooming gangs.
01:04The Prime Minister called for nine inquiries in the last parliament.
01:07Does he not see that by resisting this one, people will start to worry about a cover-up?
01:12We already know what the major flaws are.
01:15And my argument is we should get on with that action.
01:19Labour has accused the Conservatives of failing to act on Professor Jay's recommendations whilst
01:24they were in government.
01:26They wasted precious time and now are just using this to score political points.
01:31We're not interested in that.
01:32We are prioritising action now to ensure that we get truth and justice for the survivors and
01:39victims of these horrific grooming gangs.
01:43However, the government has now changed its mind, following Baroness Casey's recommendation
01:47that a national inquiry be held.
01:49Well, I think this inquiry has to be time limited.
01:52It can't last for too long.
01:53I think one or two years is as long as it should last for.
01:56And I think prosecutions should happen in parallel.
02:00Prosecutions of perpetrators who carried out these disgusting crimes, but also prosecutions
02:04for those people in positions of authority, senior police officers, local authority leaders,
02:09who deliberately covered up these crimes only because the perpetrators were mainly of Pakistani
02:15heritage.
02:16And these people were more interested in so-called race relations than they were about protecting
02:20young girls.
02:21Baroness Casey's review explicitly links the grooming gang issue to men of Pakistani origin,
02:28and says people were ignored for the fear of racism.
02:30Baroness Casey's review also identifies prosecutions and investigations into perpetrators who are
02:37white, British, European, African or Middle Eastern, just as Alexis Jay's inquiry concluded
02:44that all ethnicities and communities were involved in appalling child abuse crimes.
02:49So, to provide accurate information to help tackle serious crimes, we will make it a formal
02:54requirement for the first time to collect both ethnicity and nationality data for all
03:00cases of child sexual abuse and exploitation.
03:04Chantelle was groomed by a British-Asian gang whilst she was in care.
03:08She says more needs to be done to implement the findings of existing inquiries.
03:12Listen to what we are all saying.
03:16Listen to the reports they've already done.
03:19Look into the inquiries they've already done.
03:22Like, they're only going to release and tell you so much anyway.
03:26Jonathan Bridge has been representing victims of grooming gangs for years.
03:31He says clients of his are sceptical about what an additional inquiry will achieve.
03:35There are more powers with a statutory inquiry to force people to give evidence, but I still
03:40can't see really what we're going to learn that we don't already know.
03:43We've had countless cases where we've recovered damages for clients because they've been
03:47failed by local authorities.
03:47MPs will question whether a national inquiry will be enough to finally deliver justice.
03:55The last thing victims will want to see is further delays to that process.
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