00:00It was remarkable, really, and in lots of ways, good. We welcome, and I welcome, and
00:06victims and survivors very much welcome the news that she had to bring us, but it was
00:11amazing to hear her say it just a few weeks and months after the government had been saying
00:16the opposite.
00:17Well, it is extraordinary, isn't it? Because when people were calling for an investigation
00:22in January, they were far right, and now it's government policy. I mean, this seems to be
00:28a little inconsistent, to say the least.
00:33To say the very least, and there are specific Members of Parliament, Sean Davies today, who
00:40is now the Member of Parliament for Telford, who previously wrote a letter to previous
00:45Conservative government ministers, saying to them, there's nothing to see here, please
00:50don't hold an inquiry in Telford, today saying that, effectively, he'd been calling for this
00:56all along. Now, we welcome the government's change of heart, but that's not true.
01:01And it's really important that we think about the victims of this, who have been so
01:05badly treated, and this comes out in the Casey report, that they were called child
01:10prostitutes, some of them have been prosecuted for offences. Doesn't it need to be at the
01:14forefront of any report, how things can be put right for those who suffered from the
01:20rape gangs? Absolutely. And that's why it's so important that the government is honest
01:28about what they have been saying, and why I think that the Prime Minister and the Home
01:32Secretary should explain why they have changed their minds. These victims and survivors have,
01:36for years, and in some cases decades, heard people rubbish what they had to say, make it seem like
01:44they were liars, like exactly as you say, that some of these victims were child prostitutes,
01:50that they were doing things that they wanted to do. And after all of this time of being
01:55disbelieved, if people have changed their minds, that is wonderful, but to do so credibly,
02:01they need to explain why, and they need to give us the details of this inquiry. Who's going to lead
02:05it? Where exactly will it cover? They say it's going to be national, but the report itself looks
02:09like it might actually be a coordination of local inquiries. We need to see this information
02:15for what the government is saying to be credible. And what do you think it says about the culture
02:20of the nation, that there was such a desire to cover this up in so many different towns
02:27across the country? Unfortunately, I think, and sadly, I think it says something quite dark
02:37about where we've ended up in Britain on a few different issues, that so many people were
02:45more comfortable aiding and abetting, facilitating and covering up mass child rape than they were
02:53of being accused of being racist. And we know that that's the case. That is well documented.
02:58There are documents, there are emails that people wrote at the time. West Midlands police,
03:02back in 2010, suppressed a report saying that there were Asian Pakistani men who were grooming
03:09girls outside care homes, outside the gates of playgrounds and schools. And we know from what
03:16people said at the time that that report was suppressed because people were worried about
03:20inflaming community tensions. And they were more worried about that than they were about our
03:25children.
03:25And did that go all the way through? Because we were in government at the time, not necessarily
03:31either of us personally, but the Conservatives from 2010 to 2024. Were we part of this concern
03:38of not wanting to inflame racial tension? Or did we simply not know? Was it ignorance? Or was
03:45it being part of an unsatisfactory culture?
03:47As you say, I wasn't a member of parliament then. So the truthful answer is, I don't know. But if I
03:55were to guess, I would say, I would say it's probably a little bit of both. It's human nature not to look
04:01straight at things that you find difficult or uncomfortable. But there were definitely brave
04:06people in the last government. Suella Bravman, the former Home Secretary, started the Grooming Gangs
04:11Task Force. She spoke out about this issue quite a lot and was at the time, you know, rubbished and
04:17ridiculed. So it's amazing to see how far we've come.
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