The chair of the upcoming grooming gangs inquiry has vowed to “not flinch from uncomfortable truths” as she launches the terms of reference of the long-awaited review.
Baroness Anne Longfield, the former children’s commissioner, made the promise in her first statement since being appointed to run the statutory independent inquiry last December.
In it, she makes clear the inquiry will focus on sexual exploitation by grooming gangs, not other forms of sexual abuse such as individual, familial or institutional.
The inquiry will examine institutions such as police forces and local authorities that failed to protect children and whether “the ethnicity, culture, or religion of either perpetrators or victims influenced patterns of offending, and whether these factors shaped the institutional response”.
In what seems like a criticism of previous investigations, the inquiry team said: “These are questions that previous reviews chose not to address. This inquiry will not avoid them.”
Baroness Longfield added: “Children across England and Wales were – and still are – sexually abused and exploited by grooming gangs. Raped. Trafficked. Threatened into silence.
“That is not disputed. What has been disputed, what has been minimised, explained away, or buried for far too long, is why the institutions that exist to protect them so often chose not to act.”
The inquiry, which is expected to have offices in London, Leeds and Wales, will finish its work by March 2028 with a budget of £65m.
There are several headwinds the inquiry team is trying to face down: the fact the chair is not a judge; the previous squeamishness of others about ethnicity; and an overriding sense from survivors, who’ve already been badly failed by the state, that this will be another whitewash.
Over the last three months, the team has been meeting dozens of victims and survivors experiencing this scepticism and questions about whether it will make a difference.
This, they said, has helped determine the terms of reference, and the team has offered reassurance and promised to publish as they go so that institutions under investigation will have the evidence exposed when found. There is also a pledge to look back over 30 years – beginning in 1996.
It has promised to investigate how grooming gangs operated and were able to do so for so long, what police forces, social services, local authorities and schools knew, and what they did or didn’t do.
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While Baroness Longfield is not a judge, she will use some of her budget to employ legal assistance, and the Inquiry will have statutory powers which can force reluctant witnesses to give evidence.
There is an emphasis on the experience of the Baroness and her two panel members: Zoë Billingham, who has spent much of her career inspecting public services and Eleanor Kelly, the former Southwark chief executive who oversaw the response to the Grenfell disaster.
Baroness Longfield said: “Together, we bring decades of experience in protecting and promoting the interests of children, holding police forces and institutions to account, safeguarding vulnerable women and girls from violence and abuse, and providing strong local leadership in times of crisis.”
Alongside the national inquiry, there will be an unspecified number of local inquiries, each with a £5m budget. One will be in Oldham, and there has been local pressure for one in Bradford.
It was January last year when the government came under political pressure for this inquiry after a series of tweets by Elon Musk about grooming gangs in the UK. The prime minister ordered a rapid national audit but initially resisted a full national Inquiry.
Then, in June, Louise Casey’s audit found “ignorance, prejudice, and defensiveness contributed to a collective failure to protect children” and that data collection on ethnicity was flawed.
At this point, the government promised a full national statutory inquiry.
It took until October for two candidates for chair to be mooted, but both withdrew after a poor reaction from survivors, many of whom wanted a judge to lead it. Then, in December, Baroness Longfield was appointed.
In recent days, Conservative MP Robbie Moore has expressed concern that evidence may have been destroyed because of the length of time it took for the government to instruct institutions to preserve records.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Since Baroness Casey’s National Audit, we have worked across government to ensure records relevant to the draft Terms of Reference are appropriately retained by public sector organisations.”
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Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said: “The grooming gangs scandal is one of the darkest moments in our country’s history, where the most vulnerable people were abused and exploited at the hands of evil child rapists.
“The chair and I have agreed that the Inquiry will be laser-focused on grooming gangs and will explicitly examine the role of ethnicity, religion and culture of the offenders and in the response of institutions.
“There will be no hiding place for the predatory monsters who committed these vile crimes.”
The inquiry is due to begin its investigation on 13 April.
