Home Secretary announces local reviews into grooming gangs

A series of local reviews into grooming gangs has been announced by the Government a day after the Home Secretary was threatened with legal action over the issue.

Yvette Cooper also said she had ordered a three-month rapid review of the “current scale and nature of gang-based exploitation across the country”.

Stronger sentences will be brought in for child grooming, making it an aggravating factor to organise abuse and exploitation, Ms Cooper said, as she vowed more investigations and prosecutions will take place.

She said the “most important task should be to increase police investigations into these horrific crimes and get abusers behind bars”.

‘Public concern’

Her statement to Parliament on Thursday came a day after a former police detective warned she would take Ms Cooper to court unless she took “urgent steps to allay widespread public concern” over gangs sexually exploiting children.

Maggie Oliver, an ex-detective who resigned from Greater Manchester Police in 2012, said she had put Ms Cooper “on notice” about possible legal action if she did not support “my request for urgent, tangible and transparent action to combat the epidemic of abuse of children”.

Ms Cooper told the Commons: “As we have seen, effective local inquiries can delve into far more local detail and deliver more locally relevant answers, and change, than a lengthy nationwide inquiry can provide.”

Political debate over the grooming scandal has continued to rage in the wake of a slew of attacks online from tech billionaire X owner Elon Musk aimed at Sir Keir Starmer.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who has repeatedly clashed with the Prime Minister over calls for a national inquiry into grooming gangs, insisted: “I don’t think that local inquiries are enough”.

The Tory MP said local inquiries will not have the power to summon people, while a national inquiry would.

National inquiry

Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham is among Labour figures who had supported a move for a national inquiry, as well as Liverpool Walton MP Dan Carden and Rotherham MP Sarah Champion.

Ms Cooper failed to say whether the local reviews will have the power to compel witnesses to attend, to take evidence under oath or to requisition written evidence.

As part of an overall package of £10 million in funding, half will go specifically on local inquiries.

Tom Crowther KC, who chaired the inquiry into abuse in Telford, will lead on developing a new framework for what Ms Cooper described as “victim-centred locally led inquiries where they are needed”.

The Home Secretary said Mr Crowther will work with Oldham Council and up to four other pilot areas, but shadow home secretary Chris Philp described this as “wholly inadequate”.

He said previous reports and reviews on child sexual exploitation and abuse “did not go far enough”, telling the Commons: “The IICSA (Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse) report itself was mainly not about these rape gangs, in fact it barely touched on the issue and only looked at six towns.

“We now believe as many as 50 towns could have been affected so IICSA barely scratched the surface. The Home Secretary has announced Government support for only five local inquiries. Let me say this is wholly inadequate when we know up to 50 towns are affected.”

The three-month review will be led by Baroness Louise Casey, who previously led an inquiry into children’s services at Rotherham Council.

Parliament heard that this work will take place ahead of the launch of the commission into social care, which Lady Casey is also leading.

Ms Cooper announced that chief constables in England and Wales will also be urged to reopen cold case investigations into grooming gangs, while the child sexual exploitation taskforce will be required to improve how it gathers data on ethnicity.

Ms Cooper has also vowed that the Government will lay out a clear timetable by Easter for implementing the recommendations in the final report from IICSA.