Former Children's Commissioner Will Chair The Government's Inquiry Into Child Sexual Abuse By Grooming Gangs

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said "we must root out this evil once and for all" and the three-year inquiry will be a "moment of reckoning", as she announced the appointment in the Commons.

The prime minister announced the inquiry for England and Wales in June, accepting the recommendation of Baroness Louise Casey's audit into the evidence on the scale of group-based child sexual abuse.

Baroness Longfield will be joined by panellists Zoe Billingham CBE, a former inspector at HM Constabulary, and Eleanor Kelly CBE, former chief executive of Southwark Council, to lead the inquiry.

Ms Mahmood said Longfield and the two panellists had been recommended by Baroness Casey following "recent engagement with victims" and would meet survivors shortly.

On her appointment, Baroness Longfield said the inquiry "owes it to the victims, survivors and the wider public to identify the truth, address past failings and ensure that children and young people today are protected in a way that others were not".

However, Fiona Goddard - one of the survivors who quit the inquiry in October - said those still serving on the panel had "not been consulted at all on the chair".

"They have been overlooked and just used to give the impression of victim engagement," she wrote on X. In the same tweet she also criticised the selection of Baroness Longfield, who will resign the Labour whip in the House of Lords to chair the inquiry.

"That doesn't change a lifetime of representing Labour's best interests," Ms Goddard said, arguing that the inquiry was not "independent" of the government.

Readers will vividly recall the trials and tribulations that the then Home Secretary, Theresa May, encountered when trying to select the chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA). Chairing a public inquiry is an onerous task. Chairing a national statutory inquiry involving events which are complex, extremely sensitive and often traumatic is one of the most difficult quasi-judicial tasks imaginable. That position requires a specific set of skills that few candidates will have. The fact that invariably those candidates have risen to senior positions in what might be termed ‘the Establishment’, due in no small part to the specific skills that the inquiry chair will require, makes it virtually impossible to select an individual who will not be criticised as being too close to the Establishment and thus inherently biased or tainted.

It remains to be seen if Baroness Longfield’s appointment will come under further challenge before or during the inquiry. It will be recalled that during the early stages of IICSA Dame Lowell Goddard decided that for various reasons she could no longer continue, leading to the appointment of yet another chair, Professor Alexis Jay, who eventually saw the inquiry through to conclusion.

As terms of reference (which are to be finalised and published by the end of March 2026) still remain in draft form, and there is no clear timetable to the commencement of the inquiry, it is fair to say that many obstacles still lie between the inquiry panel and the publication of a final report. The government has mandated that the cost of the inquiry is to be capped at £65m (IICSA cost £186m) and its work must be concluded within three years. The coming months and years will tell us whether the government’s requirements prove to be remarkably accurate or, as we have seen in both IICSA and the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry, not even close to the subsequent reality.