Yvette Cooper gives details of new National Grooming Inquiry

Here at Forbes our Abuse and Social Care Team has been dealing with Child Sexual Exploitation cases since 2013. As such we have seen the devasting impact that this crime has on children and young people. We have also seen the impact that this has had on Local Authorities, their staff and the provision of frontline services.

Whether a statutory inquiry into this particular subject would ever come to pass has been a consideration for many years, and many Local Authorities and Police Forces have already been part of localised inquiries. There has also been, and remains, dispute over whether this is the correct way to go, within survivor groups as well as the public sector and amongst politicians. Dame Alexis Jay, who chaired the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse recently gave evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee that her preferred option would be to implement her inquiry’s recommendations rather than to embark on another inquiry into this specific subject. However, it is now clear that such an inquiry is to be held and the basic terms of refence that it will have.

Along with a significant criminal inquiry led by the National Crime, Agency, improved ethnicity data collection and new specific laws to protect children, Yvette Cooper has today announced a National Commission to oversee local inquiries, with statutory inquiry powers, to oversee local inquiries into grooming gangs. This is to be time limited but the timescale and location of these inquiries has yet to be set out.

The National Audit on Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation, undertaken by Dame Louise Casey, whose recommendations have triggered this decision, has just been released and will no doubt influence the course of the inquiry and its terms of reference. We will provide a further update once the report has been considered and as details of the inquiry are released.