Labour rejects calls for Oldham grooming gang inquiry

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Are Labour right to push the responsibility for carrying out a public inquiry back onto Oldham Council?

I don't understand how it is considered acceptable for local authorities to carry out their own inquiries when they are often part of the institutional failure that allowed these crimes to be carried out on such a large scale over decades. Councils, police and social services were/are all implicated in the failure to act (or to actively obstruct) in some way or another.

"Phillips’ letter to Oldham Council, seen by GB News, claims it is for the the local authority ‘alone to decide to commission an inquiry into child sexual exploitation locally, rather than for the government to intervene.’ Reports have previously been commissioned and produced in Rochdale, Rotherham and Telford; Oldham now plans to launch its own Telford-style inquiry. Given the strength of feeling – which Phillips acknowledges in her letter – it seems inevitable that there will be questions or debate in the Commons when parliament returns next week."

"Yet for the hundreds of victims and those invested in bringing perpetrators to justice, this will seem pitifully inadequate. In each town where grooming gangs operated, similar patterns emerged: victims were ignored, law enforcement complicit and political officials more concerned about reputational damage than lives affected. Local authorities can hold their own inquiries, of course. But given the scale of these crimes, the fact they took place over decades, in many towns, suggests a level of institutional complicity requiring the attention of central government."

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/labour-rejects-calls-for-oldham-grooming-gang-inquiry/

Archive...

https://archive.ph/3greC#selection-1667.0-1759.570

There has already been an enquiry. Not one single recommendation it made has been implemented. Not one.

Specific to Oldham

x.com/jeremykauffman/status/1876280892085457209

I think only 6 towns were looked at and encompassed all types of CSA. I think we need a specific inquiry into grooming gangs (there is a trafficking element, men made money off this, it’s modern day sexual slavery of children). We need to look at specific failures in each town. I imagine we’ll see a pattern emerge and we need to be able to see it clearly and have it stated clearly so that the kind of people whether they are police, councillors etc etc know that we all know exactly what we are looking at when they refuse to engage. I think we need the cold light of day on this. There are most likely thousands more victims and hundreds more perpetrators out there and until someone goes around and asks I don’t think these children will get justice. Some survivors want local inquiries so that no-one gets away with it and specific people are exposed and I think that should feed into a national enquiry looking at patterns of behaviour.

It looks like Labour is bringing in statutory reporting with teeth. It wasn’t clear before as pp said we have statutory reporting already but Baroness Thompson Grey had introduced a members bill on the same subject. So I assume there is currently an obligation to report but no clear consequences for doing so. Which is great, it’s one of the recommendations in the report and I would fully support implementing them all at pace.

However I think theres a whole lot missing. This is one of the largest crimes to have taken place in the UK and it’s a crime against children and it is STILL HAPPENING. There are supporting structures within communities which enable these crimes to go on and we need to be absolutely clear as to what they are and how we dismantle them.

We had a bloody inquiry into whether Boris Johnson went to a party. I think the magnitude of this is vastly more important.

What @User37482 said.

Anyone who doesn't think there should be an inquiry into Oldham, let alone the rest of it, please read the screenshot I linked last night.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgngd52z71o

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy47jm41rgmo

I don't think the government are going to be able to keep fobbing everyone demanding more action off forever. The scale of injustice is immense.

Yes, it seems unlikely that "we've had reviews" is going to hold. All that'll happen is more detail will emerge, making it such that an inquiry has to be held, but has to be held to due to something being so utterly vile it cannot be ignored. Having read the 2013 sentencing remarks, I'm not sure what, but presumably men willing to act in groups with such depravity aren't lacking in sickening ideas they'll act out.

Especially in the current media landscape, with FB also changing moderation and "fact checking".

*social media landscape

The court transcripts I think will expose how utterly awful this was/is. The ones I read sickened me. I am increasingly concerned about local councils who show no interest in really looking into this. I’m worried that without sustained attention that this is still happening to children and we are letting people get away with it.

Interesting results on YouGov live polling

www.yougov.chat/channels/daily-chat-uk/27591

Majority (just now when I accessed) support for rolling out measures Labour refers to but also 58% support for an independent inquiry. Most people don't like Musk's stirring but a majority feel that tackling institutional problems and prosecuting the guilty are equally important.

This stood out to me in the BBC article linked just up thread

However Phillipson criticised Jenrick, saying he should "hang his head in shame" for his "failure to bring justice for victims" as a Home Office minister in the previous Conservative government.

Is Phillipson admitting that the victims haven't received justice?

Wrt Bradford, I'm always surprised that Blackpool never comes up in the list's of places with massive problems of CSE. Julie Bindel has written articles about the problems there. The town in poor and has massive number of children in care, they're literally bussed in there. It also, perhaps not coincidentally, seems to have lots of young girls claiming to have a trans identity.

I am increasingly concerned about local councils who show no interest in really looking into this.

Louise Casey published her inquiry into Rotherham Council in 2015, after a government mandated investigation - she found that they had basically ignored the results of previous investigations, especially the one by Alexis Jay that they themselves commissioned.

"They denied there had been a problem, or if there had been, that it was as big as was said. If there was a problem they certainly were not told - it was someone else's job. They were no worse than anyone else. They had won awards. The media were out to get them."

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/report-of-inspection-of-rotherham-metropolitan-borough-council

The clips ive seen on twitter show labour advisors and ex advisors admitting that they havent read the court transcripts. Maybe thats the problem - they arent seeing whats unique about this?

Also , i think the government's needs to understand what Oldham is saying - they know they need an inquiry but recognise the conflicts they have? To not offer practical support is blocking an effect inquiry taking place at all.

Also, is it true that labour only committed to implementing the recommendations on Sunday? I saw this on politicsjoe, but nowhere else.

Also, is it true that labour only committed to implementing the recommendations on Sunday? I saw this on politicsjoe, but nowhere else.

Maggie Oliver has also said, that the focus on this online has forced their hand.

Also , i think the government's needs to understand what Oldham is saying - they know they need an inquiry but recognise the conflicts they have? To not offer practical support is blocking an effect inquiry taking place at all.

It needs to be independent. Look at what happened in Rotherham. I've linked the report following up on the failure to act that Louise Casey produced.

"Now think about the people that were meant to protect them. Who comes to mind? Police, local councils, social services, sexual health clinics, schools, care homes.

Those in positions of power turned a blind eye for decades while little girls were being raped, tortured, and murdered.

You can see why a bigger, more far reaching, yet totally specific enquiry would frighten the shit out of quite a few people

Indeed, @Datun

Very disheartening.

There a new article in the Times, an interview with their reporter who helped publicise the story

https://archive.ph/Y7bsZ

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/grooming-gangs-national-inquiry-cause-unaddressed-2qkqwsprn

He stands up for Starmer, doesn't really back the calls for an inquiry but agrees research is needed into the specifics of the 'grooming gangs' phenomenon; why it happened, why it was allowed to continue, why was nothing done for so long.

There is a touching naïveté on this thread about the purpose of public enquiries. Am I the only one to remember ‘Yes Minister’?

The first thing that happens is a well paid tame chair is appointed, who will totally understand that the purpose is to delay, obfuscate and divert attention from senior politicians who may have been seriously at fault.

Then everyone gets to see evidence, which will be mainly redacted, as it contains details about individual cases which may be sub justice or are under ‘active’ investigation.

And, after about a decade, you get the results and recommendations. These will generally be timed to coincide with some big news, so they get buried and not written much about.

Of course, once the enquiry starts, people are told that the government won’t comment until the results of the enquiry are known, by which time they will be probably long out of government. So, for years, wider discussion is parked.

If there is one thing that public enquiries don’t do is bring justice.

If you feel I am wrong, please tell me how the Post Office enquiry had or will help the victims in any way?!

They don't know the cause?! These men did it because they could. The opportunity presented itself and they took it, that's not hard to understand.