Baroness Longfield to chair Grooming Gangs Inquiry

[Imnobody4]

Announced in HoC today. I do have some concerns she is a Labour Peer [she'll be resigning the whip) on the other hand she'll be scrutinised for bias.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/e1c42eea-5c13-46cc-b137-5faca792d910?shareToken=3a34d983e5e8d19c4c6819c5db2188fa

Baroness Longfield, a former children’s commissioner, will chair the national inquiry into grooming gangs after months of delays.

Mahmood confirmed that the inquiry would focus exclusively on grooming gangs and not have a wider scope, which was being considered by the Home Office in October and led to Fiona Goddard, a survivor of a Pakistani grooming gang in Bradford, resigning from the victims’ liaison panel in October and calling for Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, to resign.

The inquiry will also be tasked explicitly with finding how ethnicity, religion and cultural factors affected both the responses from the authorities and the perpetrators themselves.

I’ve just been reading about this. There will be a consultation on the terms of reference, apparently.

I’d suggest that ‘grooming gangs’ is expanded to include the words ‘rape’ and ‘torture’.

Biographies of Chair and Panel. Seems a bit lightweight to me.
Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs: biographies of the chair and panellists - GOV.UK share.google/IDxgDkeezxNgVTFlk

https://x.com/ukhomeoffice/status/1998411916251898241

It's being promoted on X

The victims and survivors panel will be wound down in January, the Home Office has confirmed, just a year after it was set up to ‘ensure that victims’ voices remain at the very heart’ of the inquiry.

The decision was criticised as ‘disgusting’ by grooming gangs survivors, who said it proved the inquiry would not be victim-led.

https://metro.co.uk/2025/12/09/survivors-panel-centre-grooming-gangs-inquiry-scrapped-25318328/

The statutory inquiry will have full legal powers under the Inquiries Act to compel witnesses to give evidence, require organisations to hand over documents and records, and make recommendations, both locally and nationwide, to make sure nothing like this happens again.

It has also been confirmed that the inquiry will focus exclusively on grooming gangs and explicitly ask how ethnicity, religion and cultural factors impacted both the response from authorities and the perpetrators themselves.

The government has committed £65 million to the inquiry and it must not take longer than 3 years, putting a stop to victims waiting endlessly for answers. The draft terms of reference will now be consulted on before being finalised by March.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/update-on-independent-inquiry-into-grooming-gangs

Yes, I think many people think that it involved “consensual” sex with minors for money, cigarettes etc, not the brutal abuse that was often a feature.