Keir Starmer to launch nationwide inquiry into grooming gangs | Politics

Keir Starmer will launch a nationwide inquiry into grooming gangs after receiving the suggestions of an impartial report on the scandal.

The prime minister mentioned a brand new statutory inquiry was “the proper factor to do” based mostly on the findings submitted by Louise Casey, who has carried out a months-long inquiry into the abuse of younger women.

Talking to reporters travelling with him to the G7 summit in Canada, Starmer mentioned Casey advisable “a nationwide inquiry on the idea of what she has seen”.

“I’ve learn each single phrase of her report and I’m going to just accept her advice. That’s the proper factor to do on the idea of what she has put in her audit,” he mentioned. “I shall now implement her suggestions.”

Requested to set out a timeline for the inquiry, Starmer mentioned: “It will likely be statutory beneath the Inquiries Act. That may take a little bit of time to type out precisely how that works, and we are going to set that out in an orderly manner.”

Starmer has beforehand resisted strain for a brand new nationwide inquiry into grooming gangs, and mentioned earlier this 12 months it will delay justice for victims. He referred to as for ministers to as an alternative concentrate on implementing the suggestions of earlier critiques.

Casey was requested to hold out a three-month nationwide assessment on the dimensions and extent of grooming gangs in January after producing a report into sexual abuse in Rotherham.

She was tasked with inspecting knowledge not out there to the preliminary nationwide inquiry led by Alexis Jay, and to look into the ethnicity and demographics of abusers and victims, in addition to “the cultural and societal drivers for one of these offending, together with amongst totally different ethnic teams”.

Starmer mentioned on Saturday that Casey’s “place when she began the audit was that there was not an actual want for a nationwide inquiry”, however that she had modified her thoughts after reviewing the proof.

In parallel to Casey’s assessment, the federal government requested Tom Crowther KC, who led an investigation in Telford, to assist devise a mannequin for a collection of comparable investigations in 5 cities the place women have been abused, together with Oldham.

Ministers got here beneath strain over grooming gangs final 12 months after Elon Musk spotlighted the federal government’s resolution to refuse Oldham council’s request for a second nationwide inquiry. The US billionaire’s flurry of tweets on the topic introduced the scandal again into public consciousness.

On Friday, seven males who groomed two weak teenage women in Rochdale have been discovered responsible of a number of intercourse offences after a long-running trial. The courtroom heard the boys subjected the ladies to years of distress and anticipated them to have intercourse with them “every time and wherever they wished”.

Casey’s 2015 assessment into the scandal in Rotherham mentioned there had been an “archaic tradition of sexism, bullying and discomfort round race”, with councillors and workers fearing being labelled racist in the event that they talked about the ethnicity of perpetrators.

In response to the announcement of a brand new nationwide inquiry, Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative social gathering chief, mentioned: “Keir Starmer doesn’t know what he thinks until an official report has advised him so … I’ve been repeatedly calling for a full nationwide inquiry since January. It’s about time he recognised he made a mistake and apologise for six wasted months.”