At the heart of the political turmoil now engulfing the grooming gangs inquiry are women and girls who were systematically raped, abused, ignored and repeatedly dismissed by the very bodies that were meant to protect them – social workers, the police, local authorities and others over years. Finding the right person to chair the inquiry is proving difficult for obvious reasons – victims don’t trust the police nor social services and the recommendation from Louise Casey was that it should not be judge led which limits the choice for chair. However, it’s worth pointing out that Professor Alexis Jay was the fourth person to chair the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse(IICSA) after a lengthy process that had seen previous chairs and officials resigning. Her inquiry lasted seven years, cost over £200 million and reported in 2022 making 20 recommendations, none of which were implemented by the previous government and barely a handful under the current one.
In 2014 Professor Jay also carried out a review of on-street grooming in Rotherham which concluded that 1,400 girls were abused by rape gangs, mostly made up of south Asian-British men, between 1997 to 2013. So one wonders what the new inquiry, if it can get back on track with a chair who’s acceptable to all involved will uncover and whether anyone will take any notice.
The call for a public inquiry into failures and wrongdoings is understandable – a desperate attempt to uncover the truth, find accountability and get some justice. But that rarely happens – no one held to account for Hillsborough, no one held to account for the Post Office scandal, no one held to account for the blood contamination tragedy and it is doubtful that anyone will be held to account for the Grenfell fire or the mistakes during Covid both of which are still ongoing. The spectacle of Boris Johnson giving evidence at the latter should serve to underline the pointlessness of such inquiries.
Public inquiries can only make recommendations, it is up to the police and other agencies to pursue prosecution or sanctions but wouldn’t it make more sense if the government of the day was held to account if it fails to implement recommendations within a set time frame? Wouldn’t it make more sense for a
cross-party parliamentary inquiry that would be powerful and, arguably, more focused and cost effective?
Tragically, the grooming gangs inquiry has become a political point scoring exercise where nobody wins, least of all the victims. And how do they benefit if after years, we are told ‘lessons will be learned’ and a list of recommendations gather dust?
Apparently, Michael Heseletine when presented with a plan of action would scrawl JFDI across the document – Just Effing Do It. If only someone had done that after the Jay inquiry we might be in a better place today.
