Tory leader Kemi Badenoch with grooming gang survivors and campaigners (Image: Getty)
Kemi Badenoch has branded the grooming gang cover-ups “one of the biggest scandals Britain has ever seen”. Survivors and campaigners joined the Tory leader in London for a press conference on Tuesday where she insisted she was not politicising the issue.
They warned Sir Keir Starmer’s grooming gang inquiry does not go far enough after the Prime Minister finally bowed to pressure to commission a probe into the historic sexual exploitation of thousands of children, predominantly by men of Pakistani origin. Asked if the actions of past Conservative governments should be scrutinised, Mrs Badenoch said: “There should be no stone left unturned. Where there is evidence, that should be looked at.
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“The actions that we have seen over the last 30 years have shown that work has been done but that work was not enough.
"But this inquiry in my view needs to look at those institutions that actively covered stuff up, not maybe work was done but not completely.
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“We are talking about those who hid evidence, those who asked victims to go away, those who told people that what they were saying was not true. That would be a completely different order of magnitude to any sort of state failure we have seen. This is why we say that this is one of the biggest scandals that Britain has ever seen.”
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Asked whether she would take the opportunity to apologise to survivors, she replied: "No one here is asking me for more apologies, they have heard the apologies.
"Apologies are easy, apologies are easy, what we need to see is action. We can sit here and say sorry all day long but what I actually want to see is an inquiry that actually gets to the bottom of this.”
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The Prime Minister’s commitment to an inquiry followed a report by Baroness Casey which found that police and council leaders covered up the scale of Asian grooming gangs because they feared being called racist.
Marlon West, whose daughter Scarlett is a grooming gang survivor, told the press conference he was worried some prosecutions would be missed and that he was not reassured “one little bit” social workers would be held accountable.
He went on to say he did not trust Labour “one bit”, adding: “I’ve met with Jess Phillips, I’ve been campaigning for this for the last years and I’ve just had the door closed on my face. I do not trust them, so they still need challenging. Like I said there’s more questions and answers.”
Survivor Fiona Goddard, who waived her right to anonymity, told assembled journalists it would not be enough to hold an inquiry without survivor-led education in schools.
She added: “There is a responsibility to fix damage that has been done to so many people across the country but there is also a responsibility to protect future people.”
Brave Fiona shared her harrowing story of rape and abuse while living in a children’s home at the age of 14 with the Express in January.
She used the interview to demand that Sir Keir launch a national inquiry into the scandal.
Theresa Smith, the mother of a now-dead grooming gang survivor, said she was disappointed the investigation will focus on the abuse of girls.
She added: “It’s not enough that this inquiry and stuff is all about girls, because it’s not just girls and boys need to come forward.
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“Lots of boys need to come forward because I know it’s happening and it’s not something that they have to be embarrassed about.”
Campaigner Lucia Rea, who advocates for survivors, added that she was “concerned about the lack of openness and transparency” around the issue.
She said: “I’m hoping this inquiry will give regular updates to restore the public trust and survivors’ trust more importantly because we do believe that’s at an all time low.
“These survivors have been let down too many times and we’ve got to see real change with this inquiry now.
Mrs Badenoch said her party backs a national inquiry into the scandal, and had been calling for one “for six months”.
But Sir Keir Starmer later took aim at Mrs Badenoch over her attacks on grooming gangs.
He told reporters at the G7 summit that he brought the first prosecution for grooming cases nearly 15 years ago when he was director of public prosecutions.
The Prime Minister said: “Kemi Badenoch, I think, if I remember rightly, was the minister for children and for women, and I think the record will show that she didn't raise the question of grooming once when she was in power, not once. Not one word from the despatch box on any of this.
“[Shadow Home Secretary] Chris Philp, I think, went to 300 plus meetings when he was in his position in the Home Office, and at not one of those meetings did he raise the question of grooming.
“So I know there's some discussion of this far right bandwagon. I was actually calling out politicians, nobody else, politicians, who in power had said and done nothing, who are now making the claims that they make.
“I think the focus should be on the individual victims. And there used to be a time when some of this stuff was more cross-party consensus, actually, and we could go forward... when Theresa May was prime minister, we did work together on this, and that, for me, is the right way of working on it.
“But I mean, the question of Kemi Badenoch is, why on earth didn't you, you were in power, you had all the tools at your disposal. I was calling even then for mandatory reporting. Why didn't you do it? Why didn't you say one word about it?
Mr Philp, who also spoke at the press conference, called for “the people who are responsible for covering this up” to face prosecution for misconduct in public office alongside the inquiry.
He said the Conservatives wanted the probe to take two years, focus on “all 50 towns affected” and “look at the role of ethnicity in the cover-up”.
Baroness Casey also told the Home Affairs Committee that a national inquiry should be done within three years, rather than the two called for by the Tories.
Her damning report, published on Monday, found the ethnicity of perpetrators had been “shied away from”, with data not recorded for two-thirds of offenders.
But appearing in front of MPs yesterday (TUES), she urged people to “keep calm” on the subject of ethnicity.
Pointing out that her report had said data on the ethnicity of perpetrators was “incomplete and unreliable”, she said: “If you look at the data on child sexual exploitation, suspects and offenders, it’s disproportionately Asian heritage.
“If you look at the data for child abuse, it is not disproportionate, and it is white men.
“So again, just (a) note to everybody really, outside here rather than in here, let’s just keep calm here about how you interrogate data and what you draw from it.”
A Downing Street spokesman said the format and chair of the inquiry would be set out at a later date, adding that it would have the power to compel people to give evidence.
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The spokesman said: “We want to get on with this, but we must take the time to sort out exactly how that works and get the process right.
“But to be absolutely clear, the grooming scandal was one of the greatest failures in our country’s history, with vulnerable people let down time and again, and the Prime Minister is determined to finally get them justice.”
He added that the Government had accepted all of Baroness Casey’s recommendations, including making it mandatory for the police to collect data on the ethnicity of suspects.