Why is the grooming gangs inquiry falling apart?

The four abuse survivors who have stepped down from the oversight panel of the national grooming gangs inquiry said last night that they will not re-engage with the process unless safeguarding minister Jess Phillips resigns.

Fiona Goddard and Ellie-Ann Reynolds announced they were quitting earlier this week, with fellow survivors “Elizabeth” and “Jess” following suit just days later. In an open letter to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, the four women said they joined the panel “in good faith”, hoping that, “after decades of being dismissed, silenced, and called liars by the very institutions meant to protect us, things might finally be different. Instead, we have watched history repeat itself.”

What did the commentators say?

Other survivors remain on the panel but the exit of these four has “plunged” the inquiry “into disarray” before it has even started, said Adele Robinson and Jake Levison on Sky News. Ever since Keir Starmer announced the inquiry in June, “frustrations have grown over the pace of progress towards launching it”. Specifically, some survivors are concerned that the Home Office may broaden the inquiry’s scope “beyond group-based sexual abuse” and adopt a “regional focus”, rather than a “truly national” one.

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“This inquiry is not, and will never be, watered down on my watch,” said Mahmood on X, insisting that “its scope will not change” and it will be “robust and rigorous”.

Britain’s grooming gangs acted “with impunity” to exploit vulnerable girls whose word was not taken seriously, said Joanna Williams in The Spectator. “Both Goddard and Reynolds joined the victims’ liaison panel to ensure” those “who had endured abuse”, like they both had, for years, “were heard”. But it seems clear they are “still struggling” to be “taken seriously”. The grooming gangs “thrived” because “the abused girls were the wrong kind of victims and their Pakistani-heritage rapists were the wrong kind of perpetrators. Now, as adults, these women continue to be the wrong kind of victims.”

What next?

The inquiry still needs to find a chair. Both potential candidates approached so far have pulled out after some survivors objected to their previous career backgrounds in police or social work. The government wants “to get this right”, said Minister for Children, Families and Wellbeing Josh MacAlister, urging other political parties to “turn the heat down”.

Jim Gamble, one of those who withdrew as a potential chair, said there was now a “toxic environment” around the inquiry. “There needs to be a pause,” the former head of the Child Sexual Exploitation and Online Protection centre told GB News. Those in positions of power need to “think about the victims and survivors, rather than their own political point-scoring”.