"One thing is abundantly clear; we as a society owe these women a debt."
That was Louise Casey's assessment in her audit of group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse, published yesterday. Keir Starmer commissioned the audit in January after Labour "came under extreme pressure to hold an inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal", said The New Statesman.
The government had "repeatedly refused to hold a national inquiry", arguing that councils should investigate "at a local level instead". But yesterday, Starmer "quietly let slip that the government had changed its mind".
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Latest Videos From
There will be a full statutory inquiry into the way the grooming scandal was mishandled by authorities – as Casey's report "directly recommends". But critics have argued that another inquiry does not necessarily mean society's debt to the victims, to use Casey's language, will be repaid.
"The report is damning," said Megan Kenyon in The New Statesman. The strength of its findings has "forced Starmer's hand".
Casey described a "collective failure to address questions about the ethnicity of grooming gangs". Institutions like the police, social services and councils "shied away from" these questions for fear of appearing racist; "two-thirds" of perpetrators did not have their ethnicity data recorded. But such data as there was identified "clear evidence of over-representation among suspects of Asian and Pakistani heritage men", Casey wrote. "It is not racist to want to examine the ethnicity of offenders."
Among the audit's many recommendations, said The Guardian, is a time-limited national, independent inquiry, co-ordinating "a series of targeted local investigations".
But there has already been a "comprehensive, seven-year" Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, chaired by child protection expert Alexis Jay, said Emma Norris and Cassia Rowland at the Institute for Government.
The "more serious charge on institutional failure to tackle child sexual abuse" is that even now, three years on from Jay's final report, none of her 20 core recommendations have been implemented in full. A "better alternative to a new inquiry", and the best way to help the victims of child sexual abuse, would be to "listen to and act on" the inquiry that has already taken place.
But this new inquiry isn't quite the same, said Isabel Hardman, assistant editor of The Spectator. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told MPs yesterday that it would not be "another overarching inquiry" like Jay's, but one with a purpose "to challenge what the audit describes as continued denial, resistance and legal wrangling among local agencies". This, said Hardman, allows ministers to "claim they are taking grooming gangs as seriously as the row at the start of the year demanded".
But whether or not it counts as a U-turn is "beside the point", said The Independent. It has "been long apparent" that what has been achieved on this issue hasn't been enough. The country needs an "accurate and balanced accounting" for how these unspeakable crimes were committed just a few years ago, "almost in plain sight, with something like collusion in parts of local government and the police".
Perhaps "even more heartening" than the announcement of a new inquiry is Casey's recommendation for "a nationwide policing operation", led by the National Crime Agency rather than "sometimes discredited" local forces. This new model of investigating these gangs "will help prevent future shortcomings". The victims "deserve nothing less than this".
What next?
Cooper said the inquiry would take about three years, and that further action would be taken to implement the recommendations of Jay's previous inquiry.
Many victims will "welcome" Starmer's quick acceptance of Casey's audit, said Sky News. They will want the inquiry to "probe" into who the perpetrators were and how they were connected, as well as "clear accountability of the people and organisations who failed to act" when vulnerable girls reported their abuse.
But, said Hardman in The Spectator, "there will need to be quite a sustained storm to ensure there is real change in policy".
It remains to be seen if Starmer, Cooper and colleagues will ever be "given political credit", said The Independent. But they are "delivering a measure of justice and restitution". Britain is at last "doing the right thing by the victims".
