Failings of UK institutions to protect young girls from grooming gangs will remain high on political agenda for years
Louise Casey’s decision to recommend a national inquiry into grooming gangs has forced Keir Starmer’s hand on an issue that has haunted the Labour party for decades.
The failings of UK institutions to protect young girls from widespread abuse by gangs of men will remain high on the political agenda for another three years.
A 197-page report produced by Lady Casey has called for wholesale changes to rape laws; requested that criminal convictions applied to abuse victims be quashed; and suggested that five existing local inquiries into grooming gangs be coordinated by an independent commission with full statutory inquiry powers.
But it is the issue of the ethnicity of the perpetrators that will resonate as the most explosive political issue arising from its pages. Casey could only find data from three forces, but, using publicly available material from the police and reports, concluded that suspects were disproportionately likely to be Asian men.
