Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report

Lord Davies of Gower Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, as my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott said last week in response to the Government’s previous U-turn on winter fuel payments, we are pleased that the Government have finally listened to the wishes of the British public and agreed to hold a full national inquiry into grooming gangs.

The abhorrence of the crimes committed by these gangs is beyond belief. It is vividly apparent that the victims have repeatedly been let down. The audit by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, lays bare the scale of the institutional failure across the country. I pay tribute to all those survivors who were systematically ignored by authorities for fear of being branded racist. Those who have come forward to whistleblow and share their harrowing stories have demonstrated unbelievable bravery, such as the survivor Fiona Goddard, who was exploited and abused by an Asian grooming gang at the age of 14 when living in care in Bradford. She was led to believe that her abusers cared for her, before they plied her with drugs and continuously raped her. I cannot imagine the horrors experienced by the many thousands of children groomed by these gangs. I am particularly concerned—I raised the matter with the Minister at Questions earlier today—about what steps the Government will take to ensure that the victims are at the centre of their response.

We must be under no illusions. This is not a historic sexual abuse story; these vile crimes are still being perpetrated. Young girls are still, to this very day, being groomed and sexually exploited by gangs, as the report by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, makes abundantly clear.

The fact that these gangs continue to operate, with young girls still not being believed and their voices still not being heard, makes it even more difficult to understand why the Government have taken so long to listen to what my right honourable friend the leader of the Opposition has been saying since January. The Conservatives gave the Prime Minister three opportunities in the other place to back a full national inquiry, and Labour Members voted against these measures on all three occasions.

Not only that, but Government Ministers repeatedly opposed such an inquiry. The Secretary of State for Education accused those who called for an inquiry “bandwagon jumpers” who “don’t care about children”. The Leader of the House of Commons claimed that the issue of grooming gangs was a “dog whistle”. The Minister for Safeguarding rejected an appeal by Oldham Council for a national inquiry last October, and in April this year announced just five local inquiries. Indeed, the Minister here said on 22 April, in response to a question that I posed to him, that:

“We could certainly have a national inquiry, as the noble Lord has mentioned, but this Government’s judgment is that we know what the problem is”.—[Official Report, 22/4/25; col. 624.]


Even the Prime Minister himself said that anyone calling for an inquiry was jumping on a far-right bandwagon and repeatedly opposed holding such a national inquiry. He has, of course, now changed his mind once again.

Can the Minister explain why the Government opposed a national inquiry for so long, and why they have now done such a complete about-face on this issue? Surely now is the time for the Government to apologise for repeatedly making false claims about those who have been calling for this national inquiry since January.

I place on record my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, for her no-nonsense, hard-hitting and thorough audit. Her candour and tenacity are exemplary. She has not shied away from highlighting the fact that these child rape gangs were largely comprised of Pakistani men, a point that all too many have previously been scared to make. She also highlights faults in the available datasets. As the report states, the complex organised child abuse dataset includes all child sexual abuse and exploitation that is committed by two or more perpetrators, and this includes familial abuse, child-on-child abuse and institutional abuse. It is therefore difficult to ascertain the true scale of grooming gangs.

There are 12 recommendations presented in the audit. I look forward to hearing the detail of how and when the Government will take them forward.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I pay tribute to the victims and the whistleblowers from the police and other authorities for their bravery and absolute consistency in continuing to fight for their cause.

I am sorry that the Conservative spokesman has taken the line that he did. I am afraid that from these Benches we have a different standpoint. It was really disappointing on Monday to hear the leader of the Opposition attack the current Government when this applies to Governments of all parties over recent decades, including my own, but especially the Conservative Government who commissioned Professor Jay’s IICSA report, published a response but then did nothing. Surely it is better for all of us to come to this in humility and admit that, time after time, politicians failed to listen. This is not just about parliamentarians; it is about elected mayors, councillors, assemblies and combined authorities too. We did not just fail to listen but we all failed to act.

The noble Baroness, Lady Casey, said that now is the time to right wrongs, and that is correct. The victims and the whistleblowers, even when reported in the news and documentaries, have had to listen time and again to promises of action but nothing changing. It is refreshing that the Statement says that the Government will act on all the noble Baroness’s recommendations. But we know that this promise has been made before in response to complex, long-standing and shameful incidents over the years, and I am sure that some still continue. As Professor Jay said in her IICSA report, we lie to ourselves if we think that child sexual abuse and exploitation are not happening now.

We are seeing similar issues with the slowness of the infected blood compensation scheme, the Post Office Horizon compensation scheme and the Windrush scheme. Will your Lordships’ House hear that the inquiry will be set up swiftly and will be fully funded, including support for victims, as has been promised for the other schemes I have just mentioned, but which has not always appeared? Will the inquiry also draw evidence from the previous reports and reviews, so that the evidence it takes will build on what is already known? As I mentioned at Oral Questions, there are two reasons for this. First, it is much less traumatic for the victims and whistleblowers, many of whom have had to give the same evidence many times, each time revictimising them. Secondly, that should ensure a shorter evidence period of the inquiry; as the Statement says, there is an urgent need for action and accountability, whether for the perpetrators or the organisations that did not protect these children when they were raped and groomed, including councils, the police, the judiciary, social workers and more.

Will victims, including whistleblowers, be supported properly, right from the start, and not be revictimised? How long will it take to review the convictions that some of these young people, mainly girls, received, because they were perceived as complicit and able to give consent when they were plainly children? What steps will the Government take, in the light of the noble Baroness’s audit review, to ask councils, the police, the judiciary, social workers and others to review their working practices now? While the inquiry’s future report and recommendations are important, it is evident that there is enough for those organisations to reflect and change their practice now, in light of this audit review.

The Government have promised a form of mandatory reporting, as well as a Bill on the duty of candour, or Hillsborough law. Can the Minister say when we will see them in Parliament? Both are urgent to prevent this happening again in the future.

The recommendations on appropriate data collection and data sharing are also vital and, I am afraid, long overdue. The use of the Smith algorithm in West Yorkshire sounds helpful in identifying people possibly in scope as victims and survivors. Will it be rolled out elsewhere, given West Yorkshire’s positive experience?

The noble Baroness’s report proposes research into taxi drivers for group-based child sexual exploitation, including online. Unlike the monks, teachers and children’s workers involved in other group child sexual exploitation, taxi drivers are below the regulatory radar, other than the licence for their taxis. So will the Government ensure that statutory standards for taxi drivers will be brought in, to end “out of area” taxis plying their trade in places many miles away, where they are not on the radar of the local authority in which they are trying to work?

Will the Government publish a plan for communication to the wider public? This is a highly sensitive topic for young people, families and communities. In particular, will the Government work with faith groups and community groups? The noble Baroness, Lady Hazarika, rightly pointed out during Oral Questions that most Muslims are absolutely horrified by the behaviour of small groups of truly evil men, but it will be important for these communities to understand what they need to do to prevent it from ever happening again.