Child Rape Gangs

Lord Cameron of Lochiel Excerpts

Wednesday 30th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, the child rape gang scandal has seriously shaken the trust that communities across this country have in the systems that are supposed to protect them. People deserve reassurance as well as clarification, and they need to know that the Government are taking swift and significant action to address this situation.

That being so, why will the Government not commit to holding a national statutory inquiry into this matter? Further, will the Minister take this opportunity to inform the House when the long overdue rapid audit, overseen by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, will publish a final report?

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)]

I would thank the noble Lord for the question, but I am not going to. With regard to the independent inquiry, the former leader of his party, the noble Baroness, Lady May, instituted a national inquiry. Some 7,000 victims gave evidence. There were 2 million pages of evidence to be considered; it took 99 months and cost £192.6 million. That inquiry and the recommendations by Professor Jay were delivered to the previous Government in October 2022 and there was no response: not a single recommendation was followed. In fact, the FT quoted a government veteran from the last Government as saying:

“The report came out at an unfortunate time and was maybe to some extent forgotten or deprioritised”.


This Government have sought to move as quickly as possible within our first nine months. We have acted on 17 of the recommendations made in the IICSA report and we are moving forward with local inquiries. We look forward to the response to the national audit that has been undertaken by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, which we will receive next month.