Robert Jenrick@RobertJenrick
The rape gang scandal is a stain on our country that will never fade. Across an estimated 50 towns and cities, and over several decades, young British girls were systematically exploited and abused by predominantly Pakistani men. We still do not know the full horror.
When backbench MP Ann Cryer first raised it, she was smeared as a racist and Westminster chose to look the other way. It was two decades later when Suella Braverman became home secretary that a senior politician took this scandal seriously.
Since coming to office, Labour politicians have tried to boot the scandal into the long grass. But it hasn’t gone away. The public testimonies are too powerful and the crimes too heinous.
First, they voted against a full, statutory inquiry. Lucy Powell, now the deputy leader of the Labour Party, argued that those who demanded an inquiry were playing “dog whistle” politics.
Under pressure, Starmer announced five local inquiries, thinking that would be enough. It wasn’t even close. Months later, he was forced into a full about-turn, finally agreeing to a full national statutory inquiry. But after victims resigned because of “stage management” and attempts to “widen the scope” of the inquiry, it ground to a halt.
The Government has now wasted 18 months. Only yesterday did they manage to publish the terms of the inquiry.
It is welcome news that the inquiry will explore the role of ethnicity, culture and religion in abuse. It will also go back further in time in recognition of just how persistent this abuse was. It will look at police officers who failed to investigate these evil crimes.
But, understandably, trust is low among survivors and the public. There is still the potential for the inquiry to go down rabbit holes and fudge conclusions to avoid the clear cultural and religious aggravating factors.
Will councils cooperate? In London, for instance, Sadiq Khan is in denial about evidence of rape gangs operating in the capital. Will the inquiry pursue all leads in every city and town where reports have been lodged?
The inquiry will have failed unless it results in the hundreds of public sector officials, including many councillors, who knew of the abuse but ignored it being named, shamed, and locked behind bars. The state has failed so many through cowardice. Some, like Shaun Davies, the then leader of Telford council, even sit in the House of Commons now. In any decent society, men like him would be cast out of public life forever.
Unfortunately, I fear the inquiry won’t deliver what is needed. At every turn, this Government has fallen short of what is required. As Labour battle for the Islamist vote with the Green Party, they may well put their electoral interests above delivering answers and justice.
We know this Government can conduct fast reviews when it wants to. In just a matter of months, it held an “independent” review, transparently aimed at kneecapping Reform. It is truly shameful how fast this Government has acted to undermine its democratic opponents, yet how slow it’s acted to deliver justice for the tens of thousands of girls whose childhoods were stolen from them.
A Reform government would not wait for the conclusion of a three-year-long inquiry to act.
We will deport any foreign rape gangs back to their home country, wherever that may be. We will strip dual citizens of their British citizenship and deport them too. We will end migration from backwards countries who despise women and hate our country.
We will pass life sentences for rape gang perpetrators and ensure the councillors, officials and officers who covered it up are systematically prosecuted. There will be no place for sectarian politics and the cosy relationships between self-appointed “community leaders” and officials that look the other way.
That still won’t be enough for the victims. It will not get them back their childhoods, or repair the deep psychological trauma. But it is the least we must do to restore some semblance of justice.
