Grooming gang victims have accused the UK government of attempting to manipulate them into broadening a national inquiry to include other forms of sexual abuse, despite Shabana Mahmood’s insistence that the focus will not change.
They suspect that the government is trying to deflect focus away from Labour-led councils, wishes to impose a government-friendly chair and wants to avoid raising questions over the ethnicity of the perpetrators, many of whom were men of Pakistani descent.
Their comments come after four abuse survivors resigned from their roles on the victims and survivors liaison panel, accusing the Home Office and ministers of sidelining them and seeking to widen the inquiry for political ends.
Mahmood, the home secretary, has been forced to intervene, insisting that the inquiry will leave “no hiding place” for those involved in the scandal.
However, evidence has emerged that shows members of the liaison panel were explicitly asked by officials: “Should the inquiry have an explicit focus on ‘grooming gangs’ or ‘group-based CSEA’ [child sexual exploitation and abuse], or take a broader approach?”
Elizabeth, a survivor using a pseudonym who has resigned from the committee, said panel members were surprised to be asked such a question in a written Q&A.
“I voiced my opinion. I said: ‘Back in June you told the country that we would be having one just on grooming gangs, and now you ask do we want it widening? No, we don’t, we want it on grooming gangs,’” she told Radio 4’s Today programme.
Asked whether she felt satisfied with the home secretary’s assertion that the inquiry would explicitly examine the ethnicity and religion of offenders, Elizabeth said: “No, I’m not, because we hear this all the time. We heard it in June. We hear it all the time.
“You know, people all want to do the best for grooming gang survivors and their families when they need a vote or they need to look good.”
Fiona Goddard, who was abused by a grooming gang from the age of 14, said she had text messages that proved that the safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, was directly aware of concerns about the risk of broadening the inquiry and warned that victims were “not being believed all over again”.
In an article for the Times, Mahmood acknowledged frustrations about the pace of progress towards launching the inquiry, which was announced by Keir Starmer in June and is yet to appoint a chair.
But she insisted the inquiry “is not, and will never be, watered down on my watch” and would focus on how “some of the most vulnerable people in this country” were abused “at the hands of predatory monsters”.
She said the inquiry would be “robust and rigorous,” with the power to compel witnesses, and would examine the ethnicity and religion of the offenders.
“In time, we came to know this as the ‘grooming gangs’ scandal, though I have never thought the name matched the scale of the evil. We must call them what they were: evil child rapists,” Mahmood said.
“It is essential that the victims themselves are at the heart of this inquiry. It was with a heavy heart, in recent days, I learned that some members have decided to step away from the group. Should they wish to return, the door will always remain open to them. But even if they do not, I owe it to them – and the country – to answer some of the concerns that they have raised.”
In her resignation letter on Monday, Goddard said the process so far had involved “secretive conduct” with instances of “condescending and controlling language” used towards survivors.
She later accused Phillips of lying for disputing allegations that the inquiry was being watered down and called on her to stand down from her position.
“It is a blatant lie for Jess Phillips to suggest, as she has done … that it is untrue that there has been possibility or conversation around ‘expanding [the inquiry’s] scope beyond grooming gangs’,” Goddard said.
She expressed deep reservations about the candidates under consideration to chair the inquiry, one of whom was reportedly a former police chief and the other a social worker.
Annie Hudson, a former director of children’s services for Lambeth, has now withdrawn her candidacy after recent media coverage, according to reports on Tuesday.
Speaking in the Commons on Tuesday, Phillips said opinions varied among victims as to who would be best suited to the role, as she faced questions from MPs about the process.
“I will engage with all the victims, regardless of their opinions, and I will listen to those that have been put in the media, that are put in panels, I will always listen and I will speak to all of them,” she said.
In a resignation posted on X on Tuesday, the third survivor to quit said: “What is happening now feels like a cover-up of a cover-up. It has created a toxic environment for survivors, filled with pressures that we should not have to deal with.”
A fourth survivor, Jessica (not her real name), from West Yorkshire, who is said to have quit the panel on Tuesday night, told GB News: “When I found out the two potential chairs were a former police officer and a former social worker, I was shocked and I didn’t know how they could be involved. They were both part of a profession that failed all of us.”
