Stephen Pollard spells it out in the Spectator – Labour’s grooming gangs position is contemptible:
We do not know exactly how many girls have been raped by so-called ‘grooming gangs’. We do not know the full extent of police and local authority involvement in covering up these rapes. We do not know where these rapes are still continuing. We do not, in reality, know anything beyond the facts of the individual cases and towns that have so far emerged and which have been properly investigated.
And it seems that if Jess Phillips has her way, nor will we ever.
In a Commons statement yesterday, the minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls announced that the government may no longer be proceeding even with the five pathetic, utterly inadequate local inquiries that the Home Secretary announced in January. Instead, a ‘more flexible’ approach will be taken, with the £5 million made available for these inquiries potentially spent on ‘more bespoke work, including local victims’ panels or locally led audits of the handling of historical cases’.
In January, Yvette Cooper’s decision not to set up a national inquiry was met with anger and outrage. This is a national scandal of epic and astounding proportions. It is inconceivable that the British state should point blank refuse to try to find out the full extent of what happened, why it happened and what can stop it happening with a national inquiry. And yet that appears to be the government’s unshakeable position.
Why? Well, we know why. It's for the same reason that the scandal went on for so long – is still going on – and why the police turned a blind eye, and why the local councils were reluctant to get involved, preferring to let the rapes and the grooming of young teen girls continue rather than confront the problem.
In her response to Ms Phillips’ statement yesterday, shadow minister Katie Lam laid out the horror of what the victims have endured. It is too graphic to repeat here, but I do urge you to read her speech in Hansard if you have the stomach for it. It matters that we understand just how unspeakable these crimes were.
The two key questions underlying all this are how rape gangs have been allowed to operate – and why there is such resistance to uncovering the full facts. These are, in reality, the same question, the answer to which was provided in a simple statement of the facts by Ms Lam yesterday:
‘The girls we are talking about are predominantly white. The men who preyed on them were predominantly Muslim, generally either from Pakistan or of Pakistani heritage.’
The look on Phillips’s face when Ms Lam dared to state this typified the problem – as if she had said something that should always remain utterly unsayable.
That's why.
So cowed were the police by the fear that they might be accused of institutional racism that they started to invert reality. Professor Alexis Jay’s report into Rotherham shows one detective waving away the complaint of a girl, who was 12 when the abuse began, as ‘100 per cent consensual’.
A further report into Rotherham by Dame Louise Casey found that the council deliberately covered up the rapes because it was worried about racial tensions. Professor Jay’s inquiry also reported that a senior police officer told a victim’s father that the town ‘would erupt’ if the routine abuse of white children by men of Pakistani origin became widely known. Political correctness was placed above protecting girls from rape and torture. The same story was repeated elsewhere.
The existence of the rape gangs shame Britain. But the decision that there must never be full accountability or a full understanding of why and how they have been allowed to operate is, in its own way, no less contemptible.
Added:
Genuinely surreal the top level focus given to a fictional Netflix drama vs a real and deeply harrowing set of crimes against actual non-fictional girls.
— James (@jhallwood) April 9, 2025
Mick Hartley 
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