Baroness Longfield: New chair of the grooming gangs inquiry announced
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Former children’s commissioner Baroness Longfield will chair the investigation into gangs after months of delays.
Sir Keir Starmer announced the inquiry in June this year but the national inquiry was thrown into turmoil when four women resigned from the victim contact panel.
It took several months to find a suitable candidate to lead the investigation amid ongoing tensions. In October, the last two candidates to head the investigation withdrew from the process.
Now Home Affairs Minister Shabana Mahmood has announced that Baroness Anne Longfield will take over the role.
The investigation follows a recommendation made by Baroness Louise Casey in her snap audit looking at the scale of grooming gangs across the country.
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Baroness Longfield will be part of a three-person panel that will also include Zoe Billingham, chief executive of the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS foundation trust, and Eleanor Kelly, former chief executive of the London borough of Southwark.
Ms Mahmood told MPs Ms Billingham also had “deep expertise in protection and policing”. The home secretary said Ms Kelly had supported the survivors of the 2017 terror attacks on London Bridge and the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire.
The investigation will conduct local investigations in areas where serious faults are suspected to have occurred. Ms Mahmood confirmed one of those venues would be Oldham in the House of Commons on Tuesday.
The inquiry will also have full legal authority under the Inquiry Act to compel witnesses to testify and require organizations to hand over documents and records.
Ministers have pledged £65 million to the inquiry and said it should not take longer than three years.
Speaking in the House of Commons on Tuesday, Ms Mahmood said Baroness Longfield would resign from the Labor Party to chair the national inquiry.
He said: “He has dedicated his life to children’s rights, including running a charity that supports and protects young people and working for prime ministers of different political parties.”
Ms Mahmood said it was important to name the gangs’ “crimes”: multiple sexual assaults carried out by multiple men on multiple occasions.
The interior minister continued: “Children were subjected to beatings and gang rape, many contracted sexually transmitted infections, some were forced to have abortions, others had their children taken away from them.”
She said “some in positions of power turned a blind eye to the horror, even covered it up”, adding: “What is required now is a moment of reckoning.
“We must shed new light on this darkness.”
This is a story of breaking. More to follow…
