Grooming Gangs: Independent Inquiry

Thursday 11th December 2025 Lords Chamber

Statement

11:50

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Tuesday 9 December.

“With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will make a Statement on the independent inquiry into grooming gangs, the appointment of its chair and panel, and the inquiry’s terms of reference.

I know that, for many, this day is long overdue. For years, the victims of these awful crimes were ignored. First abused by vile predators, they then found themselves belittled and even blamed, when it was justice they were owed.

In January, my predecessor asked Baroness Casey of Blackstock, who is here with us today, to conduct a national audit on group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse. With devastating clarity, Baroness Casey revealed the horror that lies behind that jargonistic term. It is vital that we, too, call these crimes what they were: multiple sexual assaults, committed by multiple men, on multiple occasions.

Children were submitted to beatings and gang rapes. Many contracted sexually transmitted infections. Some were forced to have abortions. Others had their children taken from them. But it was not just these awful crimes that now shame us. There was also an abject failure by the state, in its many forms, to fulfil its most basic duty: protecting the young and vulnerable.

Worse still, some in positions of power turned a blind eye to the horror, or even covered it up. Despite a shameful lack of national data, Baroness Casey was clear that in some local areas where data was available

‘disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds’

were ‘amongst the suspects’. Like every member of my community who I know, I am horrified by these acts. We must root out this evil, once and for all. The sickening acts of a minority of evil men, as well as those in positions of authority who looked the other way, must not be allowed to marginalise or demonise entire communities of law-abiding citizens.

What is required now is a moment of reckoning. We must cast fresh light on this darkness. In her audit, Baroness Casey called for a national inquiry. In June, the Government accepted that recommendation. Today, I can announce the chair and panel that will form the leadership of the inquiry, and a draft of the inquiry’s terms of reference.

The inquiry will be chaired by Baroness Anne Longfield. As many in this place will know, Baroness Longfield was the Children’s Commissioner from 2015 to 2021. She has devoted her life to children’s rights, including running a charity supporting and protecting young people, and working for Prime Ministers of different political parties. In recognition of her service, Baroness Longfield was elevated to the Lords earlier this year. At that point, she took the Labour Whip, which she will now resign on taking up this appointment.

Alongside her, I can also announce her two fellow panellists. The first is Zoë Billingham CBE. Zoë is a former inspector at His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, and currently serves as chair of Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust. She brings deep expertise in safeguarding and policing, specifically in holding forces to account. The second panellist is Eleanor Kelly CBE. Eleanor is the former chief executive of Southwark Council. In 2017, she supported the survivors of the London Bridge terrorist attacks, and the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire of the same year. Together, the chair and panel bring deep experience of championing children’s rights, knowledge of policing and local government, and, crucially, a proven track record of holding powerful institutions to account. Each individual was recommended by Baroness Casey, and her recommendation follows recent engagement with victims. The first thing the chair and panel will do, alongside Baroness Casey, is meet victims later this week.

Today, we also publish the draft terms of reference, which I will place in the House of Commons Library. Baroness Casey was clear this inquiry must be time-limited to ensure justice is swift for those who have already waited too long. For that reason, it will be completed within three years, supported by a £65 million budget. The inquiry will be a series of local investigations, overseen by a national panel with full statutory powers. Baroness Longfield has confirmed that Oldham will have a local investigation. The chair and panel will determine the other locations in due course. No area will be able to resist a local investigation.

These terms of reference are clear on a number of vital issues. The inquiry is focused, specifically, on child sexual abuse committed by grooming gangs. It will consider, explicitly, the background of offenders, including their ethnicity and religion, and whether the authorities failed to properly investigate what happened out of a misplaced desire to protect community cohesion.

The inquiry will act without fear or favour, identifying individual, institutional and systemic failure, inadequate organisational responses, and failures of leadership. It will also work hand in hand with the police where new criminality comes to light, be that by the perpetrators or those who covered up their crimes. The inquiry will pass evidence to law enforcement, so it can take forward any further prosecutions and put more of these evil men behind bars.

The inquiry must, and will, place victims and survivors at the forefront, with a charter setting out how they will participate and how their views, experiences and testimony will shape the inquiry’s work. As I have said already, the terms are in draft form. The chair will now consult on them with victims and other stakeholders. They will be confirmed no later than March, when the inquiry can begin its work in earnest.

Alongside launching this inquiry, Baroness Casey’s audit contained a number of other recommendations, which the Government accepted in full. As the inquiry begins its work, we continue righting these wrongs. I can announce today that I have commissioned new research from UK Research and Innovation to rectify the unacceptable gaps in our understanding of perpetrators’ backgrounds and motivations, including their ethnicity and religion. My predecessor wrote to all police forces calling on them to improve the collection of ethnicity data, and while the Home Secretary does not currently have the power to mandate that it is collected, I will rectify that by legislating at the earliest possible opportunity.

The Department for Education is currently interrogating gaps in ‘children in need’ data identified in the audit, which seem to underreport the scale of this crisis. The Secretary of State for Education, my right honourable friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South, Bridget Phillipson, will soon publish the findings of an urgent review of that data conducted by her department. Across government, the audit identified that poor data sharing continues to put children at risk. As a result, we are introducing a legal duty for information sharing between safeguarding partners. We are creating a unique identifier for every child, linking all data across government, and we are upgrading police technology to ensure data can be shared across agencies.

The audit also identified an absurdity in our legal system, which saw some child rapists convicted of lesser crimes. As a result, we are now changing the law to make it clear that children cannot consent when they have been raped by an adult, so perpetrators are charged for the hideous crime they have, in fact, committed.

While the law has protected abusers from the consequences of their crimes, it has too often punished victims. Some survivors were convicted for crimes they had been coerced into, continuing their trauma to this day. We are already legislating in the Crime and Policing Bill to disregard offences related to prostitution, and the Ministry of Justice is now working with the Criminal Cases Review Commission to ensure that it is resourced to review applications from individuals who believe they were wrongly criminalised.

The national audit identified further weaknesses in relation to taxi licensing. Abusers were applying for licences in areas where controls were lax to circumvent protections put in place by local councils to tackle abuse. My right honourable friend the Transport Secretary will soon be legislating to close that dangerous loophole in the regulation of taxis.

The audit was clear that justice has not been done. Baroness Casey requested a new national police investigation to bring offenders to justice. Last month, the National Crime Agency launched Operation Beaconport to review previously closed cases of child sexual exploitation. It has already flagged more than 1,200 cases for potential reinvestigation, more than 200 of which are high-priority cases of rape. The evil men who committed those crimes, and thought that they got away with them, will find they have nowhere to hide.

Finally, the audit called on the Government to fund the delivery of its recommendations. Alongside investment in the inquiry itself, I can announce today that a further £3.65 million will be committed this year to the policing operation, survivor support and research into grooming gangs.

That work is essential, but there can be no justice without truth. Today, I have announced the chair and panel of an inquiry that will shine a bright light on this dark moment in our history. They will do so alongside the victims of these awful crimes, who have waited too long to see justice done. This inquiry is theirs, not ours, so I call on all those present to put politics aside for a moment and to support the chair and her panel in the pursuit of truth and justice. I commend this Statement to the House”.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, this has been a long time coming. In a series of events that have spanned the entire year, the Government have finally taken the first steps towards establishing the national inquiry into the grooming gang scandal.

I will not recount the absolute horrors that have been faced by victims; noble Lords will be well versed in the details by now. The sentencing remarks from the trials demonstrate the appalling and vile abuse that those gangs perpetrated.

It is shameful that it took the Government so long to get where they are today. It was all the way back in January when the first calls were made by these Benches for the Government to launch a national inquiry. The Government at that time point-blank refused, smearing those urging an inquiry as “far right”.

In one of the numerous screeching U-turns that have become the mainstay of the Government’s conduct, the Home Secretary then announced that there would be a full national inquiry. That was in June, and it has taken us until December for the chair to be appointed and the terms of reference to be published. This is deeply regrettable.

The Government have appointed the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, to chair the inquiry. Obviously, she is currently a Labour Peer, and I understand she will be resigning the Labour Whip, but is the Minister really satisfied that a politically aligned appointment for chair will have the support of the victims of these gangs? Not only this, but in the register of interests for her role as chair of the Police Remuneration Review Body it states that Zoë Billingham is also a member of the Labour Party. She is one of three who will make up the panel. So, two out of the three members of the leadership of the inquiry are directly linked to the Labour Party. Does the Minister think that that sends the correct message to survivors? It is clear to me that it may undermine trust in the independence of the inquiry. This is even more important given that a number of the victims have already signalled their distrust in this process.

Can the Minister absolutely guarantee that the inquiry will not shy away from investigating the links between nationality and ethnicity and the mass rape of young girls? That is the crux of the matter. It is the deliberate cover-up of these crimes due to fears of accusations of racism that led to countless young white girls being ignored and cast aside by the authorities that were meant to protect them. The inquiry cannot lose sight of that.

The terms of reference that have been published state that the inquiry will investigate only issues arising up until the date of its establishment and that it will not attempt to be exhaustive. This makes it seem like these are events from the past, where the only concern is that we do not allow it to happen again. But it is still happening. How will the inquiry, and indeed the Government, address the concerns that young girls are still being abused and raped by gangs of men of mainly Pakistani origin?

Finally, we still do not know what areas will be investigated and what criteria will be used to determine them. Can the Minister tell the House how the inquiry will determine which local areas will be investigated and how it will ensure that certain councils and officials are not able to avoid scrutiny? I look forward to what the Minister has to say in response.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, earlier this year, Parliament discussed the national audit by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, of group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse. Her report brought with it her exceptional ability to identify the issues around the appalling exploitation and abuse and the actions that need to follow to ensure that these execrable acts do not happen again, not least because government and other public bodies will do the right thing at the time to protect these children and hold the perpetrators to account.

From these Benches, this is where I want to start. Many of the victims and those who supported them have said that some of the handling of the communications with them has distressed them, including proposals earlier this year for possible candidates for the role of chair.

All the survivors and victims from many other state tragedies and scandals repeat exactly what these survivors say: “If you don’t work with us, you will get it wrong, which is distressing and can re-victimise people”. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that the Home Secretary’s choice for the chair of the inquiry, the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, will work closely with survivors to overcome any fears that they might have? I appreciate that she will stand down from the Labour Party for the duration of the inquiry, but the concerns of victims and survivors are very real, despite the victims’ and our respect for the exceptional skills and commitment of the noble Baroness.

The Statement talks about the

“abject failure by the state”.

This is correct. As with the infected blood scandal, the Post Office Horizon scandal, the Hillsborough disaster and many others, this country, its Government and public bodies seem to have a blind spot about failures and a natural inclination to cover them up.

While the inquiry will look at the details relating to the exploitation and abuse of young people, I want to ask the Minister what plans the Government have to ensure that the findings are not just read and acted on briefly but will be fully embedded into the culture and working practice of every government department and public body. How will the Government judge that both the hard recommendations and the softer cultural ones from the audit by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, and those that will come from the inquiry from the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, change how children are viewed by officials so that are truly supportive of those children from the first to the last contact with them?

The terms of reference outlined in the Statement are clear and strong. However, I gently warn the Minister that many other current or recent inquiries have had equally strong terms of reference but, as the detail of how they are going to happen has been released, survivors and victims suddenly discover that things have changed a bit and their expectations shattered. What will the Government do to work with the victims and survivors to ensure that that does not happen with this inquiry and after it?

I have some other specific questions. The Statement says that the Government will introduce a legal duty for information sharing between safeguarding parties. Can the Minister say whether this can be included in any of the Bills currently going through Parliament; for example, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill or the Crime and Policing Bill? That is interesting because the Minister and I had a debate about another piece of legislation which is waiting to be enacted. I do hope that that might be the case.

Is it also possible to use a different Bill currently in front of Parliament, which might be the Crime and Policing Bill or the Victims and Courts Bill, to change the law to ensure that children who are raped cannot consent—the Minister is very clear in the Statement that that is the law and it must be explicit—and that advice to the CPS should be that an alleged perpetrator must be charged with rape and not a lesser charge?

The proposed changes to the taxi licensing system will be welcomed from these Benches. My noble friend Lady Pidgeon has already raised this problem with the noble Lord, Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill, so it is good to see that there will be action too.

Finally, I was slightly bemused by the title of the Statement today, because yesterday there was also a Written Statement from the DWP on safeguarding. I think it might have been quite helpful to call this what it is, which is a Statement on the chair and panel for the child grooming gangs inquiry.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for their comments.

I will start with the noble Lord, if I may. I hope he wants this inquiry to work—I know that he does. We want to look not at where we have come from over the last 15 or 16 months but at where we are going. What we have done in this case is establish a clear inquiry with a £65 million budget, a three-year definitive target date, and terms of reference that are published and in the Libraries of both Houses to achieve some outcome that ensures that we do not create further victims of child sexual abuse and that we tackle the underlying causes of how grooming gangs have been allowed to operate in this country—from whatever ethnicity, but, particularly, as is mentioned here, to examine particular ethnicities and whether that has been an aggravating factor in some of those instances. I hope he will give it a fair wind.

The noble Lord asked about the Labour Party membership of the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, and Zoë Billingham. The Home Secretary has accepted a recommendation from the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, to appoint the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, Zoë Billingham and Eleanor Kelly, former chief executive of Southwark Council. The noble Baroness, Lady Casey, chose them because, as he knows, the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, was Children’s Commissioner for six years. She has devoted her life to children’s rights, and she has worked with charities and with Prime Ministers of all political parties to deal with these issues over a long period. Zoë Billingham is a former inspector of constabulary and currently chair of a health foundation, and brings deep expertise. Eleanor Kelly was chief executive of a local authority and supported survivors of the London Bridge terrorist attack and victims of the Grenfell Tower fire. Their party membership was not a deciding factor in their appointment. Their experience, skills and contribution certainly were.

The noble Lord asked about the scope of the inquiry, and I think it is important that we say that the inquiry’s terms of reference are clear on a number of vital issues. It is focused on child sexual abuse committed by grooming gangs. It will consider explicitly the background of offenders, including their ethnicity and religion. It will look specifically at where authorities and others have failed to properly investigate what has happened, and it will do so without fear or favour. I hope that answers some of the points that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, also covered.

The noble Lord asked about the Crime and Policing Bill and why this starts only from now in terms of what happened in the past. What happened in the past is subject to review and investigation. He will know that it is not appropriate for the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, or indeed the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, to look at things that happen today. It is for the police to bring to the CPS and to take any action against anything today. This is a historical examination, not a current investigation. That is for the police.

The noble Lord also asked about what we are doing now. He has spent many a pleasant hour with me on the Crime and Policing Bill, and he will know that this Government are putting in place a range of IICSA recommendations from Alexis Jay, which, if I was being politically motivated, I would say his Government did nothing about in the two and a half years when they had those recommendations lying on their desks. We have put those things into play. He knows that we will continue to look at grooming gang issues in that Bill to ensure that we put further preventive measures in place to tackle them.

The noble Lord asked whether the inquiry will look at specific areas. The noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, has already said that she will begin to look at Oldham as a particular case because we indicated earlier that we would look at Oldham. We will look at others as and when, according to the issue. The terms of reference are subject to consultation, which goes to a point that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, mentioned, until 31 March next year.

The noble Baroness asked about victims and survivors. We want victims and survivors to be involved and engaged and to feel part of this process. That is why one of the first things that has happened since her appointment is that the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, is meeting victims and survivors this week to test their concerns and issues and how we take this matter forward. As we do, she wants to test the terms of reference and terms of engagement by 31 March, and comments can be put in there. That is an important part of how we engage with victims.

We have engaged with victims, and one of the reasons we have had some difficulty getting a chair in place until now is that we have had to engage with victims to ensure that we have their view on the proposed chair. The noble Baroness, Lady Casey, engaged with victims about the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, and the panel members. The first thing that the chair and panel will do this week, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, is to meet victims still further.

The noble Baroness made a number of other points around the state failing. She will know that we have put in place what is colloquially called the Hillsborough law, which is going through the Houses of Parliament at this moment. That is an important way to prevent systemic failures in future. She mentioned a number of other areas in relation to the recommendations that the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, made. We have accepted a number of those recommendations. We have looked at the issue of the audit. She asked whether that audit can be brought forward and whether it needs legislation. We are currently looking at how we can examine that legislation and what format that will take, but I assure her that we are looking at rectifying that gap, by legislation if need be, at the earliest possible opportunity.

I welcome the noble Baroness’s support for the regulations on taxis and taxi licensing. My right honourable friend the Transport Secretary and in this House my noble friend Lord Hendy will be legislating shortly in the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill to close this dangerous loophole on the regulation of taxis, and we hope that will be taken forward shortly.

The noble Baroness will know that we have looked at child sexual abuse, children who have been raped by an adult and what we do with that. While the law has protected abusers from the consequence of their crimes, it has too often punished victims. In the Crime and Policing Bill we are looking to disregard offences related to prostitution, in particular, which we discussed earlier this week.

I say to the noble Baroness—and this goes to what the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, said about what we are doing now—that a couple of months back we launched, through the National Crime Agency, Operation Beaconport, which is reviewing closed cases of child sexual abuse. It has already flagged 1,200 cases for potential reinvestigation, and 200 of those cases are high priority because they are rape. There are evil men out there who committed those crimes. They will not be sleeping comfortably in their beds now because they will know that the National Crime Agency is after them, will follow that evidence and will ensure that they are brought to justice. We will continually look at trying to take action against others who are before the courts in due course.

There have been failings—let us not get away from this—but I hope that this Government are grappling with those issues and coming to some conclusions. I hope that all Members of this House will look forward to participating successfully in this inquiry when the terms of reference are finally agreed following consultation. When we get reports and recommendations, going back to what the noble Baroness said earlier, I think it is fair to say that we have to judge those recommendations at the time. That will be three years hence, but that does not mean we are not doing things in between. If the noble Baroness looks at the history of where this Government have come from, it does not mean that we have not accepted recommendations from the noble Baroness, Lady Casey. I hope that the House will welcome the Statement today and help make it a success for the future.

12:08

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, the core group in this will, of course, be the survivors. The inquiry will be there to ask what happened and what we can do to prevent it happening in future. Yet I read in the press today that the survivors group is to be wound down very shortly, this month or next month. What representation will survivors have as a group? That is my first question. Secondly, what funding will they have for independent legal support? I am not talking about advocacy because I do not think it is that sort of inquiry, but they will need to have the help of competent solicitors to organise themselves and to make submissions meaningfully and efficiently.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. The survivors are not a coterminous, cohesive group. They have different experiences and different views on what is happening. The noble Baroness, Lady Casey, and now my noble friend Lady Longfield are trying at least to meet a panel of survivors to examine how best we can involve survivors and victims in the process of both the appointment of the chair, as has been done, and the terms of reference. Again, it is important that survivors continue to express their views. We have allocated around £3.6 million this week to support Operation Beaconport, and a portion of that resource is to assist survivors and help them to be able to work with the inquiry in a positive way. That is not a finite sum and it may be reviewed at a later date, but the initial £3.65 million that we have put in place is there both to try to help to support the prosecution of historical perpetrators and to assist victims in this process, which I know is extremely difficult for them. The whole purpose of what we are trying to do, as I am sure the noble Lord will accept and support, is to not retraumatise victims as far as possible by the actions of this inquiry.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, many of the victims at the centre of the inquiry were victims at least twice over: they were abused by the gangs but also by those who were supposed to be caring for them. The inquiry will be looking at systemic failures in the system and will go on for three years. Can the Minister assure us that those who were working in the so-called care system at the time, and were responsible for effectively abandoning these children, will not be allowed to work with children again? That includes the three years during which the inquiry winds on.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Baroness invites me to come to conclusions about what the inquiry might say in any particular circumstance. Hopefully, I can reassure her by saying that the inquiry is already going to look at individual authorities urgently. If there are emerging issues, then I expect my noble friend Lady Longfield to report those to Ministers. They are beginning to look at the local authority of Oldham as a first priority, and there may be more that they look at individually. I suspect that if there are lessons to be learned during the course of the inquiry, such as those that the noble Baroness has mentioned, they will be drawn to the attention of Ministers, but we have set a remit and a scope for the inquiry and I think it fair that we let the chair and panel members, with the guidance of the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, examine those issues. Self-evidently, though, if someone has not performed their duty and that has led to the exploitation and grooming of individuals and has failed in their professional duty, then they should be held to account for that. What I cannot say to the noble Baroness is who, what, where and when, because that is part of the purpose of the inquiry.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the Statement and I certainly welcome the appointment of my noble friend Lady Longfield as the chair of this very important inquiry; she has the requisite experience and skills. Like others, I regret that it took so long but I understand that it is a complex situation. I have one question: it is great that the inquiry has a defined timescale of three years, but I wonder if in that time there will be opportunities for my noble friend to update Parliament on the progress of the inquiry. Where there is no communication, there is a vacuum, and vacuums lead to suspicion, so the more open the inquiry can be, the better.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. There are two issues arising out of that. The first is that I personally, as Minister, will have a responsibility for holding to account the budget and timescale of the inquiry. In the past, some inquiries have said, “We’re going to do it in three years”, but then it has taken longer—maybe five years or six—and recommendations have not come out. My first job as the Minister is to ensure that we hold now to the three-year timetable and to the budget and that we liaise with the chair on those matters. What the chair says and does is for the chair to determine, in my view—for example, if the chair wishes, as I will do anyway, to meet regularly to review those other matters that I have just mentioned. If the chair wishes to draw attention to anything in particular then I am sure that will be done, but I do not want to restrict the chair or commit her to doing things that it is for the chair to determine. Self-evidently, however, if there are emerging issues that the chair wishes to report to Ministers then it will be for Ministers to report those to both Houses of Parliament in due course, for the reasons that my noble friend has mentioned.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for taking questions on the Statement today. I have looked at the provisions in the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill and welcome the provisions that deal with the out-of-area taxi provisions, as do many taxi operators themselves. However, those provisions seem to leave the question open as to how the perpetrators of these crimes were deemed to be fit and proper persons to operate private hire vehicles, allowing them to groom with such devastating consequences the victims of these grooming gangs. How is the Minister assured, under the provisions in the devolution and empowerment Bill, that this will not happen again in future?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The provisions in the English devolution Bill are Department for Transport provisions led by my noble friend Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill, based on recommendations that have been made to the Government by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey. We believe—and, ultimately, this will be for my noble friend Lord Hendy to hold to account—that those changes in the regulations will ensure that there is greater control over the allocation and control of licences. Ultimately, it is for him to agree those recommendations, with the House’s support, and deliver on them. It has been identified as a gap, and we have tried to close it. Further lessons may come out of the inquiry led by my noble friend Lady Longfield with the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, supporting her, which may look at further issues to do with the points that the noble Baroness has mentioned, but I hope the Government’s swift action on taxi licensing is welcome.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, the last paragraph of the Statement says that

“the chair and panel of an inquiry … will shine a bright light on this dark moment in our history. They will do so alongside the victims of these awful crimes, who have waited too long to see justice done. This inquiry is theirs, not ours”,

so it belongs to them. I want to know whether there will be a counsel to the inquiry to advise them in matters that sometimes may need clarification. Will the survivors, whose inquiry it is—the same question was asked by the noble Lords from the Official Opposition—get counsel from the start so they can see what kind of legal advice they are going to get? These are traumatised people who have been violated, so from the start a policy needs to be made, in conversation with the chair, that they will have a counsel to help them. Without that being put in place, I am afraid that the three years are probably going to end up without getting the direction that is required.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble and right reverend Lord for his comments. The £65 million that we have allocated to the budget for this inquiry includes a range of issues to do with the management of the inquiry. I would like to allow both my noble friend Lady Longfield and her two panel members, with the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, to detail in due course how that expenditure is going to be allocated. We have allocated a budget of £65 million that we think is fair, and it is important that they have an opportunity to report back on how that budget is allocated. Again, for the record, the inquiry is going to look at historical and current failures in the performance on grooming gangs. That is what it is about. As ever, the point that I have mentioned about current potential criminal action is one for the police.