Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Robbie Moore and Gavin Williamson

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)]

Having consistently advocated for victims of the rape gangs scandal in my part of West Yorkshire—I have raised the subject more than 40 times in this place since being elected—I want to focus on that issue in the short time I have been allocated to speak today. It is over two decades since the Labour MP Ann Cryer, my predecessor, first brought the issue to the House. Unfortunately, we seem to be repeating the mistakes of the past today. It is deeply concerning to me that right hon. and hon. Members on the Government Benches plan to vote against the call in the amendment for a national rape gangs inquiry.

Last night, the safeguarding Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips)—told the public that a national inquiry is not needed because local inquiries are more effective at bringing about change. However, just minutes after she made those remarks, local leaders in Bradford once again rejected my long-standing calls for a full local inquiry into rape gangs across Keighley and the wider Bradford district, arguing that it would be too expensive. That same local authority has spent more than £40 million of public money on an empty music venue in the heart of Bradford. This is a complete and utter dereliction of duty by local leaders. More importantly, it demonstrates what I have been trying to say on this issue for years: every time I have brought up this issue at national level, it is referred back down to local government, but every time I have taken the prospect of an inquiry down to the local level, the suggestion is blocked by local leaders, and I am told that this is a national problem. There has been a complete vacuum of accountability in the system over the past two decades.

[Sir Gavin Williamson]

How many of the people involved have been held accountable, lost their job or had action taken against them?

[Robbie Moore]

Nobody has, and that is exactly why I have been advocating for a local inquiry across the Bradford district—for far too long. A report of 50 pages that looked at five children who had been sexually exploited in the Bradford district was released in 2020. It acknowledged that there had been mistakes, but nobody was held to account.

The amendment rightly tabled by the Leader of the Opposition is important because it tackles systematic problems and will end this vacuum of accountability once and for all. Convictions should follow a national inquiry that focuses on rape gangs and child sexual exploitation. When local leaders refuse their duty and ignore the concerns of local victims, it is only right that the Government step in. Ultimately, this is not about party politics, but about the difference between right and wrong. For too long, at all levels of the British state—in national and local government—all those with safeguarding responsibilities have failed to do the right thing.

There are children and families out there—I know them; I have met them in my constituency—who have suffered abuse that is unspeakable. They want the world to know the depths to which this scandal reaches. They fear, as I do, that the scale of gang rape and child sexual exploitation across the Bradford district will dwarf that in Rotherham. They want an end to this accountability vacuum. On behalf of my constituents across Keighley and indeed the wider Bradford district, I urge everyone in the House to vote with their conscience, stand up for what is right, do the right thing, and vote for a national rape gangs inquiry.