Operation Augusta

Chris Green Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I congratulate the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) on securing this important and timely debate.

We remember what Operation Augusta was about: the death of Victoria Agoglia due to a drug overdose inflicted on her by a 50-year-old man. She was in care. She should have had a huge amount of support from the state, but it was not there. It is right that the review commissioned by the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, reflected on that, and it is right that we should look at the support for victims and seek to punish the criminals who were there at that time, but we should also challenge the decision makers.

Those people—people in Greater Manchester police, and social workers in Manchester City Council—made the decisions. Those people knew exactly what was going on, but they have not been challenged for their actions, whether they amount to negligence and misconduct or criminal actions. Because of the lack of challenge at the time, and the apparent lack of challenge now, we do not know where those people are. Have they been promoted elsewhere? We know they were involved in a cover-up. It seems clear to anyone who looks at this that there was a cover-up. If those people were promoted elsewhere or moved sideways, did that cover-up and that culture move with them?

A number of colleagues wrote a letter to Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, challenging him on a number of concerns in the report. I think we were all pretty disappointed at his rather supine response. He accepts that Operation Augusta stopped solely due to lack of resource, but the number of police officers in Greater Manchester police increased by more than 1,000 between 1997 and 2004-05. It had 1,000 additional police officers in that time, yet we hear there was a lack of resource.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly) highlighted, there were a number of live inquiries, and we know the nature of the crime committed against Victoria Agoglia, but we ought to focus on the Manchester Evening News headline, which captures so much: “A paedophile grooming gang was left to roam the streets of Manchester—and police knew who they were and exactly what they were doing”. That is what we know to be true. The people who were involved in the decision making at that time have not been held to account. I am not sure it is credible to say this is only about resources.

It is also incredible that the identity of the gold commander—the person who made the decision to end Operation Augusta—is not known. It is also incredible that, just as his or her identity is not known, the minutes from Greater Manchester police of the meeting where it was decided to end Operation Augusta have disappeared—and, by amazing coincidence, the minutes from Manchester City Council disappeared at the same time. How many people at this stage would not suspect a cover-up?

The report references successes. It has been highlighted that of the 97 individuals under scrutiny for grooming, plying children with drugs and raping children, three were imprisoned—three of 97. That is referred to in the report as a success. In no way can an objective person see Operation Augusta described as a success. It was an utter failure. Its closure was a decision by the gold commander, and in Andy Burnham’s response to our letter and his description of it, he accepts the lack of knowledge. There is no challenge and no sense of an injustice.

Data sharing is incredibly important in these matters. The Mayor watched the television programme, and he started the inquiry in September 2017. In January 2018, Greater Manchester police agreed what access the review could have to that data. In September 2018—a year after the review started—Rochdale Borough Council agreed on access, and a month after that Manchester City Council agreed on access. Considering that we are talking about the production-line rape of children, it is extraordinary that it took Rochdale and Manchester councils a year to agree access to information. This was a serious review, with serious people heading it, and it took a year to reach agreement. I do not see how anyone cannot be aghast at that.

It is a consistent feature that when the Mayor of Greater Manchester ought to be challenging what has—or has not—been done, there is silence. If council leaders or people in the councils were not handing over information or being forthcoming, he should have used not just his position as police and crime commissioner of Greater Manchester police but his public platform as Mayor of Greater Manchester to challenge them to hand it over, but he chose not to.

A huge amount of follow-up work needs to be done. The report should have been in one piece, but it has been split up because of the delays. The sense of a cover-up and everything being kicked into the long grass is clear to anyone who reads the report and the response from Andy Burnham to our letter. The Minister, in reading Andy Burnham’s response, will find he mentions throughout it his lack of ability to act. If he cannot or will not act, I call on the Government to intervene: to look at Greater Manchester police and Manchester City Council and to take action where it is needed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I thank the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) for securing the debate. My thoughts, like those of other hon. Members, are with the family of Victoria Agoglia and the other 25 victims identified in the recently published review, who were so tragically let down, as well as with the many for whom suffering is ongoing.

While the terms of reference of the Operation Augusta assurance review, commissioned by Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, indicated its intention to be a forward-facing exercise, the comments on the failures to protect Victoria are damning. Chapter 2.11 sets that out clearly, leaving no doubt that

“Victoria Agoglia was exposed to the most profound harm, at least from the age of 13. Her exposure to sexual exploitation by adult males was known to police and social services and, despite the risk of significant harm caused by the men who were sexually exploiting her, statutory child protection procedures, which should have been deployed to protect her, were not utilised”.

The report is set out as an assurance review, yet, from a sample of 25 children, there are no assurances. In the case of Victoria and 15 others, where there was

“significant probability of child sexual abuse”,

the report gave “no assurance” that that had been appropriately addressed by Greater Manchester police or Manchester City Council.

Those young schoolgirls were known to be being abused. They were not being protected from harm, and yet the investigation, Operation Augusta, which commenced following the death of Victoria in September 2003, was summarily and prematurely closed down on 1 July 2005. Some 12 years later, the BBC documentary “The Betrayed Girls” exposed the shocking extent of child sexual exploitation in Greater Manchester, and the Mayor of Greater Manchester commissioned the assurance exercise that reported in January, more than two years later.

In the light of the review, I joined other Greater Manchester MPs and co-signed a letter, sent by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Chris Green), to the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham. I hope to hear reassurance that people who see failings and neglect can bring them to light and challenge the system without fear. It takes incredible bravery to be a whistleblower, but it should not. People who speak out and highlight negligence and misconduct can save lives—people such as Maggie Oliver and Sara Rowbotham, whose actions were instrumental in exposing the failure to protect children and led to the opening of the investigation.

Many whistleblowers who fight uphill battles to get justice for victims too often find themselves becoming the target of retaliation and unfounded allegations to undermine their actions.

[Chris Green]

We hear about Greater Manchester police and the culture having shifted, but when it comes to whistleblowers and the failure of iOPS—it crashed overnight, and there might be a serious incident in Greater Manchester—off-duty police officers have told me that they are threatened with summary dismissal if they talk to an MP or the press about it. The culture of clamping down on whistleblowers seems to be alive and well in Greater Manchester police.

[Mary Robinson]

My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. Without action to tackle that, we will see more of these cases. It is imperative that such issues are taken seriously in Greater Manchester and across the country.

I am not wholly satisfied with the response that we received from the Mayor to our letter. While recognising the bravery of the whistleblowers in this case, he offers no indication of what action he will take to ensure that future whistleblowers are valued and protected. If people are afraid to speak out or suspect they will not be listened to, negligence, malpractice and abuse will continue to go unchallenged.

A recent report by the all-party parliamentary group on whistleblowing highlighted the case for having an independent office for the whistleblower and a ban on non- disclosure agreements in whistleblowing cases, as well as protection against retaliation. I hope the Minister will be able to consider some of those potential resolutions.

The Manchester Evening News and its investigative reporter Jen Williams have given this case extensive coverage, and we owe them thanks for their reporting. One of the headlines read: “A paedophile grooming gang was left to roam the streets of Manchester—and police knew who they were and exactly what they were doing”. Amid ongoing concerns that a cover-up took place in the case of Operation Augusta, questions remain. Who knew about the scale of the abuse of those children? Why did nobody speak out? Could it happen again? In the light of today’s revelations that the iOPS system is not properly recording, or allowing officers to access, information on potentially serious cases, that is a live issue.

I welcome the Home Office’s intention to publish a national strategy across law enforcement and government authorities to tackle child sexual abuse. When can we expect that strategy to be published? Will the protection of whistleblowers form part of it so that the shocking incidents of abuse, neglect and abject failure highlighted today are not repeated?