Operation Augusta

James Daly Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Operation Augusta.

This is a story of the gross failure of public policy, and the implementation of public policy, to protect vulnerable children. Andy Burnham, the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester watched “The Betrayed Girls”, a BBC programme about the sexual abuse and exploitation of young people, in 2017. Afterwards, he set up what became the independent assurance review of the effectiveness of multi-agency responses to child sexual exploitation in Greater Manchester. I want to discuss part 1, which is an assurance review of Operation Augusta.

I watched “The Betrayed Girls” on Sunday evening on BBC iPlayer, and it was a harrowing experience. Reading the report, one varies between despair and outrage at the failures of Greater Manchester police and Manchester City Council to protect mainly young girls, but young boys too, from predatory sexual exploitation.

If we had the same rules as the US Senate, I would ask for the report to be read into the record so that people could read it, but we do not, so I will have to summarise it. Part 1 focuses on Operation Augusta, which was set up following the death of Victoria Agoglia on 29 September 2003. She died after being injected with heroin by a 50-year-old man. Shockingly, although she died in 2003, the report states that there has been no follow-up investigation into her death, despite the fact that Peter Fahy, the chief constable, told her relatives afterwards that he was quite happy to look at the case again, which led them to believe that it would be. Since then, Peter Fahy has said that he was just being open. I think that is dissimulating to the point of dishonesty. It was clearly the intention to reassure the family that the death of this girl would not be forgotten.

There has been no investigation, although there has been a coroner’s inquest. Four of my colleagues from Manchester and I have written to the Attorney General asking for a fresh inquest. Reading the report, it is difficult to see why the coroner came to the conclusion he did. It is particularly difficult because the current coroner is refusing to release documents. In the absence of those documents, we would like the Attorney General to order a fresh inquest.

The coroner’s conclusion was that

“there was no evidence of a gross failure to meet Victoria’s needs that would have had a significant bearing on her death”

and that there could be no inference that the events leading to her death were “reasonably foreseeable”. She claimed she had been raped, sexually abused, assaulted and plied with drugs for two years, and the coroner could not see how her death was reasonably foreseeable. The social workers knew what was happening; they had given her recommendations about what to do. I think her death was eminently foreseeable, so I hope that the Attorney General will agree to order the opening of an inquest and that the Home Office will support that.

That was the genesis of Operation Augusta, which was set up to see whether many children—mainly girls aged between 13 and 16—were in the same situation as Victoria Agoglia. A dedicated team of police officers was set up with embedded social workers to look at the situation. Relatively quickly, they found that there were 57 girls in a similar situation and 97 suspected perpetrators of this kind of vile abuse.

The report makes it clear that although Operation Augusta was successful in identifying those girls and suspected perpetrators, it was bedevilled by a lack of resources and territorial disputes between three police divisions in Manchester and about access to HOLMES, the police computer that records cases. The situation was difficult, and it is clear that leadership was lacking. After 16 months, Operation Augusta was wound up.

One of the many worrying factors about this report is that the social workers and more junior police officers have vivid and clear recollections of the operation.

[James Daly (Bury North) (Con)]

The report is scandalous, harrowing and difficult to read. I quote one thing with reference to what the hon. Gentleman has just said:

“the decision to close down Operation Augusta was driven by the decision by senior officers to remove the resources from the investigation rather than a sound understanding that all lines of enquiry had been successfully completed or exhausted”.

On its own merits, that is scandalous. That is in the report. I also read—

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions must be short.

[James Daly]

I do apologise—

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Could you resume your seat, please?

[Graham Stringer]

The hon. Gentleman is underlining and emphasising my point about the lack of resources and leadership.

Two of the senior officers became chief constables afterwards, and their recollection of events is either non-existent or hazy. I simply do not believe that someone who had been in charge of such an operation and received such awful reports would not remember—the junior officers have clear memories of how it was finished. That, of course, meant that the perpetrators, who were known about by the police and social workers, carried on, as the report says, in plain sight. A lot of the abuse took place above Indian restaurants on Wilmslow Road—the so-called curry mile—in south Manchester. Cars were known to pull up with girls, and the police did nothing—in fact, they withdrew from acting on that information. As the hon. Member for Bury North (James Daly) said, that is scandalous.

Since the termination of Operation Augusta, the response of Greater Manchester police and Manchester City Council to this quite shocking report has been to apologise and to say that they are improving co-ordination and intensifying work to identify people, and they have done that. The awful thing is that, for the last 50 years, many of the children who have been abused and murdered have become the subjects of well-known operations. Reports always make 80 or 90 recommendations after such failures, and those are always agreed to, but we carry on writing reports, and children carry on being abused. Although I believe that Manchester City Council and Greater Manchester police are sincere in their attempts to be more effective and to get their act together, we need to understand the issue more deeply by asking why these things have happened time and again and what can be done to prevent a report from being written in 16 years’ time about children who are on the streets now, while we discuss this situation.

I referred to the clear memories of the more junior police officers and the amnesia of the senior officers involved. If there had been a different culture and stronger protections for whistleblowers, allowing those junior police officers and social workers to report such cases in the knowledge that they would not lose their careers, I believe more would have been done. In no sense would the public have put up with what happened if they had known about it—they expect our children’s services departments and the police to protect the most vulnerable young women—but they know about it only 16 years later. We need stronger protections for whistleblowers and an acceptance that bringing such issues to the attention of the public and senior politicians is a good thing.

Although there were disputes about resource allocation in the police force and between Greater Manchester police and Manchester City Council, one has to remember that, at the time, police numbers were going up and local government was better funded. That is no longer the case; there is not a children’s department in the country that is not short of resources for the protection of children. We cannot wish, as I do, for better service provision for those vulnerable people without providing the resources. Police numbers have also gone down. However, that decline in resources does not apply to the time of Operation Augusta.

Another point that was made in “The Betrayed Girls” and in the report, and that has been made more generally, is that the vast majority of the men involved were of Pakistani origin and of the Muslim faith. The police, who probably had good intentions, made a mistake in saying, “We will be accused of racism if we point this out.” Nazir Afzal, the previous director of public prosecutions in the north-west and a practising Muslim, said that such activities are against the teaching of Islam and of the Koran, and that the vast majority of Pakistani people are as appalled by what has happened as the rest of the population. That is not to say that one should hide what has happened on Wilmslow Road or in other parts of the country, such as Telford, Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford or Ipswich—one can go on and on listing different towns where such cases have happened.

A final point on resources is that a number of requests have been made for the Home Office to do serious research into grooming. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) recently asked that of the Home Office, both by letter and on the Floor of the House. It is a mistake to think that the grooming of children, as described in the report, is the same as paedophile rings. The Home Office has done good research on paedophile rings. They are understood by the police and the Home Office, which know how to disrupt them. However, very little research has been done on grooming gangs. For instance, we do not know whether there are “Mr Bigs” behind the gangs at a national level or whether the cases represent major crime or decentralised local activity. That is important for our understanding; if it is major crime, organised on a national and international basis like drug crime, the National Crime Agency should be involved in disrupting that activity. I would be grateful if the Minister explained when the Home Office will fund and sponsor research into grooming gangs.

As I said, if people had blown the whistle, a stop could probably have been put to these things, because the public would not stand for them. I want to mention two people who have stayed with this issue and have continued to bring it to the public’s attention since the first Rochdale and Rotherham cases came to light. Sara Rowbotham, who worked in Rochdale as head of its crisis intervention team and is now a Rochdale councillor, and Margaret Oliver, who was a detective on the Augusta team before her maternity leave, have constantly brought it to the public’s attention. Margaret has argued very strongly, alongside the family of Victoria Agoglia, for the case to be re-opened and for the police to take more action against the perpetrators. Those two women deserve serious praise for what they are doing. I do not want in any sense to trivialise this serious debate, but they are more worthy of being nominated to the House of Lords than some of the people who have been put forward by the Labour party, which has put forward a pretty eccentric list, to put it mildly.

[James Daly]

I agree completely with the hon. Gentleman on that. Why has nobody from the GMP or Manchester City Council been held accountable for the failings identified in the report?

[Graham Stringer]

I am not sure that I have a good answer for the hon. Gentleman. Some people, such as Pauline Newman, who was in charge of children’s services at the time, have moved on. The senior police officers who took the decision to wind up operation Augusta have moved on and are not co-operating—one is not talking at all, and the other says he cannot remember. In such circumstances, when people are no longer employed by the city council or Greater Manchester police, it is difficult to know what action could be taken or by whom. However, the hon. Gentleman asks a good question. A line of accountability is needed. When one reads the report and some of the reports since, records of meetings or of attendees at those meetings are absent in some cases. That makes things difficult. However, if his point is that somebody should be held accountable, I agree with him. That is clearly right.

The final point I want to make in this sad story is that the police and Manchester City Council have said that they will improve. Today, however, Greater Manchester police have declared a “critical incident” in the introduction of their iOPS computer system, which 90% of police officers rely on to get information. The system cost £29 million and is not working. With the best will in the world, if the officers whose job it is to look into these allegations do not know what is happening, they cannot do their job. We need not only resources—more police officers—but the proper use of resources and computer systems. Currently, when I have no doubt that many perpetrators are still walking the streets of Greater Manchester and other cities, we need Greater Manchester police to do better.

This is an awful and shocking story of the failure to protect some of the most vulnerable people in the country. One of the failures, which was a mistake, is that action was not taken in some cases because the police said that the girls were not reliable witnesses. However, there have been policy statements to the effect that we do not have to rely on the victims to protect themselves in order to take the perpetrators to court. I hope that the Home Office and all the councils in the country will redouble their efforts to ensure that such activities, which I am sure still happen, are stopped.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

First, I draw attention to my entry in the register. Secondly, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) for bringing this case before the House. It received very little coverage—a few headlines in the newspapers—and was not mentioned at all in this House. Yet the report was of huge significance, not just historically, but for the lessons that still need to be learned, as he alluded to today: how we are still not dealing adequately enough with child sexual abuse in all its forms; and in particular whether we are policing it properly.

As everyone will agree, the report is troubling and makes for uncomfortable reading, such as the tragedy of Victoria Agoglia, the 15-year-old so badly let down in the care of Manchester City Council. Her treatment has many wider implications for vulnerable young people exposed to child sexual exploitation.

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman mentioned Maggie Oliver, who has been the hero throughout the whole of this sorry episode. She called out the neglect—to put it mildly—in effect sacrificed her career and has at last been vindicated after all that time. I met Maggie at the “Newsnight” studio when this issue came up and we were interviewed, just a few weeks ago. I hope the charity that she is looking to set up to continue her good work will be a great success.

I pay tribute to the Mayor of Manchester for commissioning his review—historical, because it was many years before Manchester had an elected Mayor. This is only the first phase of that review, and four further stories that may make equally uncomfortable reading will come out in future. I also pay tribute to the BBC and the “Betrayed Girls” programme, which highlighted some of the horrors that happened.

I am afraid that the situation is not untypical. When I was Children’s Minister, one of the least enjoyable parts of my job was, every Monday morning, a run-through of all the cases that had come in of child abuse or child fatalities, often at the hands of carers, and of the latest state of play in the court cases. Only a few high-profile issues—the Victoria Climbiés, the Baby Ps and some of these gangs—reached the headlines, but they were just the tip of the iceberg. This was going on wholescale, at an industrial level, and to an extent it still is.

Reading the report, I am afraid that I had such a sense of déjà vu. It talked about the horrendous way in which Victoria Agoglia met her death, stating that “No action was taken” by the police or social care to address the issues. The “scoping phase” of the investigation

“built up a compelling picture of the systemic exploitation of looked after children in the care system in the city of Manchester”,

and found that “97 persons of interest” were

“identified as being involved…in the sexual exploitation of the victims”.

None of those 97, it would appear, has been brought to justice. The report concluded that although “significant information” was

“held by both Manchester City Council and Greater Manchester Police on some individuals who potentially posed a risk to children, the review team can offer no assurance that appropriate action was taken to address this risk.”

Sixteen children in the sample were being sexually exploited, and the review team could offer no

“assurance that this was appropriately addressed by either Greater Manchester Police or…the responsible local authority.”

Evidence was presented and victims—often vulnerable children in the care system—were not believed, even when they were brave enough to present. Victims were almost tarred as perpetrators, for bringing it on themselves. In some earlier studies, comments referred to “child prostitutes”—but there is no such thing as a child prostitute. If you are a child, and if you are engaged in sexual activity at the hands of somebody else, that is not prostitution; that is child abuse. It is child sexual exploitation, plain and simple. That phrase “child prostitution” should have no place in our lexicon. We are talking about children, particularly vulnerable children who were ruthlessly exploited and taken advantage of by some very unpleasant individuals.

The whole thing was therefore all too difficult to handle. There were ridiculous considerations of political correctness—which I am afraid were all-pervading, particularly in those days—and the police and other local agencies did not want to rock the boat, so it was swept under the carpet. Even with those 97 identified potential suspects, the inquiry was prematurely closed.

One phrase from the report about the perpetrators summed it up for me:

“They weren’t viewed as sex offenders per se, just a group of men of all ages, from one ethnicity taking advantage of kids from dysfunctional backgrounds.”

It was almost the kids’ fault; those people just happened to be there and took advantage. There is clear evidence that young people were not served or protected by the statutory agencies. The hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton made the point that there is no evidence of any misconduct charges having been brought against anyone involved in the failures of this case. There was a clear absence of identifying where the buck stopped. Some of those police officers are still in the police force, in one case at the level of chief constable, and their careers have advanced with apparently no consequences of the failures raised in the report. That must be addressed.

That attitude was all too common before 2011. There was a combination of ignorance, inadequate training, complacency, political correctness and indifference to vulnerable children. However, I believe that there was a sea change in 2011. Operation Retriever, which was the first high-profile operation, identified, prosecuted and jailed a gang of British Pakistani men based in Derby and other cities across the north. It was bravely brought by Sheila Taylor, who at the time was running a charity for victims in Derby. Through her constant badgering of the police to take the matter seriously, she made sure that it was properly investigated. That was the turning point.

That case was about the scale abuse of mostly but not exclusively teenage girls, by mostly but not exclusively British Pakistani gangs of men. Let us be clear: child sexual exploitation is committed by all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds. Most of those in jail will be white men who have committed various forms of child sexual exploitation, but this was a case of organised, systematic gang abuse by predominantly British Pakistani men and it was not properly called out, identified and prosecuted so that those people could be brought to justice. That sea change came about in 2011.

[James Daly]

The report mentioned a 2014 interview in which Victoria’s grandmother said that the men were still walking around in the local community. Nothing happened between 2014 and 2018, when the investigation took place. If there was such a sea change in 2011, can my hon. Friend explain what happened between June 2014 and 2018?

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right; there are still serious shortcomings in this case, but I am trying to draw a picture of why things changed nationally and why there are grounds for optimism, although one would not believe it to look at this report.

The report needs to lead to further investigation into the culpability of the perpetrators and the people who failed to identify and do something about them. Back in 2011, the Government produced the first comprehensive child sexual exploitation plan. I launched it, together with Barnardo’s, and worked with other agencies. It made it clear that that sort of CSE was going on in all parts of society and all parts of our country; it is not just a preserve of northern metropolitan cities such as Manchester. It happens in all parts of town; it is not something that just happens to those sorts of people in a different part of town. It happened to the children of doctors, lawyers and other professionals from all walks of life. The shocking images of gang members started to appear in the newspaper, and people started to wake up to it.

What really caused that sea change was the Jimmy Savile scandal the following year. It became a different world. From October 2012, most people in this country came to realise what child sexual exploitation actually was, and that it was happening. Awareness rose hugely. It was widespread throughout all sorts of society: in the health service, in education, in children’s homes, in the Church of England—I refer to the recent exposure about Bishop Peter Ball. Again, the police just shoved it under the carpet and did not properly pursue it. It happened in politics, with Cyril Smith and Operation Midland, where there were serious shortcomings—that will be the subject of further debate in this House in due course. It was happening in Rotherham, Oxford, Cornwall, Rochdale, Telford and so on. That led to the historic child abuse inquiry, which is still undertaking its huge job of work.

The question is: have things changed? Have the police, and all agencies, got wiser to detecting and taking seriously allegations of child sexual abuse? Have mindsets changed since 2004? The people who should have been looking after vulnerable children were just not; they were questioning whether anything serious was happening to them. Back in 2004 we were focused on cases such as that of Victoria Climbié. We had just had the Laming review. Abuse of children was largely down to carers inflicting violence on vulnerable children. The whole business of gangs and sexual exploitation was not on the radar. Some seven or eight years later, that very much came on to the radar.

What has changed—I saw this in my time as Children’s Minister and subsequently—is that now every single police officer is trained to identify child sexual exploitation. We have better joint working between agencies, although it is still not nearly good enough—I have serious concerns about the successors to the local safeguarding children boards properly joining up all the local interested parties. More cases are coming to court. Indeed, some 50% of cases going through the courts at the moment are to do with historical and contemporary sexual abuse. The problem is that far too little is ending up in prosecutions, particularly for contemporary sexual abuse and rape. It is still a big problem in this country.

I would like to finish with some of the statistics. Last year something like 104,000 children went through the care system in this country. It was estimated by an all-party group led by our former colleague Ann Coffey, who did a lot of very good work, that 11,500, or 11%, went missing at some stage. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children estimates that a child is abused in this country every seven minutes. There were some 76,000 reported sexual offences—a record level and a big rise over recent years—and 20% of those relate to children under the age of 10. That is down to better reporting and better police recording, but also to the fact that it is still a problem and we are not doing enough about it. It is also to do with children in the care system not being properly looked after.

Too many children are excluded from school— 42 children a day are permanently excluded from school and 410 are on fixed-term exclusions. They end up in gang and knife culture and become vulnerable to predators. Back in 2011-12 we produced heat maps of where children should be placed. Senior police officers and heads of schools from Kent, where a disproportionate number of children in care are placed—largely from London boroughs—came to see me. They told me that they were seriously worried about being overwhelmed by children in the care system who were not properly looked after and were placed in wholly inappropriate areas. We had cases of children being placed in children’s homes on the same streets as sex offender hostels.

We changed the regulations so that where children are placed out of the area of the local authority responsible for them, the director of children’s services will be responsible for a risk assessment of whether the place is appropriate and safe—not just whether the house was okay, but whether the area was okay. Still, 41% of children across the care system are placed out of area. In the case of going to children’s homes, that is over two thirds. Those heat maps are still not being properly enforced. That is part of the reason why too many of our children are still vulnerable.

My plea is that we learn the lessons. We need to know why people were not brought to account, and they still need to be brought to account. Are perpetrators still out there who could be prosecuted? What are we doing for the victims—those children who are still suffering the trauma of having gone through their experiences, which have been brought up again by the publication of this report? Are we properly looking after their interests? What are we doing now to ensure that those vulnerable children are properly looked after by agencies who get it? Agencies must know the extent of the problem, know what they have to do and act together in the best interests of the welfare of those children, so that tragic cases such as Victoria’s never happen again.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Daly (Bury North) (Con)]

My thoughts are with the victims of these crimes. I hope they have had the help and assistance they require to come to terms with what has happened to them, and that they go on to live positive and fruitful lives. I am sure they will.

In the short time I have, I want to make one point. The report is horrific. For 14 years, men in an area of Greater Manchester were allowed to commit the most horrific offences, and it was known to the authorities. That speaks for itself. In the report, individuals are identified who must be held to account. As a Member of Parliament representing a seat in Greater Manchester where police are investigating similar offences, I ask the Minister what the Government can do to hold to account those officers who have taken decisions and behaved in a way that has put young lives at risk and ruined them? Despite those circumstances, nothing seems to have happened.

The underlying tone of the report is that, for too long, nobody cared and nobody had any interest in these girls. I hope that is going to change. One of the ways we can make that change is by ensuring that those who are responsible for the decisions—or the lack of decisions—to protect their interests are held to account. Putting it bluntly, we cannot allow them to get away with it.