Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report

Kemi Badenoch Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Kemi Badenoch (North West Essex) (Con)]

I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of the statement, although when I listened to it, I could not believe my ears. It was as if this was the Government’s plan all along, when we all know it is another U-turn. After months of pressure, the Prime Minister has finally accepted our call for a full, statutory, national inquiry into grooming gangs, and I welcome our finally reaching this point. We must remember that this is not a victory for politicians—especially not for the ones, like the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister, who had to be dragged to this position. This is a victory for the survivors, who have been calling for this for years. However, I have been speaking to many who do not have confidence that a Government who ignored their concerns will deliver.

Before I turn to the detail of the Home Secretary’s statement, I want to recognise the tireless work of those who refused to let this issue be buried: survivors like Fiona Goddard, who bravely waived her anonymity; the parents of survivors, like Marlon West, who I spoke to this morning; Maggie Oliver, whose courage in speaking truth to power has been instrumental in bringing us to this point; the late Andrew Norfolk, whose fearless journalism brought these crimes to light; Baroness Casey for her review; and Charlie Peters, who has consistently been a voice for the voiceless.

The Prime Minister’s handling of this scandal is an extraordinary failure of leadership. His judgment has, once again, been found wanting. Since he became Prime Minister, he and the Home Secretary dismissed calls for an inquiry because they did not want to cause a stir. They accused those of us who demanded justice for the victims of this scandal of “jumping on a far-right bandwagon”, a claim that the Prime Minister’s official spokesman restated this weekend—shameful.

Time and again, it has been left to the Conservatives to force this issue. Three times—[Interruption.] They can all mutter now, but these Labour MPs voted against a national inquiry three times. The Liberal Democrats did not bother to vote at all—asleep at the wheel. Labour MPs voted against a reasoned amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, and in Committee they voted against the Bill. At Committee stage of the Crime and Policing Bill—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Mr Swallow, I want you to set a good example. This is a very serious statement, and tempers are running high, but I certainly do not want to see you pointing, shouting and bawling in that way.

[Mrs Badenoch]

Mr Speaker, they can point and shout as much as they like; they know the truth, just as we on the Conservative Benches do. Three times—[Interruption.] I will repeat myself: Labour MPs voted against the reasoned amendment to the children’s Bill; in Committee, they voted against that Bill; and they voted against the Crime and Policing Bill in Committee. They voted against a national inquiry and, at Prime Minister’s questions, the Prime Minister repeatedly ruled out a national inquiry, to the cheers of all the Labour MPs who are now pretending that they believed in an inquiry all along.

No doubt, in her response to me, the Home Secretary will try to claim that the previous Government did nothing—a wholly false assertion that she should not repeat today. The Conservative Government took extensive action, starting with the original Jay report, commissioned in 2014 by the then Home Secretary, Theresa May. A year later, she commissioned the independent investigation into child sexual abuse, and Sajid Javid commissioned ethnicity data collection in 2018. It is wrong to claim, as the Home Secretary did, that ethnicity data collection had not been done. I remind her that the Foreign Secretary criticised Sajid Javid at the time, saying that he was bringing the office of Home Secretary “into disrepute”, and that he was pandering to the far-right for doing exactly what the Home Secretary says she will now do. They should be ashamed of themselves.

We accepted all the recommendations made by the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse in 2022, except the recommendation to have a new Cabinet Minister, which would not have made any difference at all to the victims of this scandal. The Home Secretary claimed that the recommendations sat on the shelf, but let me be clear that we went further than those recommendations. It was the Conservatives who established the grooming gangs taskforce, which supported police forces to make 807 arrests for group-based child sexual exploitation last year, so do not tell me that we did nothing.

It is vital that this inquiry is robust, swift and, above all, independent.

There are legitimate concerns about institutions investigating themselves, especially as some of the most egregious cases of institutional failure occurred in Labour-controlled authorities. [Interruption.] Labour Members can moan as much as they like, but the people out there believe that is why nothing has happened yet. In Greater Manchester, Operation Augusta was prematurely shut down. In Rotherham, which has been under continuous Labour control since 1974, we saw repeated failures. In Telford, where Labour has predominantly held power, the current MP, the hon. Member for Telford (Shaun Davies), initially rejected calls for an inquiry while serving as council leader.

This inquiry must have teeth. It must start with known hotspots such as Bradford and Rochdale, and I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) for his persistent advocacy on this issue. We need clear commitments. For example, will the inquiry examine the role of ethnicity in these crimes, confronting hard truths about potential cover-ups motivated by fears of appearing racist? [Interruption.] There is no point in Labour Members muttering—the Home Secretary said it herself.

I spoke to the father of a survivor just this morning, and he told me that survivors need to have someone who is independent and who they can go to and trust. It is no use them being forced to speak to the same authorities who ignored them in the first place. Will this inquiry ensure that no one, whether police officers, councillors or council officials, is beyond scrutiny?

The Government’s approach to the Casey review itself raises serious concerns. While the review’s findings are crucial, we as legislators are sent here to make decisions, not to outsource the difficult ones. The Prime Minister has waited months for someone to take this decision for him. That is the kind of dithering and delay that the survivors complained about.

We need answers to the following questions. The House deserves to know what changed the Prime Minister’s mind from thinking that this was dog-whistle, far-right politics to something that he must do. When exactly did Baroness Casey submit her findings to Downing Street, and did the Government request any changes to her report? Does the Home Secretary agree that anyone in authority who deliberately covered up these disgusting crimes should be prosecuted for misconduct in public office and that those prosecutions should happen alongside, not after the inquiry? We believe that anyone in the police, local authorities, social services or even the CPS who covered this up because they cared more about so-called community relations than about protecting vulnerable girls as young as 10 years old should be pursued.

We welcome the Home Secretary’s comments about perpetrators not being able to make asylum claims. I remind her that we put forward an amendment to the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, and she and all her colleagues voted against that very measure. Does she now agree that the perpetrators should also not be able to make human rights claims to avoid deportation, and will she legislate to do that? Will the inquiry be concluded within two years, and will every one of the 50 towns affected be covered, including Bradford, which is still refusing to conduct an inquiry into this? Will those local inquiries have the power to summon witnesses, or is that power only for the national inquiry? Most critically, we need a clear timeline for conclusions and actions. The victims cannot wait another decade for justice: we should be able to do this in two years.

Finally, we did not need to commission a report to tell us what we already knew. Will the Home Secretary apologise on behalf of herself, the Labour party and the Prime Minister for wasting so much time and voting against this, dismissing the concerns of the survivors? The House, the British public and, most importantly, the many brave survivors deserve clear answers from a Government of dithering and delay.

[Yvette Cooper]

I do not think the Leader of the Opposition can have read the report and seen the seriousness of its conclusions, because it sets out a timeline of failure from 2009 to 2025. Repeated reports and recommendations were not acted on: on child protection, on police investigations, on ethnicity data, on data sharing and on support for victims. For 14 of those 16 years, her party was in government, including years in which she was the Minister for children and families, then the Minister for equalities, covering race and ethnicity issues and violence against women and girls. I did not hear her raise any of these issues until January this year. She will know that the Prime Minister did not just raise them but acted on them: he brought the first prosecutions against grooming gangs and called for action to address ethnicity issues in 2012. She will also know that the safeguarding Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), and I have raised these issues repeatedly.

The Leader of the Opposition referred to Professor Alexis Jay’s independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. I called for that inquiry and strongly supported it, and we wanted it to work on a cross-party basis. We supported its conclusions, but the Leader of the Opposition’s party did absolutely nothing to implement them. Time and again, recommendations just sat on the shelf, and it has taken this Government to bring forward the mandatory duty to report. She says that we should ensure that people who have engaged in cover-ups are prosecuted. I agree, which is why the Labour party is changing the law to make that possible, so that cover-ups cannot happen and people are held to account.

The Leader of the Opposition also knows that in the vote she referred to, what she wanted to do—the amendment she tabled—would have wrecked the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. That Bill includes two of Baroness Casey’s recommendations to strengthen child protection, recommendations that the Leader of the Opposition and her party refused to introduce over 14 years. I am sorry that she chose not to join in the apology to victims and survivors for decades of failure in 2022. That apology was a cross-party one, which, if she really had victims’ interests and the national interest at heart, it should be again.