Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

Laurence Turner Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips]

It is not that victims like Joanna do not deserve justice; they absolutely do deserve justice. I do not know about Joanna’s case, but I should be more than happy to meet her and talk to her about it. The body that must hold a national inquiry into events in Scotland is a body in the devolved Government, because both policing and child protection are devolved issues. However, as I said to one of my hon. Friends earlier, I am more than happy to look into this. People who are Scottish, or who live in Scotland now, and have been abused in an area covered by the inquiry will absolutely be able to take part.

[Laurence Turner (Birmingham Northfield) (Lab)]

One of the questions that haunt Baroness Casey’s audit is, “Why?” Why was this type of offending allowed to grow seemingly unchecked for so long? Will the Minister, whom it is good to see in her place, give an assurance that serious and credible research on all the factors that drove and enabled the horrendous crime of gang-based child sexual exploitation will be commissioned and will operate without fear or favour?

[Jess Phillips]

Absolutely. One of Baroness Casey’s recommendations was for a piece of research on exactly that: the “why” about things that were covered up and the “why” about communities but also institutions. The Home Office is currently working with various academics to commission such research, and it is fundamental.

While a huge amount of discussion—and, as I have said, I agree with it—has concerned the “why” issue on ethnicity, with the nervousness, the wokeness or whatever we want to call it, another “why” is about class and the way in which the systems treat these young women when they come forward, and, indeed, the way in which they treat plenty of other women when they come forward in relation to any of these issues.