Grooming Gangs: Independent Inquiry

Lord Sandhurst Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, the core group in this will, of course, be the survivors. The inquiry will be there to ask what happened and what we can do to prevent it happening in future. Yet I read in the press today that the survivors group is to be wound down very shortly, this month or next month. What representation will survivors have as a group? That is my first question. Secondly, what funding will they have for independent legal support? I am not talking about advocacy because I do not think it is that sort of inquiry, but they will need to have the help of competent solicitors to organise themselves and to make submissions meaningfully and efficiently.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. The survivors are not a coterminous, cohesive group. They have different experiences and different views on what is happening. The noble Baroness, Lady Casey, and now my noble friend Lady Longfield are trying at least to meet a panel of survivors to examine how best we can involve survivors and victims in the process of both the appointment of the chair, as has been done, and the terms of reference. Again, it is important that survivors continue to express their views. We have allocated around £3.6 million this week to support Operation Beaconport, and a portion of that resource is to assist survivors and help them to be able to work with the inquiry in a positive way. That is not a finite sum and it may be reviewed at a later date, but the initial £3.65 million that we have put in place is there both to try to help to support the prosecution of historical perpetrators and to assist victims in this process, which I know is extremely difficult for them. The whole purpose of what we are trying to do, as I am sure the noble Lord will accept and support, is to not retraumatise victims as far as possible by the actions of this inquiry.