Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of announcing a national inquiry into grooming gangs; and what steps she is taking to (a) support investigations into alleged crimes and (b) help prevent similar crimes in the future.

This Government is prioritising work to ensure victims and survivors of Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse are protected and supported, while pursuing offenders and bringing them to justice. We are continuing to work across government and with policing and law enforcement partners to strengthen the prevention of and response to these despicable crimes.

I refer the Rt Hon Member to the Home Secretary’ statement made on 16 January, which sets out some of the actions the Government is taking forward to tackle child sexual exploitation and abuse, including on grooming gangs offending. This includes making grooming an aggravated factor in sentencing, and new help to assist victims in getting prosecutions underway by expanding the remit of the Independent Child Sexual Abuse Review Panel.

The Home Secretary has also written to the National Police Chiefs’ Council to ask all chief constables to look again at historical gang exploitation cases where No Further Action was taken, and to work with the Child Sexual Exploitation Police Taskforce to pursue new lines of inquiry and to reopen investigations where appropriate. These measures are being backed with £2 million of additional funding.

The Home Secretary is also appointing Baroness Louise Casey to lead an audit to improve our understanding of the scale, nature and drivers of group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse at a national and local level, and to make recommendations on what additional action is needed to improve our response.