GROOMING GANGS INQUIRY: No funding or staffing levels and no guarantee of pre-Christmas update plus fears Home Office has not ordered police forces to 'not destroy records'

THE most senior civil servant in the Home Office was unable to confirm what the budget will be for the National Grooming Gangs Inquiry, or how many people will work on it, and could not commit to there being any meaningful update before Christmas.

Dame Antonia Romeo (above), the Permanent Secretary for the Home Office, received a grilling from MPs on the Home Affairs 

Select Committee, about when the inquiry will be up and running.

Robbie Moore, (below) Tory MP for Keighly and Ilkley, asked "what level of funding has been allocated so far" and she said: "I can't say, we are at the allocations stage."

When he asked what level of staffing had been allocated so far, she said there was a team of about 50 people at the Home Office who focus on violence against women and girls, but he said he wanted to know how many there were specifically for the inquiry. 

She said there was one senior civil servant, who had a team of 11 people, who was leading on the issue, but added that people from other Government departments will also be involved.

She then asked him how many people would be appropriate, which he slammed as completely the "wrong question" to someone who did not have the level of access she enjoyed.

Mr Moore said it was the biggest national scandal the country had ever seen.

He said: "We were told of five local inquiries in January this year that never came to anything. We were told in June there would be a national inquiry. We are now in November and we still don't know who is the independent chair, the terms of reference, how much funding there will be and which local areas will be included despite me campaigning for Bradford to be one of them. Are we likely to get any update before Christmas?"

Dame Romeo said: "I don't think I can commit to that. It is going to take as long as it takes. We would like to see it at pace, but it has to be done properly."

Mr Moore replied: "A year with no action, thank you."

Mr Moore also slammed the Government for still not having implemented any of 20 recommendations for improvements that followed the conclusion of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in October 2022.  

Dame Romeo said there were cross Government departments "working at pace" to finally implement the recommendations and that she had recently met with others on the issue.

Mr Moore said "simply saying you are having meetings is not good enough considering these recommendations were made in 2022."

Joani Reid, (above) Labour MP for East Kilbride and Strathaven, said it was a "huge, unmitigated failure" that none of the recommendations had been implemented yet.

Dame Romeo added that the upcoming Crime and Policing Bill would deliver some of the recommendations, including that of mandatory reporting of offences and there was an Interminstrail Group on the issue chaired by Jess Phillips.

Mr Moore said Baroness Louise Casey had said in her damning report on the scale of grooming gangs, which led to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer's U-turn over holding a national inquiry, after it was published in June, that the Home Office must ensure that police forces and other relevant agencies, such as social services, must not destroy any relevant records between now and the national inquiry.

Mr Moore said he had made a Freedom of Information Act request to West Yorkshire Police, to ask for copies of any correspondence about this from the Home office, and it responded that no such letters were held.

He took this to mean the Home Office had not put the force on notice in the way Baroness Casey recommended and asked Dame Romeo to confirm what, if anything, the Home Office had sent out to this effect.

She said she would write to the committee about this and a number of the other issues.