Labour peer appointed to run national inquiry into child sex grooming gangs

A LABOUR peer has been announced as the chair of the national inquiry into grooming gangs.

Former children’s commissioner Anne Longfield (above) was announced as the lead of the inquiry announced by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in June this year following a damning report by Baroness Louise Casey who completed a rapid audit looking at the scale of grooming gangs across the country.

Announcing the appointment in the House of Commons yesterday Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said Baroness Longfield will resign the Labour whip in order to chair the national inquiry.

Baroness Longfield will be part of a three-person panel that will also include Zoe Billingham, the chair of Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, and Eleanor Kelly, former chief executive of the London borough of Southwark.

The inquiry will conduct local investigations in areas where suspected serious failings occurred. Ms Mahmood confirmed that one of these locations will be Oldham.

The inquiry will also have full legal powers under the Inquiries Act to compel witnesses to give evidence and require organisations to hand over documents and records.

About £65m has been commited to the inquiry to be completed within three years.

Ms Mahmood said of Baroness Longfield: “She has devoted her life to children’s rights, including running a charity supporting and protecting young people and working for prime ministers of different political parties.

“Children were submitted to beatings and gang rapes, many contracted sexually transmitted infections, some were forced to have abortions, others had their children taken from them.

“Some in positions of power turned a blind eye to the horror, even covered it up. What is required now is a moment of reckoning.

“We must cast fresh light on this darkness.”

It has taken some months to find a candidate to chair the inquiry after the final frontrunners dropped out in October and four survivors resigned from its victim liaison panel.

Some people were cynical about the appointment of a pro-Labour chair.

One posted online: "Longfield resigning the Labour whip won't stop her being a Labour stooge in their continued desperate stalling and cover up of the grooming gangs."https://www.essexnewsandinvestigations.com/single-post/jess-phillips-denies-cover-up-claims-over-grooming-gangs-inquriy-as-two-survivors-resign-from-pane