𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

The rape gang scandal – the industrial-scale rape of British girls by gangs of largely Pakistani Muslim men – has disgraced our political and justice systems for decades. It is a stain on our national conscience, Parliament now has a chance to re-establish itself in the minds of the people as a good and just institution, by finally exposing that historic cover-up.

I am proposing that MPs should take over the inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal and run it as a select committee investigation or a parliament-wide commission. It would be the quickest way to bring the guilty to justice and give a voice to the victims than the government’s failing official inquiry.

We know that Keir Starmer’s government never wanted a national inquiry into the rape gangs to begin with.

In January he marshalled over 350 Labour MPs to vote the proposal down in parliament. The Prime Minister was finally forced to call an inquiry after a public backlash.

But almost five months later, the inquiry still has no chairman and no terms of reference. Five grooming gang survivors have now resigned.

As one of them, Ellie Reynolds said yesterday, she believes Labour’s inquiry was “rigged from the start” and she has “no faith whatsoever” in its ability to get to the truth.

Indeed, it seems Labour has been busy extending the cover-up. We now learn that, despite repeated denials, Labour’s London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Metropolitan Police chiefs been doing their best to hide known facts about grooming gangs in the capital.

As former police whistleblower Maggie Oliver has said, it looks as if Khan’s London could be the “last bastion” of the national cover-up of the rape gangs scandal.

I believe that Starmer’s inquiry is about kicking the can down the road until after the next general election. And nothing of value will come out of it.

It’s time for MPs to step up and to do our job of representing the British people. We forget how much power our sovereign Parliament has, if it chooses to use it.

A select committee inquiry would have the power to summon anybody, from former police officers to ex-Members of Parliament.

It would have the power to require that witnesses swear an oath; if what they say is deliberately misleading or untrue, they could face prosecution.

This is an enormous opportunity for Parliament and this discredited government to restore some public trust, on an issue that has been gnawing away at our public conscience for over a decade.

What I’m calling for here is Parliament to become a court, so that we can discover under oath the truth about who knew what and when, who refused to say anything, so that there can be prosecutions for negligence.

It will happen in the full glare of the media and it won’t take years to conclude but weeks, perhaps a couple of months.

And it will have the power to bring to book those who are suspected of colluding in the cover-up of one of the most shameful stories in the history of our nation.

If it is to get at the truth, our commission must have a laser focus on Pakistani grooming gangs.

The government has deliberately tried to widen the scope of its inquiry to include other victims of a very different kind of sexual abuse, effectively watering it down.

What the country demands now is that we expose the unique – and for many people difficult to understand – scandal that has been going on in our towns and cities for decades.

We must finally get at the full truth, however hard it might be. Parliament owes that first to brave women like Ellie, and then to the rest of the British people.