𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

The father of a rape gang victim says he is “extremely disappointed” in the appointment of Labour member of the House of Lords Anne Longfield to lead an inquiry into grooming gangs. Lady Longfield was appointed by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to chair a three-year inquiry into grooming gangs, with a budget of £65 million. She is a former children’s commissioner, and has vowed to “not shy away” from difficult truths.

But some people have criticised the appointment, because she is a Labour peer. They include Marlon West, who said: “I’m extremely disappointed. As a campaigner, more importantly as a father, we’ve been asking for a judge, preferably a non British judge. Then when I discovered that Dame Longfield has been named the chair, who also is, historically, a Labour peer, it’s really concerning. Because we all know this: a lot of the areas where girls are groomed, including my daughter, are Labour run. And what we don’t want is Labour scrutinising Labour.”

Mr West told GB News: “So it goes back to trust. With everything that’s gone on in the last few months, survivors on families don’t trust Labour, so we are dubious straight away.

“However, that said, I do know that Dame Longfield has done some good work with county lines, but she’s not done anything around grooming.”

Daughter Scarlett West has spoken about how she was trafficked for three years from the age of 14. She waived her right to anonymity and presented a Sky News documentary where she said the police and social services had failed to protect girls.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said: “Why pick a Labour peer? I mean, that will appear to everybody like, effectively, you’re marking your own homework.”

Speaking in the House of Commons, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said there was “nothing Muslim or Islamic” about grooming gang crimes.

Ms Mahmood also said she feared community relations had been damaged by “the actions of those who looked the other way” during reports of group-based child sexual exploitation.

Talking about the inquiry, she said: “What is required now is a moment of reckoning. We must cast fresh light on this darkness.”

Ms Mahmood also said: “We should always pursue justice without fear or favour because, in the end, that is the only way to maintain confidence in our system of justice, but also to make sure that we don’t inadvertently harm community relations, which is what I think has happened because of the actions of those who looked the other way when these crimes were being committed.”

Baroness Louise Casey of Blackstock completed an audit on group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse earlier this year, and recommended that the Government launches a national inquiry into English and Welsh cases.

She also recommended that the authorities collect ethnicity and nationality data for all suspects in child sexual abuse and criminal exploitation cases.

“The ethnicity data collected for victims and perpetrators of group-based child sexual exploitation is not sufficient to allow any conclusions to be drawn at the national level,” Lady Casey found, warning also that “the ethnicity of perpetrators is shied away from”.