Starmer: Ministers “wasted” a decade over child abuse protections

Keir Starmer has accused ministers of having “wasted” a decade over strengthening protections for children after the government announced it was introducing mandatory reporting of suspected sexual abuse, a move Starmer called for in 2013.

Suella Braverman revealed on Sunday that the government plans to introduce a legal obligation for people working with children in England to report knowledge or suspicions of child sexual abuse.

Speaking to LBC radio this morning, the Labour leader said: “On this question of mandatory reporting, the duty to report particularly if you’re in a position where you see something going on, I called for that in 2013.”

“That is a decade lost, and I think the Prime Minister and others have to really explain why they’ve wasted that decade,” Starmer told listeners.

Rishi Sunak announced today that a new grooming gangs taskforce will be set up, which will see specialist officers brought in to support police forces with child sexual exploitation and grooming investigations.

The government said the new taskforce would be supported by the National Crime Agency and revealed that data analysts will work alongside the taskforce “to identify the types of criminals who carry out these offences”.

The government said: “This will include better data on the make-up of grooming gangs, including ethnicity, to make sure suspects cannot hide behind cultural sensitivities as a way to evade justice.”

Writing in the Mail on Sunday this weekend, Braverman claimed that there are “four critical facts about the grooming gangs phenomenon”, including that “the perpetrators are groups of men, almost all British-Pakistani, who hold cultural attitudes completely incompatible with British values”.

The Home Secretary also claimed in an interview with Sky News on Sunday that Labour-run councils failed to act on grooming gangs because of “not wanting to come across as racist, not wanting to call out people along ethnic lines”.

Speaking to the BBC, Lisa Nandy acknowledged that, in the cases of Rochdale and Rotherham, the official reports “were clear that there were politicians and [police] officers who didn’t report, sometimes for fear of political correctness”.

But the Levelling Up Secretary added that it is an “absolute joke” for the Home Secretary “to turn up in the TV studios today talking about a wilful, blind eye, near-complicit silence, talking about a lack of action”.

“If anybody could be accused of turning a blind eye to what is a very real problem in this country, across all backgrounds and ethnicities, it’s the Home Secretary,” the Labour frontbencher added.

A Home Office report on group-based child sexual exploitation (CSE), published in December 2020, concluded that “beyond specific high-profile cases, the academic literature highlights significant limitations to what can be said about links between ethnicity and this form of offending”.

The report continued: “Research has found that group-based CSE offenders are most commonly white. Some studies suggest an over-representation of Black and Asian offenders relative to the demographics of national populations. However, it is not possible to conclude that this is representative of all group-based CSE offending.”

Starmer told LBC that “it is right that ethnicity should not be a bar and political correctness should not get in the way of prosecutions”. But the Labour leader added: “The vast majority of sexual abuse cases do not involve those of ethnic minorities.”

Asked by Sky News this afternoon why the government is focusing on British Asian gangs when the data shows the majority of perpetrators are white, the Prime Minister said: “All forms of child sexual exploitation carried out by whomever are horrific and wrong.

“But with the specific issue of grooming gangs, we have had several independent inquiries look at the incidents here in Rochdale, but in Rotherham and Telford.

“What is clear is that when victims and other whistleblowers came forward, their complaints were often ignored by social workers, local politicians or even the police. The reason they were ignored was due to cultural sensitivity and political correctness. That is not right.”

The government also announced today that legislation will be introduced to make being the leader of or involvement in a grooming gang a statutory aggravating factor during sentencing, which it said reflects ministers’ “unwavering commitment to make sure these offenders face the toughest sentences for their crimes”.