Labour Breaks Pledge to Publish Grooming Gangs Review in May – Guido Fawkes

Labour Breaks Pledge to Publish Grooming Gangs Review in May

Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips has been for some time fending off questions from opposing benches on what Labour’s  local grooming gang inquiries will look like. On 28 April when she was asked for more details on how additional inquiries will work, including how councils will be compelled to co-operate, she said:

“The framework for what local authorities will be tasked with will be released later in May, as will Baroness Casey’s review, which I have committed to publishing. All those things will be dependent on each other. I cannot stand here and say exactly what that will look like, because I do not know what Baroness Casey will say about any particular area and what I might need to focus on. I will go on the basis of facts—something that does not happen very often in this debate, I have to say. I will follow the facts; wherever they tell me that there are victims who need help, that is where I will go.”

Baroness Louise Casey’s audit was meant to be completed in mid-April. Phillips at the end of that month guaranteed it would be done by May, at which point the Home Office would reveal how its grooming gang inquiries would work. Crickets…

Alternative statutory inquiries have been proposed by the Tories while the Crush Crime campaign has put forward its own bill campaign to execute as much. Labour can’t even deliver its weakened versions…

UPDATE: Phillips in the Commons apologises for the delay and says and that Casey has requested a “short extension” for her audit which is expected “very shortly.”