Cooper says law on rape being tightened so adults cannot use consent as defence against charge of raping child under 16
Cooper says the Casey report makes 12 recommendations, and the government will act on all of them, she says.
In line with the first recommendation, the government will tighten the law on rape, she says.
Baroness Casey’s first recommendation is we must see children as children. She concludes too many grooming gang cases have been dropped or downgraded from rape to lesser charges because a 13 to 15 year old is perceived to have been in love with or had consented to sex with the perpetrator.
So we will change the law to ensure that adults who engage in penetrative sex with a child under 16 face the most serious charge of rape, and we will work closely with the CPS and the police to ensure there are safeguards for consensual teenage relationships.
We will change the law so that those convicted for child prostitution offences while their rapists got off scot-free, will have their convictions disregarded and their criminal records expunged.
Key events
Early evening summary
I think the continuation of not looking at this data effectively and not collecting the data is in itself a risk. Look what happened in January. You get worldwide attention. You get the far right using that type of situation. So not collecting it is as much a problem if you’re trying to be concerned about society as collecting it.
Asked if she was worried recording the data could lead to civil unrest, the crossbench peer responded:
So let’s put it the other way around. If for a minute you had another report that ducked the issue, what do you think is going to happen? Do you think they’re not going to use that as well? If good people don’t grip difficult issues, in my experience bad people do.
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David Lammy, the foreign secretary, has told MPs that all British nationals in Israel should register their presence in the country with the Foreign Office. He said that would mean they could get information on how to leave the country. He also said escalation of the conflict between Israel and Iran “poses real risks for the global economy”.
Starmer says he will be having one-to-one talk with Trump at G7 summit
Keir Starmer has said he will meet Donald Trump for “one-on-one” talks at a major global summit in a push to get the US-UK trade deal over the finish line, PA Media reports. PA says:
The prime minister said he expected the economic pact to be completed “very soon” ahead of a meeting with the US President at the G7 conference in Canada.
Britain’s long-coveted free trade deal with Washington was agreed upon last month but is yet to be implemented, with both sides yet to take the necessary steps to reduce tariffs.
Asked whether he would be able to finalise the deal as he crosses paths with Trump at the international leaders’ summit in Kananaskis, Starmer said: “I’m very pleased that we made that trade deal, and we’re in the final stages now of implementation, and I expect that to be completed very soon.”
Amid speculation that the two leaders will carve out time for a bilateral meeting between G7 plenary sessions, Starmer said: “I’ll be having a one-on-one with him. I think I’m seeing him on a number of occasions today because we’re in all of the sessions together, so I’ll be having a lot of conversations with President Trump.”
John Cryer, a former Labour MP who is now in the Lords, has just told Radio 4’s PM programme that when his mother, Ann Cryer, MP for Keighley from 1997 to 2010, first raised concerns about Asian men sexually abusing young women in Yorkshire about 20 years ago, fellow Labour party members tried to get her expelled from the party claiming she was racist. He said people who covered up abuse of this kind should now be prosecuted.
Why was Kemi Badenoch so keen to call for a national inquiry into grooming gangs in January? She may well have been persuaded by the merits of the arguments in favour. But the fact that this was popular with the public could have been a factor too.
In January 76% of Britons were in favour of a national inquiry, according to YouGov. YouGov says that figure has now gone up to 87%.
Lawyers who have represented the victims of grooming gangs have welcomed the news that a national inquiry is happening – while questioning some of the details.
Richard Scorer, head of abuse law and inquiries at Slater and Gordon, said:
We welcome the announcement of a national investigation with statutory powers and the integration of local inquiries. However, critical questions remain unanswered. Is this truly a full public inquiry, or merely a ‘commission’, as the home secretary described? The distinction matters deeply for victims, survivors, and the public.
We also support the involvement of the National Crime Agency (NCA), but this must be backed by substantial new funding. Current police investigations into grooming gangs are painfully slow, and without significant additional resources, justice will continue to be delayed and denied.
And Amy Clowrey, a solicitor from the firm Switalskis, said:
Our clients have been denied accountability for the failures by councils and police for many years.
We hope local inquiries will drill into the detail of failures at a local level and that what is learnt from those inquiries is used in the central national inquiry to better protect future generations of children.
At the same time, we want to see the IICSA (Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse) recommendations implemented in full, right now. Those recommendations must not be shelved.
In the Commons, Labour’s Gurinder Singh Josan asked for an assurance that the police would collect better data about the ethnicity of victims too. He said:
The secretary of state will be aware that there’s been historic allegations involving the grooming and sexual abuse of Sikh girls. So will she ensure that the requirement to collect ethnicity and nationality data extends to victims, so that we can once and for all, see the evidence for any model of this kind that exists?
And Yvette Cooper replied:
He raises a very important issue about victims, and very often victims in many communities he’s talked about, Sikh girls, not feeling confident to come forward and feeling the sense of shame that prevents young people being able to ask for help when they need it.
It’s essential therefore, that we strengthen the ethnicity data around victims as well as around perpetrators to make sure that victims and survivors in all communities get the support and safeguarding they need.
Kemi Badenoch asked Yvette Cooper when Louise Casey submitted her report to Downing Street, and whether it was changed before it was published. She did not get a reply.
The Conservative MP Sarah Bool asked Cooper the same questions a few minutes ago. Cooper said the report was submitted to government 10 days ago. And she said anyone who thought Louise Casey could be pressurised into changing her mind clearly had not met her.
In the Commons Robbie Moore (Con) claimed that council leaders in areas like Keighley and the wider Bradford area had been allowed to just say no to an inquiry.
In response, Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, said the safeguarding minister Jess Phillips had previously said she “would not allow local councils to be able to turn their backs and to say ‘no’ to investigations where they are needed”.
Cooper went: “That is why we have accepted Baroness Casey’s recommendation for a national inquiry that will underpin those local investigations.”
Cooper says national inquiry into grooming gang scandal expected to last three years
In the Commons Richard Tice, the Reform UK deputy leader, asked Cooper to apologise to people who called for a national inquiry. He alleged they had been smeared by Keir Starmer. (See 12.41pm.)
He also asked if the inquiry would conclude within two years.
Cooper said that the inquiry is expected to take around three years. But it might be able to conclude before then, she said.
As for an apology, she said huge harm had been done to victims. She said the Casey report set out how they were failed over many years. They deserved an apology for that, she said (from the Tories, she implied.)
Extracts from Casey’s report on grooming gangs scandal
Here are some extracts from Louise Casey’s audit of the grooming gangs scandal.
On what group-based child sexual exploitation actually involves
Group-based child sexual exploitation’, rare though it may be, is one of the most heinous crimes in our society.
That term ‘group-based child sexual exploitation’ is actually a sanitised version of what it is. I want to set it out in unsanitised terms: we are talking about multiple sexual assaults committed against children by multiple men on multiple occasions; beatings and gang rapes. Girls having to have abortions, contracting sexually transmitted infections, having children removed from them at birth.
When those same girls get older, they face long-term physical and mental health impacts. Sometimes they have criminal convictions for actions they took while under coercion. They have to live with fear and the constant shadow over them of an injustice which has never been righted – the shame of not being believed. And, with a criminal justice system that can re-traumatise them all over again, often over many years. With an overall system that compounds and exacerbates the damage; rarely acknowledges its failures to victims. They never get to see those people who were in positions of power and let them down be held accountable.
On the failure to proper collect ethnicity data
The appalling lack of data on ethnicity in crime recording alone is a major failing over the last decade or more. Questions about ethnicity have been asked but dodged for years. Child sexual exploitation is horrendous whoever commits it, but there have been enough convictions across the country of groups of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds to have warranted closer examination.
Instead of examination, we have seen obfuscation. In a vacuum, incomplete and unreliable data is used to suit the ends of those presenting it. The system claims there is an overwhelming problem with White perpetrators when that can’t be proved. This does no one any favours at all, and least of all those in the Asian, Pakistani or Muslim communities who needlessly suffer as those with malicious intent use this obfuscation to sow and spread hatred.
On what the available data does show
We found that the ethnicity of perpetrators is shied away from and is still not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators, so we are unable to provide any accurate assessment from the nationally collected data.
Despite the lack of a full picture in the national datasets, there is enough evidence available in local police data in three police force areas which we examined which show disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds amongst suspects for group-based child sexual exploitation, as well as in the significant number of perpetrators of Asian ethnicity identified in local reviews and high-profile child sexual exploitation prosecutions across the country, to at least warrant further examination.
On what the rape law should be tightened
Despite the age of consent being 16, we have found too many examples of child sexual exploitation criminal cases being dropped or downgraded from rape to lesser charges where a 13 to15 year-old had been ‘in love with’ or ‘had consented to’ sex with the perpetrator.
This is due to a ‘grey area’ in the law where, although any sexual activity with 13–15- year-olds is unlawful, the decision on whether to charge, and which offence to charge with, is left more open to interpretation.
The purpose is largely aimed at avoiding criminalising someone who reasonably believed a child was older than they were or criminalising relationships between teenagers. But in practice, this nuance in law is being used to the benefit of much older men who had groomed underage children for sex.
The law should be changed so adult men who groom and have sex with 13–15-yearolds received mandatory charges of rape, mirroring the approach taken in countries like France.
On how a national inquiry should be set up, ‘coordinating a series of targeted local investigations’
Based on findings from the criminal investigation above, and submissions from victims and witnesses, an Independent Commission should review cases of failures or obstruction by statutory services to identify localities where local investigations should be instigated.
There would need to be a process to identify instances and allegations of statutory agencies’ failures, and we recommend that the government develops a list of criteria to determine the types and extent of failures which should be used to assess the triggering of a hearing.
The Independent Commission would set strict timescales and terms of reference for the local investigations which would have a single appointed legal team, with full statutory powers available to them, able to compel witnesses where they refuse to cooperate. Each investigation will call witnesses to give evidence and will require records to be submitted. Local authorities, police forces and other relevant agencies should in the meantime be required not to destroy any relevant records.
