Back in January, Cooper had resisted calls for a second national inquiry, pointing out that the Conservatives had failed to implement the 20 recommendations of the first national inquiry by Prof Alexis Jay, which were made in 2022.
She said her focus would be on the recommendations of the seven-year Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA).
The Labour government has included one of the recommendations, the introduction of criminal sanctions for both the cover-up of child sexual abuse and the failure to report it, in the Crime and Policing Bill currently going through parliament.
However, work on the local inquiries appears to have stalled, with the barrister tasked with helping to develop the five “victim-centred, locally-led” pilot schemes suggesting there had been little progress nearly three months on.
That KC, Tom Crowther, chaired the inquiry into child sex abuse in Telford, Shropshire, gave evidence to the Commons Home Affairs Committee at the start of April and told MPs he had asked a government official “do you still want me?”, amid uncertainty over his role.
This week, the issue was again raised in the Commons, with Conservative frontbencher Katie Lam was among MPs demanding updates on the local inquiries.
“Over three months since the Government announced these local inquiries, Tom Crowther KC, a barrister invited by the Home Office to help establish them, knows almost nothing about their progress, and neither do we,” she told the Commons.
Responding, Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips said councils will be able to access a £5m fund to support locally-led work on grooming gangs.
“Following feedback from local authorities, the fund will adopt a flexible approach to support both full independent local inquiries and more bespoke work, including local victims’ panels or locally-led audits into the handling of historic cases,” she said.
Phillips also announced a child protection authority will be created to address another of the central recommendations of IICSA, as well as doubling funding for national services which support adult survivors of child sexual abuse.
However, Tory MP Robbie Moore said he was “completely infuriated” by the update from Phillips, who he said had “all but admitted that no real progress whatsoever has been made on their promise to launch five local rape gang inquiries before Easter”.
A survivor of child sexual exploitation, Lucia Rea, told GB News government backtracking was a “betrayal” of survivors hoping for justice and undermined the “very little” trust there was in the first place.
She said: “The five [local inquiries] weren’t enough and to think that four of them have now been excluded, and only one town is going to receive what is due, and even that’s not statutory, so that’s still not good enough.”
But a Home Office spokesperson said decisive action was being taken to finally tackle grooming gangs.
“It is wholly wrong to claim the government is cancelling local child sexual abuse inquiries,” they said.
“We will pursue justice for victims without fear or favour, and claims we would not do so to avoid offending any group are false.
“We have also commissioned a rapid national audit, led by Baroness Casey, to uncover the true scale of grooming gangs in the UK today, including looking at ethnicity.”
