(Bloomberg) — The UK will launch a national inquiry into child grooming gangs, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said, in an about-turn that comes five months after rebuffing calls from the opposition Conservative Party and the billionaire Elon Musk to conduct a full probe.
Starmer said it was “the right thing” to accept the recommendation of a statutory inquiry by Louise Casey, a member of the House of Lords he’d asked to carry out an audit to fill an evidence gap that hampered previous inquiries into child sexual exploitation, including looking into the ethnicity of gangs and victims.
“That will take a bit of time to sort out exactly how that works and we will set that out in an orderly way,” Starmer told reporters on the way to the Group of Seven meeting in Calgary, Canada.
Starmer told reporters that Casey had originally thought a new inquiry was not necessary, but that she had changed her mind having examined the material in recent months. The prime minister in January had told the House of Commons that his focus was on taking action now rather than holding a national inquiry that could take years.
Victims “I have spoken to are worried about the delay of a further inquiry,” he told lawmakers on Jan. 8. “The last inquiry took seven years, which would take us to 2031.”
Instead, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced on Jan. 16 that there would be a series of quicker, local probes into child grooming. At the same time, she appointed Casey to carry out the wider audit. The new national inquiry will serve to co-ordinate those targeted local investigations, Starmer said.
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