Major update on grooming gangs inquiry as ex-commissioner put in charge

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced former children's commissioner Baroness Anne Longfield will head the grooming gangs inquiry

Shabana Mahmood has vowed "evil" grooming gang members will finally face justice as she announced a former children's commissioner will chair the national inquiry.

The Home Secretary confirmed Baroness Anne Longfield will be put in charge of the £65million inquiry after months of delays. Ms Mahmood said the probe - which must deliver its findings within three years - will "shine a bright light on this dark moment in our history".

She said there had been an "abject failure" by the state to protect the young and vulnerable - while some in power "turned a blind eye to the horror". Ms Mahmood told the Commons the inquiry will be a series of local investigations overseen by a national panel with full statutory powers.

The Home Secretary also announced a package of support for victims and survivors and funding for police to target abusers. She said: "The evil men who committed these crimes and thought they got away with it will find they have nowhere to hide." Ms Mahmood told MPs that more than 1,200 cases have already been flagged for reinvestigation - including 200 priority cases of rape.

She said: "The inquiry is focused specifically on child sexual abuse committed by grooming gangs. It will consider explicitly the background of offenders, including their ethnicity and religion, and whether the authorities failed to properly investigate what happened out of a misplaced desire to protect community cohesion.

"The inquiry will act without fear or favour identifying individual, institutional and systemic failure and inadequate organisational responses and failures of leadership. It will also work hand in hand with the police when new criminality comes to light."

The inquiry national was announced in June following a bombshell report by Baroness Louise Casey ordered by Keir Starmer. After her appointment was announced Baroness Longfield - who will step down as a Labour peer having been elevated to the House of Lords earlier this year - said: “The findings in Baroness Casey’s report were truly shocking, and I recognise that behind every heinous crime is a person, a child, a teenager, a family. I will never lose sight of this.

“The Inquiry owes it to the victims, survivors and the wider public to identify the truth, address past failings and ensure that children and young people today are protected in a way that others were not."

She said the inquiry will not shy away from "difficult or uncomfortable truths wherever we find them". In her report Baroness Casey said the ethnicity of abusers had been "shied away from".

She said that in Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire there was enough evidence to find that a "disproportionate" number were from South Asian backgrounds.

Ms Mahmood told the Commons there was "nothing Muslim or Islamic" about the acts the "evil men" had carried out. The Home Secretary said: "Like every member of my community who I know, I am horrified by these acts. We must root out this evil once and for all.

"The sickening acts of a minority of evil men, as well as those in positions of authority, who look the other way, must not be allowed to marginalise or demonise entire communities of law abiding citizens."

In October, the final two candidates to chair the inquiry dropped out of the process. Five women also resigned from the inquiry's victim liaison panel in a row over the scope of the probe being potentially widened.

In the six months since the Government accepted all of Baroness Casey’s recommendations, the Home Office says significant progress has been made. The Government will bring in a scheme to tear up “child prostitution” convictions and cautions, Ms Mahmood said. And a further £3.75 million will be invested into the policing response, support for survivor and research into how to stop grooming gangs.