The Whitewash grooming gang report is to be debated in parliament on Wednesday 3rd February. The petition called for a public inquiry into grooming gangs.
The original petition, which called for publication of the government’s research into the characteristics of grooming gangs is to be debated again in parliament.
An initial response to the petition from the Home Office in April failed to respond to the petition request. After some pressure, The Petitions Committee then wrote to the Home Secretary Priti Patel expressing utter dissatisfaction with the response to the petition.
The Committee requested a revised response to the petition which it said should directly respond to the petition request. The government then responded with a promise to publish a paper on group-based child sexual exploitation by the end of this year (2020).
The government went to extraordinary lengths to avoid publishing its research into the characteristics of grooming gangs. Why was this? What did the government want to hide?
Then Home Secretary, Sajid Javid commissioned a review into the characteristics of street grooming gangs in 2018, saying that they should leave “No stone unturned.”
When the report was released it stated that up to March 2020, over 83,300 CSA offences were recorded by police, that’s an increase of nearly 270% since 2013. Not all of these will have been group-based.
The ‘standout’ result of the research is that “group-based CSE offenders are most commonly white.” This was inevitably picked up by mainstream media and they pushed the headline “most child sexual abuse gangs made up of white men.”
But the report does not say that. It says “most commonly white” which is not the same as saying most offenders are white. The report was very carefully worded to avoid stating most offenders are white, whilst misleading people to that impression.
The two key quotes that can’t be ignored are “data on ethnicity are not routinely or consistently collected by police forces and other agencies” and “many research and evidence collections have a lot of missing or incomplete data.” These two quotes tell you that the reports data is inadequate.
The message from the report is that the government has no idea about the ethnicity of these offenders. Islam was not mentioned in the report and religion cannot be ignored due to potential affiliations.
These crimes (that we know of) have been happening for over 40 years, yet after a two-year investigation the government report says that that they don’t know very much about the characteristics of the offenders.
Home Secretary, Priti Patel stated “Victims and survivors of these abhorrent crimes have told me how they were let down by the state in the name of political correctness… What happened to these children remains one of the biggest stains on our country’s conscience.”
MPs will debate the petition on February 3rd at the main chamber of the House Of Commons. It will be led by Tom Hunt MP, a member of the Petitions Committee.
The debate was originally postponed due to the closure of Westminster Hall, and will now take place on Wednesday 3rd February. The Government will send a Minister to respond.
You may wish to write to your local MP and ask them to raise some questions in the debate.
Will the government order the recording of prisoners’ ethnicity and religion?
Why wasn’t religion even considered?
The British people request a public inquiry into grooming gangs.
The debate can be watched live.
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