Former Yorkshire crime tsar '˜misled MPs over Rotherham sex abuse'

The Home Affairs Select Committee said it was taking the allegations against Shaun Wright, the former South Yorkshire PCC, seriously with members set to discuss what action to take while meeting in private tomorrow outside of a public hearing on a separate inquiry into hate crime.

The committee’s clerk, Carol Oxborough, said: “I can confirm that a complaint relating to this matter has been passed on to the Committee by the South Yorkshire Police and Crime Panel.

“The serious nature of the complaint is fully accepted and the matter is being carefully considered.

“No further comment can be provided until a decision on how to respond has been taken by the Committee.”

Details of the allegations forwarded by the police and crime panel are not known but it is known they involve evidence Wright gave to the committee in September 2014.

The panel initially referred complaints it received about Wright’s conduct to the Independent Police Complaints Commission but subsequently forwarded them to the committee last month after the IPCC ruled it could take no action. It said giving false evidence to the committee could be considered a contempt of Parliament but not a criminal offence.

When Mr Wright appeared before the committee he was one of a number of key witnesses on the child grooming scandal who were required to give evidence under oath - a relatively rare step for a select committee to take. The chairman at the time, Keith Vaz, explicitly warned him that meant action could potentially be taken for perjury if he gave false evidence.

During the course of Wright’s appearance, Mr Vaz made it clear the committee did not accept his evidence.

In particular, Vaz took issue with Wright’s claims he was not aware child sexual exploitation was a significant problem while he was responsible for childrens services as a Rotherham Council cabinet member between 2005 and 2010.

At one point, Mr Vaz said: “We do not accept for one moment the evidence you have just given that you did not know that this was an issue.

We accept as a committee that you did know. We accept the evidence that has been given by people who have come here before this committee and gave evidence before the committee last year that you were well aware of what was happening. That is our view as a committee.”

Other MPs took issue with Mr Wright’s evidence that he did not recollect a reported face-to-face meeting with a victim of sexual exploitation.

The PCC was giving evidence in the wake of the publication of a devastating report two weeks earlier that found at least 1,400 children had been sexually exploited in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013.

Professor Alexis Jay’s report described the abuse, which included girls as young as 11 being raped by multiple men, as appalling and laid bare the failure of the council and South Yorkshire Police to tackle a problem that was an open secret in the town and had been raised in a series of official reports.

Mr Wright told the committee he didn’t recall a single report from Ofsted or any other external organisation that flagged the abuse as being a significant issue and said he had acted on recommendations in internal reports, including the provision of increased resources.

A week after the committee appearance, Mr Wright finally resigned as police and crime commissioner after a chorus of calls for him to go, including one from then prime minister David Cameron.

Parliament has rarely used its powers to hold non-members in contempt but in September two former News of the World executives were found to have misled the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee over evidence they gave during the phone hacking inquiry.

Former editor Colin Myler and legal manager Tom Crone were formally admonished for contempt of Parliament after the case was referred to Parliament’s Privileges Committee.

A series of men have been convicted of serious sexual offences against girls in Rotherham since the industrial scale of the abuse began to emerge publicly.

The National Crime Agency was called in by South Yorkshire Police in December 2014 and in its latest update said there were 17 ongoing major investigations under the umbrella of Operation Stovewood.