Why Baroness Anne Longfield is the right person to lead the national grooming gangs inquiry
Few people are better qualified than former children’s commissioner Baroness Anne Longfield to lead the national inquiry into grooming gangs. She has the expertise and her probity is beyond question.
Baroness Longfield served as children’s commissioner from 2015 to 2021 and last year founded the Centre for Young Lives think tank aimed at improving the lives of children and families. She was made a Labour peer for her work devoted to children’s rights earlier this year. Baroness Longfield will step down from the party as she carries out the inquiry’s work.
So far the Government has tied itself up in knots when it comes to dealing with the grooming gang scandal. The whole political establishment has been blind to the horrors that many young girls have had to endure for decades.
As Baroness Longfield said: “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.”
One of the key issues at the heart of the scandal is the role ethnicity, religion and other cultural factors may have played. This is something the inquiry cannot shy away from and with Baroness Longfield promising to “not shy away from difficult or uncomfortable truths wherever we find them”, the victims can have a degree of confidence.
The inquiry will take three years and have a budget of £65m. It is good to finally see decisive action from the Government on an issue that it had seemed increasingly out of touch on.