Rotherham MP Sarah Champion calls for national inquiry into grooming gangs

Rotherham MP Sarah Champion has heaped more pressure on the Government by calling for a national inquiry into grooming gangs.

Ms Champion has been one of the main campaigners around child sexual exploitation since discovering the horrific abuse going on in her constituency.

Alongside Tom Watson and Zac Goldsmith, she was one of the MPs which pushed for the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA).

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Her intervention comes amid a national row around grooming gangs, which after Elon Musk sent online abuse towards the Prime Minister and Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips.

Since then the Conservatives have called for a national inquiry, while Sir Keir Starmer has said his Government will instead work to implement the recommendations of IICSA, something the previous Tory administration had not done.

While Ms Phillips said inquiries into grooming were more effective at a local level.

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She said: “I don’t know what a national inquiry would add, other than delaying what needs to be seen, which is prosecutions and children being protected.”

Sarah Champion MPSarah Champion MP
Sarah Champion MP

Ms Champion added: “To be quite honest, as a politician, calling for an inquiry is a really good way of being seen to be doing something, but why do you want that research and what do you want it on?”

However, yesterday, the Rotherham MP posted her “five-point plan for addressing child sexual exploitation and abuse” on social media.

In this, she said she wanted a national inquiry that is locally led.

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“Local inquiries do not have the power to compel witnesses or evidence, nor would they satisfy the public concern of cover ups,” Ms Champion wrote.

“There needs to be a national ‘Telford-style’ model which is nationally resourced, and victim centred.”

Ms Champion also called for a new commission looking at the motivation of grooming gang members and a review of whether the law is fit for purpose.

She also said all local authorities and police forces should review all child protection referrals linked to child sexual abuse over the last 10 years.

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And Ms Champion urged the Government to give a timeline for implementing the IICSA report.

Speaking in the House of Commons yesterday, Ms Phillips said: “We will work absolutely at pace with the stakeholders, including the victims and also Professor Alexis Jay, to make sure that what was intended by those recommendations can happen.

“I will do it as quickly as can possibly be done, but I will not do what has previously been done by the previous government and just say ‘yeah sure’ and leave it to chance.”

Ms Champion is the latest Yorkshire MP to call for a national inquiry into grooming gangs.

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Keighley and Ilkley MP Robbie Moore has repeatedly called for an inquiry covering the Bradford district, however the safeguarding partnership has ruled it out, saying it would “cost a huge amount of money”.

Mr Moore has claimed solicitors believe that the scale of child abuse could in the area could “dwarf” that uncovered in Rotherham, where the Jay Report found 1,400 children were sexually abused between 1997 and 2013.

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