1 day ago
8
A frontrunner to chair the national grooming gangs inquiry has withdrawn amid growing discontent from survivors over the government’s handling of the process.
Jim Gamble, a former head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, is the second candidate to step down over the last two days, government sources have confirmed.
It comes after four survivors invited on to an inquiry panel resigned and accused the UK government of attempting to manipulate them into broadening it to include other forms of sexual abuse.
Gamble, a former police officer who rose to become head of RUC special branch in Belfast, was one of two known leading candidates for the role.
The other, the senior social worker Annie Hudson, who was once head of children’s services at Lambeth, said she no longer wanted to be considered after intense media coverage.
Survivors had complained that senior police officers and social workers should not be considered for the role because both professions have been accused of participating in the cover-up of abuse.
In her resignation letter on Monday, Fiona Goddard, who was abused by gang members while living in a Bradford children’s home, wrote: “Having a police officer or social worker leading the inquiry would once again be letting services mark their own homework.
“The shortlisting of these potential chairs shows the government’s complete lack of understanding of the level of corruption and failings involved in this scandal.”
A third survivor, Elizabeth, quit on Tuesday, saying she was leaving the panel because she believed the process had been “scripted and predetermined”, “rather than emerging from honest, open dialogue with survivors”.
The four abuse survivors resigned from their roles on the victims and survivors liaison panel, accusing the Home Office and ministers of sidelining them and seeking to widen the inquiry for political ends.
They suspect that the government is trying to deflect focus away from Labour-led councils, wishes to impose a government-friendly chair and wants to avoid raising questions over the ethnicity of the perpetrators, many of whom were men of Pakistani descent.
The intense pressure on the inquiry has led to people dropping out and officials are exploring a range of other candidates, government sources said.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We are disappointed that candidates to chair that inquiry have withdrawn. This is an extremely sensitive topic, and we have to take the time to appoint the best person suitable for the role.”
Speaking in the Commons on Wednesday, Keir Starmer said Louise Casey, the peer and safeguarding expert whose audit recommended the creation of the inquiry, would “support the work of the inquiry”, which has yet to appoint a chair.
Pressed by Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, at prime minister’s questions, Starmer said any survivors who stepped down from the process would be welcome to return if they chose, and that the scope of the inquiry “will not be diluted and we won’t shy away from cultural or religious issues”.
Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, has insisted the inquiry will leave “no hiding place” for those involved in the scandal.
However, evidence has emerged that shows members of the liaison panel were explicitly asked by officials: “Should the inquiry have an explicit focus on ‘grooming gangs’ or ‘group-based CSEA’ [child sexual exploitation and abuse], or take a broader approach?”
Elizabeth, a survivor using a pseudonym who has resigned from the committee, said panel members were surprised to be asked such a question in a written Q&A.
“I voiced my opinion. I said: ‘Back in June you told the country that we would be having one just on grooming gangs, and now you ask do we want it widening? No, we don’t, we want it on grooming gangs,’” she told Radio 4’s Today programme.
Asked whether she felt satisfied with the home secretary’s assertion that the inquiry would explicitly examine the ethnicity and religion of offenders, Elizabeth said: “No, I’m not, because we hear this all the time. We heard it in June. We hear it all the time.
“You know, people all want to do the best for grooming gang survivors and their families when they need a vote or they need to look good.”
Goddard, who was abused by a grooming gang from the age of 14, said she had text messages that proved that the safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, was directly aware of concerns about the risk of broadening the inquiry and warned that victims were “not being believed all over again”.
She later accused Phillips of lying for disputing allegations that the inquiry was being watered down and called on her to stand down from her position.
“It is a blatant lie for Jess Phillips to suggest, as she has done … that it is untrue that there has been possibility or conversation around ‘expanding [the inquiry’s] scope beyond grooming gangs’,” Goddard said.
She expressed deep reservations about the candidates under consideration to chair the inquiry, one of whom was reportedly a former police chief and the other a social worker.
Speaking in the Commons on Tuesday, Phillips said opinions varied among victims as to who would be best suited to the role, as she faced questions from MPs about the process.
“I will engage with all the victims, regardless of their opinions, and I will listen to those that have been put in the media, that are put in panels, I will always listen and I will speak to all of them,” she said.
A fourth survivor, Jessica (not her real name), from West Yorkshire, who is said to have quit the panel on Tuesday night, told GB News: “When I found out the two potential chairs were a former police officer and a former social worker, I was shocked and I didn’t know how they could be involved. They were both part of a profession that failed all of us.”
