Labour’s grooming gang inquiry mess

What a pig’s ear the government is making of its response to the grooming gangs scandal. Ministers have spent weeks resisting growing calls for a new and comprehensive national inquiry, insisting that this would take too long and get in the way of implementing measures to help victims. Now there’s been a change of heart, of sorts, because it has become all too obvious that the government is failing to win the political argument.  The answer ministers have alighted upon to dig themselves out of a hole of their own making is unlikely to satisfy anyone for very long.  

There still won’t be a national inquiry – lest anyone dares to accuse the government of reversing course – but there will now be a series of local inquiries. Ministers can try to dress this up any way they like but the new measures amount to a marked shift in approach, with the government forced to move further and faster than originally intended.