Yvette Cooper announces new local grooming gang inquiries

There will be more inquiries into grooming gangs after all – just not a full public inquiry. Yvette Cooper has just announced in the Commons that there will be five new local inquiries, including one in Oldham which triggered the most recent row on these crimes. The Home Secretary also announced that Louise Casey is going to conduct a rapid review into grooming gangs, looking at the data on these crimes, to see what can be learned at a national level. She told MPs:

‘As well as reviewing past cases we also need much stronger action to uncover the full scale and nature of these crimes… The data on ethnicity of both perpetrators and victims is still inadequate.’ 

She added that, ‘in order to go much further, I have asked Baroness Louise Casey to oversee a rapid audit of the current scale and nature of gang-based exploitation across the country and to make further recommendations on the work that is needed.