Conservative calls for a multi-million pound inquiry into whether grooming gangs have operated in London were rejected at City Hall on Tuesday. Tories on the London Assembly had proposed an amendment to mayor Sir Sadiq Khan’s budget, which included £4.49m for an “Independent Inquiry into the Exploitation of Children in London”.
The amendment - which required a two-thirds majority to pass - was defeated by 16 votes to 9, as it was voted down by the Assembly’s Labour, Green, Liberal Democrat and independent members. Reform UK’s sole assembly member joined the Conservatives in backing the amendment.
It comes after the mayor was last month accused of “stonewalling” questions about grooming gangs from his Tory rival Susan Hall. The former mayoral candidate had repeatedly asked him whether there were gangs operating, or previously active, in the capital, but Sir Sadiq would only say that he was unsure what she meant by grooming gangs.
In their budget amendment, the Conservatives said: “The potential scale of child sexual abuse across London remains a significant unknown. “Given that there are more than fifty areas across the country that have been identified as locations in which the systemic rape of young children by grooming gangs took place, there is a strong possibility that this criminality also occurred in London.”.
The amendment went on to claim, incorrectly: “The most recent independent inquiry into child sexual abuse – the Jay report – only examined six towns. None were in London.”. In fact, one of the six ‘case study areas’ examined by the Jay inquiry - Tower Hamlets - was in London. The other five areas were Durham, Swansea, Warwickshire, St Helens and Bristol. According to the report, the areas “were selected in order to enable the inquiry to consider a range of features, including size, demography, geography and social characteristics”.
Labour member Krupesh Hirani pointed this out when explaining why his group was not convinced of the need for a specific London-level inquiry. The Tory claim that grooming gangs have been identified in “more than fifty areas” appears to be in relation to a GB News article, in which one of the broadcaster’s journalists said they had identified more than 50 towns and cities which had “endured abuse gangs”. GB News reporter Charlie Peters was said by his employer to have drawn up the list after “sifting through court records, local media reports, and gathering first-hand accounts from several victims”.
The Conservative amendment continued: “No local inquiries have taken place across any part of London, leaving a significant number of unanswered questions around the scale of this scandal in the capital. “City Hall and the GLA [Greater London Authority] have significant resources available to draw conclusions from across all thirty-two of London’s boroughs, making it well-placed to deliver a local-level inquiry and give victims of these horrific crimes the justice they deserve.”.
Commenting after the amendment’s defeat, Tory assembly member Lord Bailey said: “I am beyond disappointed by this development. We have worked to find the money for an inquiry that London desperately needs - for the victims, for faith in our institutions, and to restore the relationships between communities.
“London has had its trouble spots, and my colleagues and I have been diligent in asking the authorities the questions necessary to address this, but we need to go further. “Today, the other parties had an opportunity to take the first step on the road to correcting this historic wrong, and shining a light on this grave issue, and they have chosen not to. I know however that my Conservative and colleagues and I, whilst disheartened, will not stop fighting for a settlement that centres the victims of child sexual exploitation in the search for justice.”.
Assembly members voted for and against the amendment for a variety of reasons, not all of which were necessarily related to the call for a grooming gangs inquiry. The amendment also included £122m “of additional funding for the Met, protecting frontline policing and preventing cuts to backroom staff”, a £15m Pothole Repair Fund, a £7m Theft Reduction Unit in the Met Police and £1.5m Nightlife Prosperity Fund.
The Conservatives claimed that these policies could be paid for reversing staffing increases at City Hall, abolishing the London & Partners agency, and limiting the number of deputy mayors to five, as well as “reallocating existing cash reserves”.
