Abuse inquiries should 'protect future generations'

Implementing the recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) will "safeguard future generations of children", according to a solicitor who represented a number of survivors of abuse in Rotherham.

The home secretary announced earlier that the government would act to bring 20 recommendations made in 2022 into force.

Yvette Cooper ruled out a new national inquiry but said there would be a national review of grooming gang evidence and five government-backed inquiries in some of the affected areas.

Lawyer David Greenwood said the victims wanted the government to "concentrate on measures which would help them and protect future generations".

Mr Greenwood, who is based in Wakefield, is a member of Act on IICSA, a group which has campaigned to get the government to implement the measures.

They include a minister for safeguarding and better data collection and improvements to the criminal records checks made on people working with children.

"They also include the child protection authority, the health and safety executive of child protection, so that would enable this body to make sure organisations looking after children have good standards and would enforce those standards," Mr Greenwood said.

Between 1997 and 2013, towns and cities - including Oldham and Rotherham - were blighted by gangs of men, predominantly of Pakistani descent, who raped and trafficked children as young as 11.

An independent report, published by Prof Alexis Jay in 2014, estimated 1,400 girls had been abused in Rotherham.

Prof Jay would go on to lead the national Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse which lasted seven years and published its findings in 2022.

In a statement in the House of Commons, Cooper said that despite that report and other inquiries, "shamefully little progress had been made".

"That has got to change," she said and added that by Easter, the government would set out a "clear timetable" for implementing the Jay Report's recommendations.

Cooper also argued that "effective local inquiries can delve into far more local detail and deliver more locally relevant answers, and change, than a lengthy nationwide inquiry can provide".

The Conservatives said the plan was "wholly inadequate".

Keighley and Ilkley's Conservative MP Robbie Moore, who has long called for an inquiry into child sexual abuse in the wider Bradford district, said he welcomed the implementation of the IICSA recommendations, but frustrations remained.

"We have had no guarantees from government that there will be any national inquiry that focuses on the Bradford district, that focuses on the wider 50 towns where those issues have been raised."

The issues around grooming and child sexual abuse had been raised by the tech billionaire Elon Musk, who has criticised the prime minister for not calling a national inquiry.

Mr Greenwood said: "We have had this inquiry which delved very deeply into the testimonies of 7,000 people who were connected or were themselves abused in childhood."

He said it was traumatic for them to go through that and the discussion around the issues recently had been "triggering for many of them" and they were unhappy the issue had been used as a "political football".

"[They want] The government to contentrate on the measures that will help them and protect future generations and it appears that Yvette Cooper had done this."

He said the Act on IISCA group would like to share its ideas with the government as the recommendations needed "doing properly".

"We think we've got a good plan to put these things in order fairly quickly, not cheaply, but they will safeguard future generations of children."

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