The four grooming gang survivors who quit the government inquiry’s victim liaison panel this week are calling on the safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, to resign. In a letter to the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, released on Wednesday 22 October, they set out five conditions for rejoining the inquiry – the first being Phillips resigning from her government role:
“Her conduct over the last week has shown she is unfit to oversee a process that requires survivors to trust the government. Her departure would signal you are serious about accountability and changing direction.”
The letter came following days of chaos for the inquiry, with four survivors quitting, citing yet another “cover-up”, and the two main figures in the running to chair it – the social worker Annie Hudson and the former police officer Jim Gamble – pulling out.
The main issue the survivors have with Phillips is that she appeared to contradict their claims when they resigned from the panel. They had expressed concerns about the inquiry’s remit being broadened out to general child sexual abuse, beyond that perpetrated by the chiefly Pakistani-heritage grooming gangs. Ellie-Ann Reynolds, one of the survivors who quit the panel, told me: “We were being pushed to accept a remit that downplayed the racial and religious motivations behind our abuse.”
Jess Phillips told the House of Commons that “allegations of intentional delay, lack of interest or widening the inquiry’s scope or dilution are false” and “the inquiry will remain laser-focused on grooming gangs, as Baroness [Louise] Casey recommended”. She said suggestions its remit would be expanded were “categorically untrue”.
However, it turned out the panellists had been asked in an email of consultation documents seen by the New Statesman sent by the NWG Network – the charity liaising with victims and survivors for the inquiry – if the probe should “take a broader approach” beyond grooming gangs. One of the four survivors to resign, Fiona Goddard, was so concerned about this question that she directly texted Phillips to ask about it, in messages seen by the New Statesman.
“If it’s supposed to be about grooming gangs, why has the charity that the Home Office has set up to consult with survivors just sent out the agenda for the questions that are going to be asked and one is ‘should this be a grooming gang inquiry or group-based CSE [child sexual exploitation] or should this take a broad approach’,” she texted. “Every which way this is being manipulated away from what it was supposed to be and it’s unfair.”
Phillips responded: “I don’t want you to misunderstand, the reason for the question is because there have been differing views and we want you to be able to give a clear steer on what you want… it is my view that it is only a grooming gangs-specific inquiry but it is not right for me to make that decision without it being formally consulted on.”
The NWG Network email and this text exchange suggest that the inquiry’s scope was not settled, therefore undermining Phillips’s statement that it would “remain laser-focused on grooming gangs”. Survivors who quit the panel felt the minister was accusing them of not telling the truth, and was misleading in her statement.
“Your safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, called our accounts ‘untrue’. Evidence has since proven we were telling the truth. Being publicly contradicted and dismissed by a government minister when you are a survivor telling the truth takes you right back to that feeling of not being believed all over again. It is a betrayal that has destroyed what little trust remained,” they wrote in their joint letter to Mahmood.
Marlon West, whose daughter Scarlett was a victim of grooming gangs, has called Phillips’s response “unprofessional” and “defensive rather than listening to what survivors are saying… I doubt she will resign but she has lost any kind of faith from the public, and more importantly with survivors and families.”
The Home Secretary has said “this inquiry is not, and will never be, watered down on my watch”. At the time of writing, Mahmood had not responded to the letter sent by the survivors.
Before their letter was sent, I understand that some of the survivors assumed Phillips would be kept on as minister but taken off the work of the inquiry, but that does not appear to be the government’s line. Keir Starmer has defended Phillips, saying she has “more experience than anyone else in this House” in dealing with violence against women and girls, and the children’s minister Josh MacAlister has said Phillips has the “full backing of the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary”, and that “she has already shown that she is properly engaging with the survivor community”.
Louise Casey, the respected Whitehall troubleshooter who did the review earlier this year into these cases, has been appointed to “support the work of the inquiry”.
This is a tricky balance for the government to strike. Grooming gangs are a highly charged issue across the country. Memories of police, council and social services betrayal are very close to the surface – particularly among working-class white British communities who accuse politicians of downplaying the ethnicity of the perpetrators.
The political dynamics of this are stacked against the government too. Elon Musk has been vocal about Britain’s grooming gangs, and both Reform and the Conservatives have been critical of the government’s handling of the inquiry (though the Tories did not call a national inquiry into grooming gangs and did not implement recommendations from reviews that were carried out when they were in power). The far-right agitator Tommy Robinson is also celebrated by his supporters for drawing attention to them (despite having been jailed for contempt of court for jeopardising one trial of a gang of child abusers). At protests against asylum hotels and immigration policies, grooming gangs are often mentioned in a context of supposed threats to British culture.
In attempting to point out political point-scoring, Labour ministers risk downplaying the gravity of these crimes or sounding tin-eared. For example, the former leader of the House of Commons Lucy Powell’s comments of “oh, we want to blow that little trumpet now do we?” and “let’s get that dog whistle out shall we?” when the subject of a Channel 4 show on grooming gangs was raised in a radio interview (she has since apologised).
But beyond political calculations, this inquiry should always have been handled sensitively to avoid re-traumatising survivors. The process, particularly the selection of chairs linked to two institutions that failed the girls, has been flawed. Phillips’s statement, in appearing to gloss over questions in the consultation process that the inquiry may be widened out, seems to have compounded these issues.
However, the minister – with her background working on women’s refuges for Women’s Aid – is the politician with the most experience in advocating for women and girls who have been abused. She has long campaigned on these issues, and is known in Westminster for reading out the names in parliament of women and girls killed by men convicted of these crimes each year.
There are also many remaining survivors on the panel whose voices the government will also want heard. Samantha Walker-Roberts, the victim of a grooming gang still involved in the process, has said she “doesn’t understand a lot of it [the latest fallout]” and that “the panel has provided a lot of safeguarding, a lot of reassurance and lot of confidentiality… from my angle, I don’t believe there’s been any issues surrounding concerns about our safety”.
Both in terms of pure politics and the well-being and trust of victims, this is a delicate situation that the government appears to be bungling. Whatever Shabana Mahmood decides to do about Jess Phillips’s position could define her tenure as Home Secretary.
[Further reading: Ireland is just getting angrier]
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