The failure of officials to collect ethnicity data on grooming gangs which abused children has been a “bloody disaster”, the author of a damning report into the scandal has said.
Baroness Casey told MPs that information on perpetrators is “incomplete and unreliable”, as she hit out at what she described as a “public irresponsibility”.
Statistics had been “half” collected, she told members of the Commons Home Affairs committee, adding: “That’s a bloody disaster, frankly.”
Her “deeply disturbing” report into grooming gangs found children and teenage girls were blamed for crimes perpetrated against them and too many parts of the state had been in “denial” about what was going on.
Home secretary Yvette Cooper said there had been “too little justice” for victims as she announced a string of measures, including mandatory collection of data on the nationality and ethnicity of perpetrators and a time-limited national inquiry.
Baroness Louise Casey also the BBC she was “disappointed” by the Conservatives’ response to her review of the scandal, leaving leader Kemi Badenoch forced to insist she was not politicising the issue.
Speaking at a press conference alongside grooming gang survivors and campaigners, the Conservative leader said was “not doing politics now”, but criticised people who sought to “tone police those who are pointing out when something has gone wrong”.
She said: “I do think that we should take the politics out of it. But who was it that said when we raised this issue that we were pandering to the far right? That’s what brought the politics into it.”
Earlier Ms Casey told MPs: “I feel very strongly on issues that are as searing as people’s race, when we know the prejudice and racism that people of colour experience in this country, to not get how you treat that data right is a different level of public irresponsibility. Sorry, to put it so bluntly… but I think it’s particularly important if you are collecting those sorts of issues to get them 100 per cent right.
“And if you are not getting them 100 per cent right, please don’t use them to justify another position, which is potentially what happened. That may be well meaning, it may not be well meaning, but that’s how the data has run.”
She added that her view was “collect something or don’t collect something. For God’s sake, don’t half collect it. That’s a bloody disaster, frankly.”
At her press conference, against a backdrop of Union Jacks, Ms Badenoch said: “I’m not doing politics now, when I’m in the Houses of Parliament, when I’m in the Commons, I will do politics.”
Baroness Casey’s findings prompted Sir Keir Starmer to bow to months of pressure and announce a statutory national inquiry.
The government had previously resisted calls for such an inquiry, saying it would focus instead on implementing recommendations from a seven-year probe by Professor Alexis Jay.
In January, Sir Keir became embroiled in a row with tech billionaire Elon Musk, who called safeguarding minister Jess Phillips a “rape genocide apologist” and accusing Sir Keir of “hiding terrible things”.
No 10 said the new inquiry will look at how young girls “were failed so badly” and institutions who failed to act to protect them will “not be able to hide and will finally be held to account for their actions”.
The Home Office has confirmed that the National Crime Agency (NCA) will follow up on more than 800 cold cases and work with police to re-examine past cases that “were not progressed through the criminal justice system.”
