Yesterday, in what could be the most consequential political announcement in years, the grooming gangs inquiry announced that it is to examine whether ethnicity, culture or religion facilitated offending. The inquiry will also ask whether those issues influenced the response of individuals and organisations that should have stepped in to stop the abuse of girls who were affected. Speaking on the changes, Baroness Longfield said that the inquiry will look into “patterns of abuse” and the common factors that contributed to the formation of these gangs.

From what we know already, it is hard to see how the answer to these questions could be anything but “yes”. Previous inquiries into grooming in specific locations have shown how girls reported horrors, including multiple rapes and being passed around groups of men for sex. An inquiry into abuse in Rochdale revealed that a girl was judged to have “consented” to sex with dozens of men, while the authorities described her abuse as a “lifestyle choice”. Similar stories have emerged from criminal cases that ended with groups of men, many of them of Pakistani origin, being sent to prison.

Yet, it’s been almost 12 years since the publication of the Jay Report that revealed the staggering extent of the abuse. So why has it taken so long for the state to ask questions that could prevent further scandals?

What the inquiry should be getting to the bottom of is how group dynamics work. Particularly, how abusive men find each other and select their victims. In this instance, the common factors are often ethnicity and familial ties — something revealed by the fact that so many of the offenders are related to each other. It’s easier to cover up criminal acts if members of the gang are brothers, cousins and uncles, many of whom eventually appeared in court together. Furthermore, this clearly isn’t a problem in one part of the country alone. It’s recently been suggested that grooming gangs have operated in London, suggesting that the true extent of the scandal has yet to be exposed.

Now that the remit of the inquiry has been expanded, the connection alleged by many victims, between police officers, councillors and local authority employees, will be analysed. Many of these people knew each other and mixed socially. The answer to these questions is a particular problem for Labour, which ran many of the towns where grooming scandals erupted.

These Labour councils appear to have underestimated the risks of allowing tight-knit local networks, men linked through family and the mosque, to influence decisions such as taxi licensing. These require rigorous, independent scrutiny to protect women and girls; familiarity makes that less likely. If it emerges that firms later tied to grooming scandals were waved through, local trust in Labour will collapse. Prosecutors have long known that some taxi networks were used to move vulnerable girls between locations where they were abused.

In several towns, Labour politicians are accused of ignoring allegations for political convenience. In the current climate, any such finding would be explosive and electorally damaging even for those unconnected. Police, too, face renewed calls for a root-and-branch overhaul of their response to victims.

The inquiry is likely to expose a profound safeguarding failure. Whether driven by collusion or by a reluctance to challenge influential local figures, the effect is the same: a systemic breakdown with potentially seismic political consequences.

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Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She was previously Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board, and is on the advisory group for Sex Matters. Her book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women was published in November 2024.

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