Cooper defends decision not to launch national grooming inquiry

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has defended her decision not to launch a national inquiry into child sexual abuse, as she faced MPs in the Commons.

Ms Cooper also raised concerns about how police forces collect data, describing it as “haphazard”, before claiming data published on the ethnicity of perpetrators is not adequate.

This came as she announced the Government will make it mandatory to report abuse and a victims and survivors panel to advise on “wider work around child sexual exploitation and abuse” would be established.

Ms Cooper told the Commons: “These crimes have not been taken seriously for too long and far too many children have been failed.

“That is why this Government is determined to act – strengthening the law, taking forward recommendations from the independent inquiries, supporting stronger police action and protection for victims.”

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp repeated calls for a national inquiry and was met with shouts of “shame” from the Labour benches as he said: “It is not far-right to stand up for victims of mass rape.”

“Smearing people who raised those issues is exactly how this ended up getting covered up in the first place,” he added.

Responding, Ms Cooper said: “The truth is there just has not been enough action to tackle these vile crimes. There hasn’t been enough change to policies, to the way in which services operate at local level, and that is a deep failing that those changes have not taken place.”

Ms Cooper said Labour called for it to be mandatory to report abuse 10 years ago, adding: “We called for it 10 years ago. He had a decade in order to introduce that, a decade that we have now lost without having those powers and those measures in place.”

She continued: “I would just say to him, his party launched the child abuse inquiry, they set the terms of reference, they provided the substantial funding for it, and he could have raised concerns about its terms of reference, about the scope of it, about the extent of its reports at any point, including at any point since it reported.

“And he didn’t do so until last week.”

Mr Philp also asked the Home Secretary to confirm if data from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse on the ethnicity of perpetrators will be published.

He went on to add: “Will the Home Secretary commission that national statutory public inquiry, which can compel witnesses to attend, that can requisition evidence and where it can take evidence under oath?

“And if the Government will not order that statutory national public inquiry, we will table an amendment to the Children Wellbeing Bill later this week to put the matter to a vote, and I hope members across the House will vote for that full statutory public inquiry so we can get to the truth.”

Ms Cooper replied: “It’s already been published, it was published in November, the latest report was published in November … as a result of the work of the taskforce.

“I would just say to him, though, I don’t think that the data that they have gathered actually is adequate. I don’t think it goes far enough. I think there’s a real problem with the way in which we collect data, and police forces collect data.

“It’s very haphazard, there isn’t a proper system for collecting data, for having proper performance framework for policing, because again, to be honest, I think his government withdrew too far from policing and having the kind of standards we need to have in place.”