Parliament and organised sexual abuse: weak ending

The House rose on Tuesday and will sit again on 22 April. The session ended badly.

Hansard’s record describes Jess Phillips MP as The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department. More exactly she is the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls. As a local councillor she did much good work for years helping women in a socially deprived part of Birmingham.

Today she was obliged to read out the Government’s further backtracking on investigations into the ‘grooming’ gangs that have long sexually abused an extremely large number of women and girls around the country.

The State has rejected the call for a fresh national enquiry – one that would have the power to compel witnesses. A reason given is that there has already been one such, looking into child sexual exploitation in broad terms, that reported in 2022.

However what concerns many of the public is the specific issue of wholesale organised abuse by groups of men largely of Pakistani heritage. It is felt that close examination would reveal that police, social workers and local politicians were aware of these outrages and chose to cover them up or even, in effect, help and abet them.

Rather than open a can of worms that threatens to embarrass the Labour Party, in whose areas of control much of the abuse went on, the Government has previously proposed local investigations in five authorities. These would not have the same legal powers and could be subject to influence from local parties that might have the ability and incentive to downplay and bury the bad news. Nevertheless a budget of £5 million was set aside to conduct these reviews.

Now, among announcements of what the Government plans to do in future about such abuses, Mrs Phillips had to tell the House that those millions are to be made available to the five councils not solely to drill down into collusion and cover-ups, but simply to use at their discretion to deal with related matters, such as therapeutic help for victims.

This must have been a very difficult speech for Mrs Phillips, given her long-time personal mission to serve vulnerable females. As ‘Spiked’ writer and former editor Brendan O’Neill observed in The Spectator, and also ‘Granniopteryx’ on her YouTube channel, the Minister’s body language and muttering clearly proclaimed her shame. At least one political commentator has suggested that Mrs Phillips should have resigned rather than allow herself to be used as the mouthpiece for an administration itself keen on minimising public attention to this matter, which has potential religious and racial aspects and severely challenges the narrative that ‘diversity’ is good for the nation.

Replying for the Opposition, Shadow Minister Katie Lam MP was ferociously critical of the Government’s revised approach and gave a shockingly explicit example of the abuse suffered by victims of the gangs.

Ms Phillips tried to re-broaden the scope: ‘I think it is a shame that she referred to only one sort of child abuse victim, when the statement is clearly about all child abuse victims… we are also talking about children raped by their fathers or raped in other circumstances, such as in children’s homes and institutions…’

This fire will not be put out so easily and Ms Phillips must feel torn between her principles and her loyalty to the Labour Party.

Evil is so often fostered by the ‘greater good’ argument: ‘Do this most regrettable bad thing now, because it helps the Party that stands for the people. In the long run it is all for the best.’ How many tyrannies have run on that basis?

We need the disinfectant of truth, not the strong perfume of distraction. Otherwise, ‘in the long run’, trust in authority will be further corroded and prejudices will fester. As the inscription above the Old Bailey says, ‘Defend the children of the poor and punish the wrongdoer.’ That is what is best for society.