Authorities used privacy laws to avoid sharing key clues that could have protected girls

COUNCILS and health trusts hid behind privacy laws to avoid sharing crucial intelligence that could have protected girls from being groomed, it has been claimed.

- Michael Knowles Home Affairs Editor

Dame Louise Casey told MPs that organisations “often use” privacy “safeguards” to “protect our own agency interest”. She declared the “sharing of data is probably easier now” than at any point over the past few decades.

So little data was shared between organisations that staff would have to show crucial pieces of information on their laptop screens in physical meetings, rather than sending electronic copies.

Dame Louise warned that detectives were missing out on “critical” pieces of intelligence, which councils, schools or health chiefs may have already had.

Her scathing report into the grooming gangs scandal added: “Information and data from safeguarding partners is vital to build a local picture of risk and threat.”

Dame Louise told the Home Affairs Select Committee yesterday: “There's no reason, technically, to make that difficult anymore. The sharing of data is probably easier now than at any point in my entire career. It is not expensive. It is just getting the safeguards around privacy right.”