Grooming survivors deserve much better

WHAT DO you call an inquiry where some of the survivors, or victims, don’t want to take part and no one seems willing to head it up? That would be an inquiry into the national grooming gangs scandal which the government has allowed to descend into utter chaos and political infighting, leaving victims desperately looking for answers feeling bitter and betrayed.

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For a former Director of Public Prosecutions — and let’s be truthful, he never tires of reminding us of that — Sir Keir Starmer seems to have been at a legal loss at this from the start.

As recently as last January he was still spectacularly misjudging the public mood by insisting anyone calling for such an inquiry was “jumping on a bandwagon of the far right”.

Is that really the way for a Prime Minister to respond to the jailing of scores of men from a network of gangs who raped, abducted, imprisoned and trafficked an unknown number of underage girls and older teens and plied them with drugs, cheap booze and gifts?

And who were also let down — possibly criminally let down — by our police forces, local authorities and parts of the NHS?

His insistence, shared by senior ministers, that it could be dealt with by a series of underfunded and disconnected regional inquiries showed how out of touch they were.