The UK government has announced a national review to assess the scale of child sexual exploitation by grooming gangs. The review will involve a three-month “rapid audit” to understand the nature and extent of gang-based exploitation across the country, with a focus on the cultural and societal factors driving the issue.
The review, announced on Thursday by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, will also analyze ethnicity data and demographics of both the gangs and their victims. Cooper emphasized that the review would include an examination of the societal factors contributing to child sexual abuse.
In addition to the national review, Cooper revealed plans for new local inquiries, modeled on those previously conducted in other areas. She defended these local investigations in response to calls from the Conservative Party for a nationwide inquiry. “As we have seen, effective local inquiries can delve into far more local detail and deliver more locally relevant answers, and change, than a lengthy nationwide inquiry can provide,” Cooper said.
The issue of child sexual exploitation gained renewed attention earlier this month when a political row broke out between US billionaire Elon Musk and Prime Minister Keir Starmer, surrounding historic sex offenses involving British girls and men of South Asian origin in northern English towns.
