Casey says having incomplete ethnicity data on grooming gangs has been ‘disaster’, and officials to blame for ‘public irresponsibility’
Referring to the national inquiry, Casey says she wants this to be different from the types of inquiry that have happened before.
On data, she says national data on grooming gangs is “incomplete and unreliable”. That is to put it mildly, she says.
She says this is a form of irrresponsibility.
She says:
I feel very strongly on issues that are as searing as people’s race, when we know the prejudice and racism that people of colour experience in this country, to not get how you treat that data right is a different level of public irresponsibility.
Sorry, to put it so bluntly, I didn’t put it that bluntly yesterday, but I think it’s particularly important if you are collecting those sorts of issues to get them 100% right.
And if you are not getting them 100% right, please don’t use them to justify another position, which is potentially what happened.
That may be well meaning, it may not be well meaning, but that’s how the data has run. And I think the sooner we bring a close to that – my view is collect something or don’t collect something. For God’s sake, don’t half collect it. That’s a bloody disaster, frankly.
She says, even where data has been collected on ethnicity, it has only talked about people being of Asian or Pakistani heritage. She says that bundles people together in one big grouping. It is not helpful, she says.
UPDATE: Casey also said:
When we asked the good people of Greater Manchester Police to help us look at the data we also collected – I think it’s in the report – what was happening with child abuse more generally, and of course … if you look at the data on child sexual exploitation, suspects and offenders, it’s disproportionately Asian heritage. If you look at the data for child abuse, it is not disproportionate, and it is white men.
So again, just note to everybody, really outside here rather than in here. Let’s just keep calm here about how you interrogate data and what you draw from it.
Key events
Stormont’s anti-poverty plan for Northern Ireland dismissed as ‘underwhelming’
A long-awaited Stormont plan to target poverty has been criticised as “underwhelming”, PA Media reports. PA says:
Communities minister Gordon Lyons (DUP) launched an extended 14-week public consultation on the executive’s anti-poverty strategy 2025-35 today.
He described it as being based on three pillars of minimising risks of falling into poverty, minimising the impact of poverty on people’s lives and working to help people get out of poverty.
Figures indicated that around 18% of those in Northern Ireland live in relative poverty, and 15% live in absolute poverty, with 25% of children living in relative poverty and 21% of children living in absolute poverty.
The strategic commitments from across departments include continuing the extended schools programme, working with partners to scope out an NI debt relief scheme, a commitment to develop an executive disability strategy and a fuel poverty strategy.
Speaking in the Assembly, Lyons described a “legacy of delay” in taking forward an anti-poverty strategy.
“When I took office, I made it clear that one of my priorities would be tackling poverty,” he told MLAs.
“After a legacy of delay in taking this work forward, I wanted to work at pace to develop a strategy which could help make a meaningful difference to those experiencing socio-economic disadvantage in our society.
But Mark H Durkan (SDLP) from the official Opposition at Stormont described the document as “underwhelming”.
He contended it didn’t just “call into question the executive’s ability to tackle poverty”, but also their appetite and ambition to do so.
Government’s water sector review won’t consider turning firms into not-for-profit companies, its chair tells MPs
Helena Horton
Helena Horton is a Guardian environment reporter.
The government will not be recommended to turn water companies into not-for-profit companies under its “root and branch review” of the sector, review author Sir John Cunliffe has said.
At the launch of the Cunliffe review, the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs said that all options – except nationalisation – were on the table, and that a non-profit model such as that used in Wales was being considered.
But Cunliffe has now said the ownership structure is not the problem causing sewage spills, financial mismanagement and water shortages caused by a lack of investment.
He told the Commons environment committee this morning that the review will not be recommending one ownership structure for the industry. He said:
If the question is whether we will recommend a wholesale transfer to another [ownership] model, what we won’t do is say we will move the whole sector to a different model. I’m not sure how you get there without spending a very large amount of public money to buy the assets and that’s outside my terms of reference.
Feargal Sharkey, former Undertones frontman turned water campaigner, said:
I had absolutely no expectations for this commission whatsoever and so far I am yet to disappointed.
I fail to comprehend how the interpretation of a root and branch review of the water industry is to completely exclude the issue at the heart of the industry which is ownership of the industry and the financial abuse of the water companies.
Sir John is refusing to look at this because the government has told him not to.
At the committee, when asked by MPs if his report was going to be “tinkering” if it was not recommending an overhaul of how water companies are owned, Cunliffe said:
It’s not tinkering, it’s trying to be evidence based. I don’t think looking at the models, the evidence we have, it’s not a big data set but I don’t think the conclusive evidence is there to make a big change like that.
He added that the terms of reference set by environment secretary Steve Reed rule out using public money to nationalise water companies.
Cunliffe said that in the review he will “think about the investors, how they want to take their money out, are they prepared to put more equity in as investment goes up, are they looking for capital gain, are they looking for a stream of dividends over time?” and what the rules were around those issues. “It looks maybe weak but I don’t think it is,” he said.
He also said the review would not make any recommendations about bonuses and pay for water company CEOs.
I don’t have a problem with there being bonuses for the financial performance provided they are not at the expense of the public good. We are not going to make recommendations on particular renumeration packages for chief executives.
There is a tension here between people taking pay packages they don’t deserve and recruiting and retaining. These are pretty big companies, the penalties for failure are pretty enormous. What we won’t get into is whether this [pay] is excessive.
At the home affairs committee Jake Richards (Lab) asked Louise Casey is she was in favour of having a permanent child sexual abuse commissioner, who could constantly pressure the government to act on these issues.
Casey said that she was “not a massive fan of constant commissioners”, having been one. (She was victims commissioner for a period). She said ministers were accountable for policy, and she also said there was already a “very good” domestic violence commissioner in place (Nicole Jacobs).
Casey says she hopes grooming gangs inquiry does not lead to scapegoating and hate-mongering
Councils should “think carefully” about the need to cooperate with the national inquiry into grooming gangs, Louise Casey told the home affairs committee.
She says councils should not take the view that, just because they might have carried out serious case reviews into abuse allegations, that meant there was no need for a further investigation.
But she also said she did not want to see people scapegoated.
Asked if there should be a specific focus on Bradford, she said:
I would urge them – Bradford, anywhere – to think carefully about not being open to scrutiny and to change, and I would urge them to think carefully.
And I realise it’s nerve wracking, because in the midst of all of this are some human beings that are leaders, and I don’t mean political leaders necessarily, but social workers, team leaders, police officers. We all know that when it gets nasty, they are named and very nasty people can do very nasty things to them, but you all know that, you’re MPs.
So we have got to be careful about not scapegoating people and creating a hate-monger thing. At the same time that we have to make sure that we get the inquiries right and that people are held to account locally.
So I would say to anybody who can see themselves in this report, be open to it.
Casey told the home affairs committee that she saw the national police investigation and national inquiry into grooming gangs as “cojoined”.
She said she wanted to see a “significant uplift” in prosecutions and police investigations.
Back at the home affairs committee, Louise Casey has just finished giving evidence. But I will post some of the things she said while the Conservative party press conference was going on.
In response to a question about how she wanted the government to respond to her report, she said she expected it to act on all her recommendations. It was not unreasonable to expect action within the next six months, she said.
We did 12 knowing that we wanted some big, big shifts.
I hope this is a line in the sand, and I think the 12 things that we’re asking for are not impossible.
They’re not pipe dreams, they’re achievable.
Badenoch is wrapping up now.
She says this is one of the greatest scandals this country has seen.
The Conservatives will support the government, she says.
But they cannot take too long. And the inquiry must follow the evidence, she says.
And that’s it from the press conference.
Q: Is this a border control issue?
Philp says this is the worst year for small boat crossings.
He says the vast majority of arrivals are young men.
And he says the Casey report says “significant numbers” of offenders are asylum seekers, or non-UK nationals.
Badenoch defends politicising grooming gangs issue, accusing Labour of doing this first
Q: Do you regret the tone you took in the Commons yesterday?
Badenoch says:
I do think that we should take the politics out of it.
But she goes to attack Labour – claiming they were the first to politicise this issue.
But who was it that said when we raised this issue that we were pandering to the far right? That’s what brought the politics into it. Who was it that said that this was dog whistle politics? It was Keir Starmer and his ministers.
She says it is her job to hold the government to account.
She says, speaking here on a platform with survivors, she is not being political.
But in the Commons she will raise politics, she says. “We are politicians – politics is what we do.” She goes on:
When I’m in the Houses of Parliament, when I’m in the Commons, I will do politics. And I think that it is wrong for people to tone police those who are pointing out when something has gone wrong.
That is what happened to Sajid Javid when he was talking about ethnicity. That is what happened to Suella Braverman.
That is what happened to many people who were bringing up these cases. I remember hearing one survivor say that they reported that an Asian man had taken their son and the police were more interested in the language she used and said that she couldn’t describe him as that, that that was racist.
That’s what really worries me.
Badenoch plays down value of politicians apologising, saying ‘apologies are easy’ – 24 hours after demanding one from Starmer
Q: Will you offer an apology to survivors for the failures of the past government?
Badenoch says she has apologised to survivors.
But apologies are easy, she says.
She says:
I have apologised, but what I find extraordinary is that more people are interested in prosecuting a government that did some things … rather than looking at what needs to happen right now ….
No one here has asked me for more apologies. They have heard the apologies. Apologies are easy. What we need to see is action.
We can sit here and say sorry all day long, but what I actually want to see is an inquiry that gets at the bottom of this.
Yesterday Badenoch was demanding an apology from Keir Starmer.
Badenoch says Sajid Javid and Suella Braverman were “vilified” for saying that race was a factor in this offending.
Badenoch says most of what was in Louise Casey’s report ‘I felt I had seen before’
Badenoch is now taking questions.
She starts with Charlie Peters, the reporter who has led the GB News coverage of this issue.
Q: Will you ensure Westminster, including the CPS, are investigated by the inquiry over cover-up allegations?
Badenoch says the inquiry should follow the evidence. No one should be out of scope, she says.
She says most of what was in Louise Casey’s report “I felt I had seen before, and I knew”.
She says a national inquiry could have been ordered sooner.
