Professor John Robertson OBA

BBC UK is headlining the above as a ‘national inquiry’ though it is clear, reading on, that it is not:

The prime minister has announced there will be a full national statutory inquiry into grooming gangs. Sir Keir Starmer said he had accepted the recommendations of an audit by Baroness Louise Casey into the data and evidence on the nature and scale of group-based child sexual abuse. Baroness Casey has recommended a national inquiry is required, he said. The inquiry will cover England and Wales.

The Guardian, notably, does not clarify that and leaves it to imply a UK-wide inquiry.

There will now be desperate attempts to push the scandal into Scotland.

On January 6th 2025, we saw this:

Former Labour and Jack McConnell aide desperately attempts to spread ‘grooming gang’ pandemic into Scotland based on no evidence at all

In the wake of the accusations that Keir Starmer was neglectful in his role as chief prosecutor at the time of the Rotherham Grooming [Mass child rape] Gang scandal, former Labour First Minister, Jack McConnell’s aide, Susan Dalgety, writes in the Scotsman on Saturday 4th January:

Why Scotland needs urgent national investigation into child sex abuse by grooming gangs¹

Leaving aside the irony of Scottish Labour calling for an inquiry into a phenomenon barely reported in Scotland at the same time as UK Labour refuses one where the phenomenon is widely reported in England, what evidence of need does Dalgety have?

Just these:

First, the absence of evidence that there is such activity in Scotland suggests, to her, that it is hidden.

Second, in 2023, seven adults were found guilty of raping four children in Glasgow.

Third, in the 1970s and 1980s, a lawyer was accused of passing his daughter around a paedophile circle. Dalgety presents this as factual evidence of a grooming gang though only one man was prosecuted.

Terrible those these events are, they do not represent a phenomenon comparable to events in England. Dalgety herself tells us:

So far, there have been five local inquiries into the prevalence of these evil networks. The first was in Rotherham in 2014, followed by Rochdale, Oxford, Telford and Newcastle.² 

There have been no such local inquiries in Scotland.

In Rotherham, with a population of just over 100 000, a sixth of Glasgow, it is estimated that 1,400 girls, primarily from care home backgrounds, were abused by “grooming gangs” between 1997 and 2013.³

A Times investigation in 2003, of court records, showed 17 cases of localised grooming in 13 northern towns since 1997—14 since 2008—in which 56 men were convicted of sexual offences against girls aged 11–16.⁴

Why does is this happening disproportionally in England? One reason can be found in the report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse October 2022:

There is no system of registration for the approximately 35,000 workers “mainly or solely providing care for children” (that is, in a care role) in England. In Wales (as well as in Scotland and Northern Ireland), children’s social care workers must register with a regulatory body.⁵

The absence of evidence may not always be the evidence of absence but there is a gap here between England and the rest of the UK which Scottish Labour cannot bridge, desperate though they are to tell Scots – ‘You’re no different!’

Sources:

1. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/crime/general/why-scotland-needs-urgent-national-investigation-into-child-sex-abuse-by-grooming-gangs/ar-AA1wWmJV?ocid=BingNewsVerp
2. https://www.iicsa.org.uk/reports-recommendations/publications/inquiry/final-report.html
3. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-61868863
4. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rotherham-child-sex-abuse-how-the-truth-finally-came-out-c2d9wgmwtd6
5. https://www.iicsa.org.uk/reports-recommendations/publications/inquiry/final-report.html

On the next day, the 7th, we were astonished by this:

Sky News try to push the child grooming scandal north of the border with one Scot* out of thousands of victims

Amazingly, Sky News and, I hear, Channel 4 News find a woman in Glasgow to talk about her experience of being groomed and raped.

*That this took place in Glasgow, ten years ago or so, is not confirmed.

It’s an amazing find. Until the recent (2002) abuse of 4 children of primary school age in Glasgow by 7 men, there is no report of anything like a ‘grooming’ gang with multiple victims in Scotland.

Channel 4’s FACTCHECK in August 2014, makes no mention of Scotland or Glasgow, only:

By date of conviction, we have evidence of such exploitation taking place in Keighley (2005 and 2013), Blackpool (2006), Oldham (2007 and 2008), Blackburn (2007, 2008 and 2009), Sheffield (2008), Manchester (2008 and 2013) Skipton (2009), Rochdale (two cases in 2010, one in 2012 and another in 2013), Nelson (2010), Preston (2010) Rotherham (2010) Derby (2010), Telford (2012), Bradford (2012), Ipswich (2013), Birmingham (2013), Oxford (2013), Barking (2013) and Peterborough (2013). https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-grooming-gangs

There is great media interest in the recent coverage of the ethnicity of the English gangs – predominantly Asian. The 8 Glasgow men in 2022 were all white.

This ability to find a Scottish connection was also demonstrated by Channel 4 News in October 2024, on County Lines gangs:

From Police Scotland in 2019:

The charity Crime-stoppers is today 14th January 2019 launching a campaign to highlight the pain and suffering that criminals from English cities are inflicting on vulnerable people in Scotland’s rural and coastal towns. The campaign aims to raise awareness of County Lines, which is when criminals from major cities such as Liverpool, Manchester, London and Birmingham are expanding their drug networks to other areas, bringing with it serious criminal behaviour such as violence, exploitation and abuse. The term County Lines refers to the use of a single telephone number to order drugs, operated from outside the local area. This is having a massive impact on rural communities and also on vulnerable children and adults who are being recruited in cities such as Manchester and Liverpool.¹

There are no such gangs based in Scottish cities yet tonight Channel 4 located their report in Glasgow, interviewed victims with Scottish accents, did not once mention England or any English city and referred to contacting the Scottish Government despite it having no jurisdiction in English cities.

At least five years since this plague of extreme violence, child abuse, people trafficking and drug deaths resulting from an increased flow of cheaper yet more powerful drugs into small town and rural Scotland, and Channel 4 News has not had the gumption to investigate the source of the plague in an English city.

The association has now been made between County Lines gangs and Scotland is a way which inverts the true relationship between the English perpetrators and Scottish victims.

A former STV reporter, Kathryn Samson, knows better but is already absorbed in that culture dismissive of Scotland.

Source:

1. https://www.scotland.police.uk/whats-happening/news/2019/january/campaign-launched-appeal-for-help-tackling-county-lines-drug-networks