Professor John Robertson OBA

In the Herald today, on the Tory leader Kemi Badenoch:

Kemi Badenoch has described Police Scotland’s failure to investigate a grooming gang in Scotland as “utterly shameful”. The Tory leader also accused the Scottish Government of “blocking scrutiny” into the allegations and warned that its refusal to support a public inquiry would lead to questions about whether the SNP was “hiding something”.

Labour’s Joani Reid has been ploughing this rancid furrow for some time now and the answer for Badenoch will be similar.

First, is Badenoch guilty of the same opportunistic shifting hypocrisy as we saw with Reid when, under instruction from Sir Keir Starmer she voted against a grooming gang inquiry in England then began calling for one in Scotland?

Yes, on the 18th June 2025, Sky had this:

Is Kemi Badenoch’s grooming gangs outrage just politics or does she really care? Does Ms Badenoch care about the grooming scandal because she cares about victims or because she cares about herself? To answer that, it’s useful to try and pinpoint exactly when the Tory leader started showing such a keen desire for a public inquiry. Was she always harbouring it? Or did it only arrive after Elon Musk and others pushed the scandal back up the news agenda?

On this, she’s not helped by the record of the governments she served in. Yes, the broader child abuse inquiry was announced under David Cameron, but there was no specific statutory grooming inquiry. As late as 2022, the then Tory safeguarding minister was batting away demands for a public inquiry on the basis that locally-led probes were preferable.

That is – as it happens – the same explanation the current Labour safeguarding minister Jess Phillips offered to Oldham Council in the rejection letter that sparked outrage and set us on a path to this eventual outcome. having dug out a recording of a post-PMQs briefing with Ms Badenoch’s media adviser from January, that certainly seems to be the case here.

Asked what had changed to trigger the calls for an inquiry, the spokesperson said: “We can all go back and look at the reasons why this entered the popular discourse. This is something that is of high public salience.” Or to put it another way, the politics changed.

https://news.sky.com/story/is-kemi-badenochs-grooming-gangs-outrage-just-politics-or-does-she-really-care-13385313

So, for Kemi it’s the same answer as I gave Joani:

‘Scottish’ Labour MP Joani Reid appears on right-wing media to try to drag Scotland into England’s grooming rape gangs shame

The facts she cares nothing for:

Don’t be fooled – this is not a ‘grooming’ gang like those in England – no children, no children’s homes, no thousands of victims

They, Scottish Labour and the MSM, would just love it if Scotland had one of those grooming gangs like the ones they have in England. That’s why they’re using the term for a gang that has little in common with the English ones and which, crucially, required a very different response.

Here are key differences:

1. The gangsters are not Scots, not even UK citizens.
2. They did not traffic children from care homes
3. The victims were all adults bar one Scottish 16 year-old.
4. The operation initially trafficked Romanian women, then expanded to Scottish women groomed on the streets

This case, dubbed “Scotland’s Rochdale,” stemmed from Police Scotland’s Operation Recloir, which addressed intelligence on human trafficking and exploitation in Tayside. While it highlights serious issues of grooming and trafficking vulnerable young adults, claims involving children from care homes appear unsubstantiated and may stem from misinformation or confusion with other UK cases. https://x.com/i/grok?conversation=1983120197314592792

Police Scotland have already made clear that this is not the same thing as in Rochdale and dozens of other locations in England:

‘No current investigations in Scotland involving offences against children which would mirror the investigations [in England] described in Baroness Casey’s audit as being perpetrated by “grooming gangs”

Readers will be aware no doubt of new Labour MP Joani Reid’s shameless u-turn on national inquiries into grooming gangs – no in England where they are many, to save her boss a red face, but yes in Scotland, where there are none, proving that as Jimmy Reid’s granddaughter, the apple can fall pretty far from the tree at times.

Reid also wrote to FM Swinney, demanding an inquiry here but his response published on 4th July 2025 has had no MSM coverage.

You can see why:

However, in order for any action to be effective, we must appropriately consider the relevance of these recommendations for our specific legislative, statutory service and regulatory landscape, and the scale of this specific form of organised gang-related sexual abuse of children and young people in Scotland.

I would firstly like to clarify that the recent case of child sexual abuse in Glasgow cited in your previous letter, which is now subject to a learning review, whilst horrendous, was of a different nature to the organised gang grooming observed in England and the cases reported in Baroness Casey’s recent National Audit.

Furthermore, Police Scotland have advised the Scottish Government that there are no current investigations in Scotland involving offences against children which would mirror the investigations described in Baroness Casey’s audit as being perpetrated by “grooming gangs”.

and:

In Scotland, all healthcare and education professionals already have a duty to report child abuse to social work or the police, including child sexual abuse and exploitation. A practitioner’s failure to report child abuse, including child sexual abuse and exploitation, could constitute a breach of their employment contract, lead to disciplinary action, or give rise to a claim for civil damages. Practitioners could also be struck off from social work, teaching, or medical registers for gross misconduct.

Not in Swinney’s response but an important factor, mentioned in the last line above – all care staff must be registered in Scotland but in the English 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. https://www.iicsa.org.uk/reports-recommendations/publications/inquiry/final-report.html

Full FM response at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/ukg-audit-on-group-based-child-sexual-exploitation-and-abuse-first-ministers-response/

Footnote – Sarah Champion MP in 2020 – One million children were sexually abused by grooming gangs? Probably not. No one really know but certainly thousands.