the extent of child abuse carried out by grooming gangs in Scotland, according to a review.

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For some reason, but not unusually for Reporting Scotland, this story is not reported more fully on their website.

The National review of group-based child sexual abuse and exploitation and child criminal exploitation Last updated: 3 September 2026 has not found evidence of any large-scale grooming gang activity comparable to that found across the ‘north’ of England in places like Rotherham and Rochdale, where more than a thousand young girls were abused and hundreds of offenders were prosecuted and jailed. What it has found is that it does not have the data to confirm that such activity does not take place in Scotland.

Opposition politicians and their media chums are currently burrowing around try to find evidence that Scotland is no different in this regard as part of a wider campaign to weaken the case for independence and the SNP Government has no alternative but to humour them with a formal invesitgation.

We have no adequate evidence on ethnicity and crime more generally but there is no popular pressure to investigate that because any finding could not be used for that purpose.

There are no comparable grooming gangs operating in Scotland.

Why am I so sure? Police Scotland would know damn fine if there were and the MSM would be all over it.

Anything like the scale and

From the First Minister on 9 February 2026, responding to calls for a national review:

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/

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