Bartholomew's Notes

A big splash from the Express:

EXCLUSIVE: Whistblowers say Sadiq Khan has serious questions to answer
MAYOR ACCUSED OVER GROOMING GANGS ‘COVER-UP’ IN CAPITAL

The plain meaning is that Sadiq Khan has suppressed evidence of “grooming gang” crimes in London, but that this has now been exposed by “whistleblowers” who have brought the matter to light. This is the general impression on Twitter/X, with calls for the mayor not just to resign but to be arrested.

The actual story, though, is somewhat less dramatic: His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) regularly publishes reports, easily found online and long known to the media, which pertain to how police forces have dealt with child protection issues. These include short “cases”, which outline instances where matters had been mishandled. The Express found six examples, going back to 2016, in which a child in London was believed either to have suffered sexual exploitation, or to have been at risk of exploitation, from multiple adults. One report, for instance, described how “a social worker reported that someone coerced a 15-year-old girl to go to a hotel. There she was given drugs and alcohol and made to carry out sexual acts on men.” Two Express journalists asked Maggie Oliver her opinions on these cases, and she expressed the view that several of them were either “grooming gang” criminality or likely to have been. A “care professional and author” named Chris Wild concurred, thus allowing “whistleblowers” in the plural.

It should be recalled that Sadiq Khan had an exchange with Susan Hall at the London Assembly in January, during which she asked him about grooming gangs in London; Khan repeatedly asked her to clarify her question, presumably because he wanted her to make a specific “Asian” or “Pakistani-heritage” allegation (if so, he would have been better advised to have asked her outright). Eventually, his answer was that “we do have issues in London with young girls being groomed for county lines. Some of those girls are used for sex”.

The allegation, then, is that the anonymous and bare anecdotes scattered here and there in the HMICFRS reports  indicate that he ought to have given a fuller answer. The Conservative Party’s Chris Philp, who with Lee Anderson provided the “cover-up” allegation, thunders:

This leaves the mayor with serious questions to answer. Why did he refuse to answer these questions if he knew grooming gangs were operating in London? Why did he deny the existence of grooming gangs like those found in Rochdale and Rotherham in London? It is clear Sadiq Khan is facilitating a cover up.

Sadiq Khan’s attitude to this issue is one of utter indifference. How can he be so unconcerned about the grooming and rape of young girls and boys by groups of men, mainly of Pakistani heritage?

The problem here, though, is that “grooming gangs like those found in Rochdale and Rotherham” is quite a leap, especially when then the Express article is read alongside a piece that one of the co-authors wrote for MyLondon:

When it comes to grooming gangs, there is no escaping Asian and Pakistani offenders have been the mainstay of media coverage. The original investigation by The Times focussed on ethnicity, and it has been a dream story for the far-right ever since.

But London was always going to be different

“The victims are as diverse as the perpetrators,” an expert told me early on in my investigation, an insight that has matched up with our research so far.

Read back through the questions from London Assembly Members Susan Hall and Lord Shaun Bailey though, and you will see ethnicity was never even an issue. They made comparisons to Northern towns like Rochdale, Rotherham, Oldham, Telford, but this was, to anyone watching, clearly a reference to the modus operandi rather than heritage.

…Why the Mayor and the Met insisted on treating every question about grooming gangs as a question about ethnic minorities, only they will know.

…The evidence is clear and the experts agree: London has a problem with groups of men (gangs) who coerce children into sex (grooming). Yes, some of it is linked to County Lines, but MyLondon and the Express have uncovered evidence that this type of exploitation goes beyond drug dealers treating kids like commodities.

The journalist’s own contribution is that he discovered the existence of an ongoing investigation in Hounslow, which he says has now forced the Metropolitan Police to change its “stance”. The MyLondon article overall ia more measured than the Express polemic; however, the ways in which this “this type of exploitation goes beyond drug dealers” remains somewhat opaque, and “London was always going to be different” is unhelpfully vague. The complaint that Khan and the Met treated “every question about grooming gangs as a question about ethnic minorities” is more suggesive of talking at cross-purposes than a cover-up.

The Express article follows on from a similar splash from last month, in which Khan was accused of “grooming failure” by Jon Wedger – I discussed that one here. Wedger and Oliver previously appeared together in a video in 2019. I noted another Oliver front-page splash from January here.

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