Cooper Claims ‘Police Investigations are Better’ After Blocking Local Rape Gang Inquiries – Guido Fawkes

Cooper Claims ‘Police Investigations are Better’ After Blocking Local Rape Gang Inquiries

Yvette Cooper is this morning having to defend Labour’s decision to scrap the five small-scale rape gang inquiries in Oldham, Rochdale, Telford, Rotherham, and Bradford. Former EHRC chief Trevor Phillips did not mince his words on that one yesterday…

Cooper’s line is that “we’re actually increasing the action that we are taking on these vile crimes, increasing the action around local inquiries and also around around investigations increase in police investigation.” By this she is reiterating that the £5 million set out for the small inquiries will now just be used for other “bespoke” things…

The home secretary went on to claim “we’re also collecting more data in a way that hasn’t been collected” and batted away the prospect of a statutory inquiry because “we’ve had already a 7-year statutory inquiry into child sexual abuse” before concluding “actually the best way of all of doing this is a police investigation, it’s not an inquiry it’s a police investigation so the most important thing we are doing is increasing police investigations.” Is that right…

Guido counts Labour counting for no fewer than ten inquiries since Starmer became party leader. Has the PM lost his appetite for them?