Robbie Moore

The House will be well aware that I have been consistently campaigning for a rape gangs inquiry into child sexual expectation across Keighley and the wider Bradford district for far too long. So I welcome some of the points that the Home Secretary has made, particularly on the implementation of the 20 recommendations from the IICSA report. Unfortunately, I do not feel that she is going far enough, and I would like to make a few points. In particular, I have serious concerns about the ability of inquiries at a local level to compel witnesses to give evidence and about the amount of funding that will be made available. Will the local inquiries that the Home Secretary is advocating be truly independent, not just local authorities marking their own homework, and will they lead to convictions? Local authority leaders in Bradford district have consistently refused to back my calls for a public inquiry, as has the Mayor of West Yorkshire and the deputy Mayor for policing, Alison Lowe. How on earth are we meant to get across this barrier of local leaders refusing to have an inquiry on this issue without the Government stepping in and giving the statutory authority that we on this side of the House are demanding?