Debate on petitions relating to grooming gangs

Two e-petitions, Release the Home Office’s Grooming Gang Review in full (300239) and We the British People Request a Public Inquiry into Grooming Gangs (327566), are calling for Home Office action relating to group-based child sexual exploitation.

In 2018 the then Home Secretary Sajid Javid said the Home Office planned to conduct an inqury into the characterstics and contexts associated with grooming by gangs. However, in 2019 the press began to report that the review had been “shelved” and would not be published.

In 2020 the Independent newspaper reported that the Home Office had turned down a Freedom of Information request relating to the research  on the grounds that the information was exempt as it concerned the development of government policy.

Following the publication of the Independent’s article, E-petition 300239 was launched on the parliamentary petitions website calling on the Government to publish the research in full. The petition received 131,625 signatures before closing. E-petition 327566 is calling for a public inquiry on grooming gangs and has so far attracted nearly 30,000 signatures.

In its May 2020 response to e-petition 300239, the Government said it would publish a paper on group-based child sexual exploitation later in 2020. The paper, Group based child sexual exploitation characteristics of offending, was published in December 2020, followed by a new Tackling Child Sexual Abuse Strategy in January 2021.