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16 Jan 2025

Police watchdog failures in grooming scandal ‘disgraceful’

Data Correspondent and Presenter

We spoke to Liberal Democrat MP Tessa Munt, who suffered sexual abuse as a child and has campaigned for an independent inquiry into historic abuse.

Ciaran Jenkins: Can I get your reaction, first of all, to that exclusive report, particularly the allegation that investigators were discouraged from looking into senior officers, which the police watchdog denies?

Tessa Munt: Yes, I’ve been aware of that, and I think one of the things I’d like to say, first of all, if I may, Ciaran, and that is that firstly, I would say thank you to those whistleblowing investigating officers for coming forward and telling the truth. Secondly, I would say thank you to Jayne Senior, who was a youth worker at the time, when she reported what was happening. Operation Linden came out of that. And then when she made specific complaints to the IOPC, that’s when we got to the report, Amazon, which has never been published. And thank you also to those victims and survivors who have been so brave in actually saying something. Now, as far as my reaction, you know, here we go again. We’ve got police officers who’ve investigated themselves giving themselves all sorts of praise. Those who are in a spot of trouble look as though they’ve sloped off somewhere and and retired. And this is absolutely disgraceful, which is why I asked the home secretary this afternoon if she would please look at all of the IPCC and the IOPC reports, and actually particularly those, whether they’ve been published or not, have a look at those. And that’s why she’s invited me to bring Jayne Senior, the first whistleblower, in to meet with her. And I’m really pleased that that’s happening. About time.

Ciaran Jenkins: We’ve got a problem there, haven’t we, now, because we have just heard on this programme tonight these whistleblower allegations that the police watchdog investigation into police failures itself failed. Now, in this new world where everyone should be taking this seriously, what should happen now? Who’s going to watch the watchdog?

Tessa Munt: My party’s got the answer to that, and that would be the Office of the Whistleblower, an independent office of the whistleblower, so that people are protected from being investigated by people who’ve investigated them for and found themselves to be clean and absolutely squeaky clean. That’s just not good enough. And to be fair, the Labour government has actually looked at that as an option and is speaking broadly in favour of that kind of thing.

Ciaran Jenkins: This was an eight year, eight year inquiry. Do you think now it should be externally reviewed at the very least?

Tessa Munt: I think we’ve got a very good starting point in that – the Lib Dems have been really clear that actually the first thing that should happen is we should implement Alexis Jay’s 20 recommendations, and that looks as though it’s coming forward. Although what we will do is make sure that we hold the government to account on the timescale for that. They’ve said they’re going to put out a timescale before Easter. I really would like to see that soon. I don’t think there’s any reason for delaying that.

Ciaran Jenkins: I was just going to say, you mentioned there what was said this afternoon. The home secretary set out what she’s going to do, including these five local inquiries. She was asked again and again if they would have statutory powers to compel witnesses, to force them to give evidence. They’re not going to, are they?

Tessa Munt: That’ll be a decision for her and for her ministers when they’re looking at what happens. And the response has to be this has to come from the victims and those people who’ve survived this appalling experience. And there are lots of them. One of the good things that happened this afternoon is she said that she will look at recent cases as well and that these are nationwide. You know, this doesn’t just relate to Rotherham or places in the north. It’s all over the country. It affects all communities. We need to be very, very clear that what victims and survivors want is exactly what happens if if people need to be compelled, then the home secretary needs to make sure that that compulsion is put into place. And she has inferred that that’s what she’s going to do.