THE ASIAN INDEPENDENT UK
Bal Ram Sampla
Geopolitics
The Labour Party promised victims of grooming gangs a full public enquiry. Five months later, that promise rings hollow. The inquiry has no chair, no timeline, and no credibility. Worse still, three brave survivors have resigned from the inquiry’s liaison panel, citing obstruction and broken promises. This is not incompetence, this looks like a deliberate attempt to protect reputations over seeking justice.
When Labour finally announced the enquiry in June 2025, it came only after intense public pressure. They were dragged to the table. Now, months later, nothing has happened. No chairman appointed. No start date set. Just excuses and delays while victims wait for answers they’ve been denied for decades.
Every day of delay is another day that victims are told their suffering doesn’t matter. Every week without progress is another week that those responsible for covering up these horrors breathe easier. This is unconscionable.
Appointing the Accused to Investigate Themselves
The proposed chairs for this inquiry tell you everything you need to know about Labour’s intentions. They wanted to appoint a police officer and a social worker—representatives of the very institutions that turned a blind eye while children were raped and tortured. Police who ignored victims. Social workers who called these girls “prostitutes” instead of abuse victims.
The survivors saw through this immediately. They said no. They walked away. And they were right to do so. You cannot have the accused investigate themselves. That’s not an inquiry—that’s a whitewash.
Protecting Political Interests Over Victims
Why is Labour doing this? The uncomfortable truth many believe is that the party is more concerned with protecting political relationships than protecting victims. Grooming gangs operated with impunity in Labour-controlled areas for years. Labour councillors ignored warnings. Labour-run councils failed catastrophically.
Now, many argue, Labour fears a truly independent inquiry because it would expose not just institutional failure, but political failure—their failure. They fear losing support from communities they believe will be offended by the truth. So victims are sacrificed again, this time on the altar of electoral calculation.
Diluting the Focus
Survivors report that Labour wants to broaden the inquiry to cover all forms of child sexual exploitation. On the surface, this sounds reasonable. In reality, it’s a tactic to muddy the waters. These grooming gangs operated in a specific way, in specific places, enabled by specific cultural and institutional failures. Broadening the scope dilutes the focus and makes it easier to avoid uncomfortable truths about why these particular crimes were ignored for so long.
Victims see this for what it is: another obstacle, another delay, another way to avoid accountability.
The Human Cost of Delay
While Labour dithers and obstructs, victims suffer. Many have waited decades for acknowledgment, for justice, for someone in power to simply say: “We failed you, and we will find out why.”
That acknowledgment still hasn’t come. Instead, they get bureaucracy, delays, and proposals that insult their intelligence and their suffering.
These are women who were groomed, raped, and trafficked as children. They were failed by police, by social workers, by councillors, and by the government. Now they’re being failed again by a Labour government that won’t give them the independent inquiry they deserve.
What Must Happen Now
Labour must stop the delays and the games. Appoint a truly independent chair, someone with no ties to UK institutions that failed, someone victims can trust. Give the inquiry the narrow, focused scope survivors are asking for. Set a timeline and stick to it. And most importantly, put victims first—not political considerations, not institutional reputations, not electoral mathematics.
If Labour cannot do this, they prove what many already suspect: that they care more about protecting themselves and their political interests than they do about the children who were raped while authorities looked the away.
The victims have waited long enough. Every additional day of delay is another betrayal. Labour must act now, or history will judge them as harshly as it judges those who enabled these crimes in the first place.
The choice is theirs. The victims are watching. So is the country.
References
1.https://www.itv.com/news/2025-10-21/two-grooming-gang-survivors-quit-national-inquiry-panel
2.https://theenglishchronicle.com/News/5632
3.https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/10/21/another-shameful-grooming-gangs-cover-up/
4.https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2025/10/21/labour-govt-accused-of-sabotaging-child-rape-grooming-gang-inquiry-amid-resignations/
