Labour Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said there is an “outstanding question” over the grooming gangs scandal and called for “truth and reconciliation” – despite the Government’s refusal to hold a national inquiry. Her comments echo the language used to describe a tribunal called the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which held a lengthy investigation into apartheid after it ended in South Africa.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, backed Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, has rejected calls for a national judge-led inquiry into the grooming scandal despite reports of rape gangs targeting girls in 50 towns and cities. But Ms Mahmood appeared to strike a different tone in an interview with The Spectator magazine. She said: “There have been successful prosecutions of large numbers of these criminals, and many are currently in our prisons. On one level, you could say, well, accountability is occurring because these criminals are facing the full force of the law.
“But the way that this scandal has played out asks a bigger question, which is that you might be getting accountability and justice through the criminal justice system, [but] it doesn’t feel like proper accountability and justice for all of the victims. And that’s because there is still [an] outstanding question of why so many people maybe looked the other way, or why this wasn’t picked up and given the prominence that was needed.
“And so that’s why justice might technically have been delivered. But there’s still a moment of reckoning to come.”
She told The Spectator: “There is such visceral pain and a total shattering of trust in people who should have done a better job locally. Whether local authorities, children’s services, police officers, all sorts of people you would feel you can trust, and that trust has been fundamentally shaken, if not totally broken, in some of these places … there is that need for reckoning. I hope I’m not overstating it as truth and reconciliation, but in my mind, that’s what it feels like is needed.”
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission began work in 1996 and was chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a leading anti-apartheid campaigner. It invited victims of human rights abuses to give statements about their experiences, while some of those responsible for violence and other abuses under the system of racial discrimination in South Africa also gave evidence.
Tories have been demanding a national inquiry but the Government has instead supported local investigations.
The Justice Secretary, a close ally of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, also named the former Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher and former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto as the politicians she admired most.
Speaking to Spectator editor Michael Gove, a former Conservative MP who also once served as justice secretary, she said: “Well, I tend to go for the women that broke the mould, who came through in tight patriarchal systems – Benazir Bhutto, Margaret Thatcher – not for the substance of their politics, but for what they represented for women and the ability to make a contribution.”
Her comments are likely to prove controversial with some Labour activists who still regard Thatcher, who was PM from 1979-90, as a villain.
The Birmingham MP was a leading figure in the Labour Together think tank, which developed alternative “moderate” policies for Labour when Left-winger Jeremy Corbyn was party leader and eventually rallied round Sir Keir when he stood for the party leadership.