REFORM TO PRESS FOR ANSWERS AFTER NEW BIRMINGHAM GROOMING GANGS AND CHILD SEXUAL EXPLOITATION REPORT.

A new Birmingham City Council scrutiny report has revealed 98 open child sexual exploitation investigations in the city, including six assessed as group-based, while raising further questions about the information being published on perpetrators.

The report, which is due to be considered by Birmingham City Council’s Education, Children and Young People Overview and Scrutiny Committee today, sets out the scale of child sexual exploitation currently known to authorities in Birmingham.

143 children are known to Birmingham Children’s Trust because they are at risk of, or experiencing, CSE - and 52% of the identified CSE cohort have repeatedly gone missing.

Although the published report provides information about the age and sex of offenders, it does not publish an ethnicity or nationality breakdown of current offenders or suspects.

That comes after Baroness Casey’s national audit specifically recommended that ethnicity and nationality data should be collected for all suspects in child sexual abuse and criminal exploitation cases. The Government accepted that recommendation and said police would be required to collect ethnicity and nationality data in every case of child sexual exploitation and abuse.

The Birmingham report does provide demographic information about victims. It states that 90.6% of identified victims are girls, with identified risk concentrated particularly among 13–17-year-olds. It also says White British children and several mixed-ethnicity groups appear above expected population levels.

The report also reveals that in May two Birmingham private-hire drivers had their licences revoked immediately after West Midlands Police supplied information concerning potential sexual offences against children, pending further police investigation.

It refers to successful prosecutions and continuing investigations, but does not provide figures showing how many there have been.

The latest report comes more than a decade after Birmingham City Council’s 2014 CSE scrutiny inquiry said the city needed a greater understanding of perpetrators, including their ethnicity. Since then further reports and scrutiny have taken place across different political administrations and leaderships, yet significant questions still remain unresolved.

Reform UK Birmingham previously called on the Council Leader to write to Baroness Anne Longfield CBE, Chair of the statutory Grooming Gangs Inquiry, formally requesting that Birmingham be included in future local investigations. The Leader subsequently confirmed that he did not intend to make that request.

Cllr Rachel Conaghan, Reform UK Birmingham Shadow Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Families, said:

“The numbers in this report are deeply serious. With 98 CSE investigations currently open in Birmingham, including six assessed as group-based, we need to understand exactly what is happening and what action is being taken.

“Baroness Casey was very clear about the importance of examining offender ethnicity. Yet the published report gives us information about the age and sex of offenders without an ethnicity or nationality breakdown.

“At scrutiny today I will be asking whether that information is held for Birmingham’s current cases and, if it is, why it was not included in the published report.

“I will also be asking what lies behind those six group-based investigations, how many children and suspected perpetrators are involved, and what action has actually resulted in arrests, charges, prosecutions and disruption.

“Behind every one of these figures is a child whose safety matters. Victims deserve justice. Children at risk deserve protection. Those responsible must be identified and pursued. The abuse has to stop.”

Reform UK Birmingham Leader Cllr Jex Parkin said:

“Birmingham has been talking about child sexual exploitation for more than a decade. Different administrations and political leaderships have come and gone, but some of the same fundamental questions still remain unanswered.

“The Council’s own scrutiny work was asking for a better understanding of perpetrators, including their ethnicity, back in 2014. More than a decade later, the current published report still does not include an ethnicity or nationality breakdown of offenders or suspects.

“Children and victims cannot afford another decade in which reports and reviews come and go while fundamental questions remain unanswered. We need the evidence, we need to understand the patterns of offending, and above all we need to know that children are being protected and perpetrators are being brought to justice.

“We previously called on the Council Leader to formally request that Birmingham be included in future local investigations by the statutory Grooming Gangs Inquiry. He chose not to do so.

“Birmingham now needs the fullest possible picture of what has happened and what is happening in our city, following the evidence wherever it leads.”