Latest news with #BaronessCasey
BBC News
a day ago
- Politics
- BBC News
Transport secretary vows to tighten taxi licensing laws
Ministers have vowed to pass laws to tackle inconsistent taxi and private hire standards amid fears some vehicles "are a dangerous place for many children and young people".Labour MP for Tipton and Wednesbury Antonia Bance spoke in the Commons on Thursday to ask what the government was doing about local taxi licensing referred to Wolverhampton, where applications are believed to be quicker and cheaper than those made Secretary Heidi Alexander said the matter was being taken "very seriously", promising to hold local authorities not following compliance to account. In January, the prime minister tasked Baroness Casey with conducting a rapid review into grooming gangs and child sexual findings, published on 17 June, identified "many cases of group-based child sexual exploitation" as having links with said: "Last week, the Casey review showed us yet again that private hire vehicles are a dangerous place for many children and young people.""What action is the minister going to take to make sure that local taxi licensing is done locally to high standards?" 'Lack of stringency' Alexander told MPs: "Baroness Casey has rightly brought this issue into sharp focus and we've committed to legislating this issue."We will work as quickly as possible and consider all options including out-of-area working, national standards and enforcement, seeking the best overall outcome for passenger safety."Baroness Casey dedicated a chapter of her audit to taxi licensing. It said taxis had historically been identified in a minority of cases as a way children became at risk of sexual exploitation."Both as a potential way for perpetrators to meet their victims, as well as a means of trafficking victims to different locations and introducing them to other perpetrators," the review later added: "A lack of stringency means that drivers who are unscrupulous can apply to a lax neighbouring borough" for a licence, and urged the government to "close these loopholes urgently". 'Illegal to refuse applicants' Licensed taxi drivers are allowed to operate anywhere in England and Wales and are not tied to the district where they got their licence.A report by Taxi Point highlighted 96% of Wolverhampton approved taxi and private hire licence holders lived outside the city between April 2023 and March 2024. City of Wolverhampton Council told the BBC safeguarding was its "number one priority" in taxi licensing and that it was "the first to implement the government's statutory standards and best practice guidance".A spokesman said. "It is illegal for the council to refuse applicants a taxi licence on the basis of where they live."It is also illegal for licensing authorities to impose a limit on the number of private hire licences they issue."The council does not gain financially from taxi licensing, as the fees are legally ring-fenced for spend only on related activities." Follow BBC Wolverhampton & Black Country on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
The Independent
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
Minister vows to ‘legislate' amid fears taxis are ‘dangerous' for children
Ministers 'will legislate' to tackle inconsistent taxi and private hire standards amid fears some vehicles 'are a dangerous place for many children and young people'. Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said the Government is taking licensing 'very seriously' after Baroness Casey identified 'many cases of group-based child sexual exploitation' as having links with taxis. In the Commons, Labour MP for Derby North Catherine Atkinson asked: 'What actions is the minister taking to review taxi licensing so that everyone can have confidence that the taxi and private hire industry is reliable, sustainable and safe for passengers and drivers themselves?' Ms Alexander replied: 'I can assure (Ms Atkinson) that we're taking this very seriously – we are reviewing licensing authorities' compliance with existing guidance, and we will hold those who do not follow it to account. 'And we will go further following the publication of Baroness Casey's review, and we've committed to taking legislative action to close the loopholes in the current licensing regime to achieve higher standards of safety across the board.' Antonia Bance, the Labour MP for Tipton and Wednesbury, later added: 'Last week, the Casey review showed us yet again that private hire vehicles are a dangerous place for many children and young people.' She referred to Wolverhampton, where 96% of taxi and private hire licence holders lived outside the city between April 2023 and March 2024, according to a report by Taxi Point, and asked: 'What action is the minister going to take to make sure that local taxi licensing is done locally to high standards?' Ms Alexander told MPs: 'Baroness Casey has rightly brought this issue into sharp focus and we've committed to legislating – as I said to (Ms Atkinson) – to addressing this issue. 'We will work as quickly as possible and consider all options including out-of-area working, national standards and enforcement, seeking the best overall outcome for passenger safety.' Responding to a written question this week, local transport minister Simon Lightwood said the Government would 'act urgently to make improvements' following Baroness Casey of Blackstock's national audit on group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse. This would include looking at 'how existing statutory guidance can be strengthened to further protect the public'. He added: 'Some important protections have already been put in place since earlier inquiries into child sexual abuse and exploitation. 'All licensing authorities in England now undertake extensive driver background checks, and since 2023, they are required to use a single database to prevent a driver refused a licence in one area on safety grounds going elsewhere. 'Careful consideration of the options is needed as we do not want any change to decrease the availability of highly vetted licensed drivers and vehicles and inadvertently increase the use of those offering illegal services that evade these licensing checks.' Labour MP for York Central Rachael Maskell asked what steps the Department for Transport would take 'to close the loophole that enables taxi drivers to apply for a licence in one area and operate in another'. Baroness Casey dedicated a chapter of her audit to taxi licensing. 'As a key part of the nighttime economy, taxis have historically been identified in a minority of cases as a way children can be at risk of sexual exploitation, both as a potential way for perpetrators to meet their victims, as well as a means of trafficking victims to different locations and introducing them to other perpetrators,' Baroness Casey found. 'Many cases of group-based child sexual exploitation have highlighted links with taxis.' She later added 'a lack of stringency means that drivers who are unscrupulous can apply to a lax neighbouring borough' for a licence, and urged the Government to 'close these loopholes urgently'.
Times
6 days ago
- Politics
- Times
The missing link in the grooming gangs report: cousin marriage
When the US Department of Defence set up an interrogation unit at Guantanamo Bay after 9/11, it conducted a detailed study on the suspected terrorists it held. Agents wanted to understand the links between them, the way they had worked together, the better to infiltrate their wider networks. They found nothing. Diddly squat. They conducted audits, led themselves on a merry dance, but achieved zilch. • 'Wrongly prosecuted' grooming gang victims denied compensation Then they hired someone who understood the culture of the people they'd apprehended; someone steeped in Arabic mores. She instantly spotted a pattern in the names of the suspects. A startlingly high proportion were from two clans: the Qahtani and the Utaybi. When she mentioned this to her DoD colleagues, their first question was: what the hell is a clan? Only after she explained the significance of these social institutions, the subtle pattern of names that indicate clan affiliations and the codes of honour and secrecy that make them powerful vehicles for group action did they see the point. The agents were then able to infiltrate the networks and prevent future atrocities. Why am I telling you this? Well, because I read Baroness Casey of Blackstock's report on the rape gangs scandal with rising levels of frustration — indeed much the same emotion with which I read her 2016 report on social integration. I don't doubt Casey's work rate or integrity. But I think that, somewhat like the DoD at Guantanamo, she couldn't see what was before her eyes because she lacked the appropriate analytical lens. • 'Whitehall tried to block Rotherham grooming scandal exposé' You see, to understand many of the most urgent failures of integration, you need to understand the clan. These groups are held together not just by ideology or religion; they are cemented by cousin marriage, a common practice in Arabic cultures and, in the UK, many Pakistani immigrant communities, particularly those hailing from Kashmir. By marrying within small, tightknit groups, they ensure everything is kept within the baradari, or brotherhood — property, secrets, loyalty — binding clan members closer together while sequestering them from wider society. In her 2016 report Casey rightly talked about the failure to speak English, honour beatings and the like, but she missed the point that many of these problems are a function of marriage practices that isolate communities. The academic Patrick Nash of the Pharos Foundation has written of baradari life 'concentrated in small geographical areas spread across a few streets or nearby neighbourhoods where there is little need or opportunity to have much to do with wider society or practise the English language'. To write a report on failures of integration without seeing the link with cousin marriage is, I suggest, like writing on the power grid without noting the significance of electricity. • How the grooming gang report detailed abusers' ethnicity Casey's report on the rape gang scandal was flawed for the same reason. It was a strange experience to read her words as she edged ever closer to grasping the point without quite getting there. She noted that the problem is disproportionately concentrated among British Pakistanis. She even noted that 'two thirds of suspects offended within groups' that were 'based on pre-existing relationships — mainly brothers and cousins'. But then, stunningly, she suggested that these links were 'unsophisticated' and 'informal'. Anyone who studies these things — one thinks of Michael Muthukrishna at LSE — could have told her that this is the unmistakable pattern of clan-based crime: groups whose links are anything but informal and unsophisticated. Charlie Peters, who has investigated this problem for GB News, told me: 'The deeper you probe, the more you see the presence of clans. We know that such communities are more likely to see others as outsiders, of less moral value and, when it comes to young white girls, fair game. The perpetrators also knew that they could commit crimes without getting dobbed in since loyalty is owed to the clan but not victims. In some cases, abusers were aided by relatives in authority.' Nash put it this way: 'Cousin marriage sustains close-kin networks which incentivise clan members both to dehumanise out-group victims and to suppress knowledge of criminal activity to preserve family honour.' • Grooming gangs 'still at large, and the victims aren't believed' A couple of examples. Last year, Shaha Amran Miah, 48, Shaha Alman Miah, 47, and Shaha Joman Miah, 38, were convicted at Preston crown court of horrific abuse perpetrated in Barrow-in-Furness and Leeds. Yes, these were Pakistani men, but they were also brothers within an overarching baradari. In Rotherham in 2016, Arshid, Basharat and Bannaras Hussain groomed and raped children for nearly 20 years while Qurban Ali was found guilty of conspiracy to rape. Three of these men are brothers and Ali is their uncle. I have long advocated a ban on cousin marriage but should perhaps say that I've never regarded it as a panacea. Improving integration requires so much more: ending mass uncontrolled immigration, amending legal frameworks to stop the boats, deporting foreign criminals, not to mention other policies supported by large majorities but serially ducked by politicians. A ban on consanguinity would, though, be of huge value. American states with bans tend to be more prosperous and faster-growing. Nations with bans are richer and more integrated, with less corruption and lower rates of crime. A ban would also reduce the prevalence of the congenital diseases causing untold suffering in Kashmiri immigrant communities from Bradford to Luton. The good news is that Kemi Badenoch has adopted this as Tory policy after campaigning by her colleague Richard Holden, and a poll for YouGov last month showed that 77 per cent of the British people are in favour of a ban (only 9 per cent oppose it). But here's what astounds me: Labour remains against prohibition, despite (I am told) having read the evidence. Why? How? Permit me to suggest that I glimpse through the façade of prevarication a party still terrified of criticising any cultural practice out of fear of appearing racist. Isn't that why it was mute for so long on female genital mutilation and honour beatings and still can't bring itself to describe the burqa as a pernicious symbol of institutional misogyny? In other words, the reason the grooming scandal was not confronted for so long by both main parties (not to mention the police and social services) — namely, the fear of seeming bigoted for investigating ethnic minorities, even while they were gang-raping young girls — is still alive and well in the British government. As the son of a Pakistani immigrant who integrated into this nation (not least by marrying my mum) and came to love it, I find this sickening. One can perhaps forgive Casey for missing the significance of cousin marriage, given that it is a custom with which she is unfamiliar (although, frankly, she should have done her homework), but there can be no excuse for politicians who put cultural sensitivities before basic decency. So I say to Starmer, Hermer, Cooper et al: examine your consciences. Did you really go into politics to be apologists for the worst kind of moral relativism, to acquiesce in the nihilistic pretence that all cultural practices are of equal value, when they emphatically are not? If not, find your backbone, confront the Muslim bloc vote and ban cousin marriage. The alternative is betrayal of the most heinous kind. For here's a thought to focus minds: girls today, even as you read these words, are being abused by ethnic clans operating in this country. Fail to act now, and this is on you.
Daily Mail
7 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
We'll never be rid of grooming gangs until - like Germany and France - we ban foreign imams who fill young Muslim minds with poison: TAJ HARGEY
Baroness Casey, the author of last week's report on grooming gangs, has bravely said what few others will admit: that a troubling number of the men committing these reprehensible crimes come from South Asian backgrounds. But as an Islamic theologian and a law-abiding imam who has devoted my life to promoting a moderate Islam – while championing Muslim integration into British society – I want to be even clearer than that.
Times
20-06-2025
- Times
Bradford is the grooming ‘hotspot' of the UK, victim warns
Fiona Goddard was just 14 and living at a children's home when she was targeted by a grooming gang based in Bradford. She was plied with drink and drugs, repeatedly raped and 'in effect used as a prostitute' before falling pregnant to one of her abusers, a court heard. Nine Asian men were jailed for committing 22 offences against her in 2019, but six years on she believes predators continue to plague her home town. PA 'It's definitely still going on,' Goddard, now 31, warned this week as she described Bradford as the overlooked hotspot of grooming in the UK. She is among thousands of young people who may have been failed by authorities over the past 20 years, according to campaigners who claim the problem here could dwarf similar scandals in Rochdale and Rotherham. A dossier compiled by a child abuse lawyer and a Bradford-based MP maintains that up to 8,000 children were at risk of sexual exploitation between 1996 and 2025. Baroness Casey of Blackstock, whose audit of grooming cases this week prompted a national inquiry into the issue, said she would be 'surprised' if Bradford was not one of the first areas to be investigated. With the spotlight finally falling on the city and its surrounding suburbs, The Times met survivors, campaigners and residents who fear child sex attackers have become emboldened by the nation's attention focused elsewhere. Speaking as families enjoyed ice creams and water fights in the warm weather on Thursday, Goddard welcomed the new inquiry but stressed that the authorities must not view the issue as purely historical. She revealed that within the last fortnight alone at least two incidents have left local parents seriously concerned for the safety of their children. On June 10, West Yorkshire police arrested a 70-year-old man on allegations of sexual assault after a report that two children were inappropriately touched at a park in Allerton village, three miles from Bradford. Footage of the arrest, seen by The Times, shows the suspect trying to escape by reversing his car down a residential road at high speed as officers chase after him on foot. The man was taken into custody and later bailed with conditions. Five days later, on Sunday evening, officers were again called to a report of a suspicious vehicle in Wibsey village, south of Bradford, after residents claimed teenage girls were being supplied with 'alcohol and balloons' in the back seats. Officers interviewed two men inside the car and searched the vehicle, before issuing them with out-of-court disposals for possession of class C drugs. Another victim of a Bradford-based grooming gang who bravely waived her lifelong right to anonymity is Scarlett West, who is now 20. Despite living in Tameside, about an hour away in Greater Manchester, she was routinely ferried to Bradbury by her abusers before finally breaking free from their influence two years ago. Marlon West, her father, said the abuse is now 'worse than it's ever been' because perpetrators have exploited 'political correctness' to create a culture of silence in the UK. Scarlett, who attended a private school, 'went off the rails' after being physically attacked by a gang of boys at a bus station. Vulnerable, she was befriended by an older white woman who allegedly groomed her and introduced her to a group of predominantly British-Pakistani men. 'Scarlett was being trafficked around the country to a number of places, but Bradford, she was taken there hundreds of times,' her father said. The area 'is on a different level', he added, because it 'has not had the limelight' like other areas and the criminals 'believe they can get away with it'. Both Goddard and West, who do not know each other and suffered abuse a decade apart, said that snooker clubs in the city had been hubs of grooming activity. At least one has been closed down by police over allegations of child sex offences. When The Times visited the site of another club identified this week, it had also shut after going out of business. It is now used as a youth club. Its new owner, who asked not to be identified, said he was saddened but not surprised to learn of the building's history given the area's reputation for grooming. Goddard said she believes the 'dynamics' of grooming operations 'are changing' as the public becomes more vigilant to vehicles loitering on street corners. 'Rather than just pulling over in cars and seeing them on the street, they're [now] getting in touch with vulnerable people on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok,' she said. • Officers at Greater Manchester Police who specialise in child exploitation agreed. Grooming is 'evolving' and has become a 'broader' issue than it was two decades ago, they said, driven by the ease with which predators can now contact vulnerable children on the internet. Many traditional routes used by offenders — through care homes or schools, for example — have been 'closed' by better safeguarding, the force said, but the digital world was 'where the opportunity is'. 'Exploitation is still happening,' Detective Superintendent Alan Clitherow, head of the force's major child sexual exploitation investigations, said. 'It's still happening here, it's still happening nationally. We're constantly having to keep pace with how it's evolving.' But he said the grooming gangs phenomenon does 'not look the same today' because law enforcement is better equipped to tackle it after learning 'a lot of lessons' from various reviews. 'You're therefore not going to have the same level of long-term bespoke offending, but that doesn't mean that it's not happening,' he added. Detective Chief Inspector Dan Hadfield, who leads the force's online child abuse investigation team, said there were still 'definitely people working together in a certain town', but that offenders now often operate across borders thanks to the internet. 'It's not as focused as it once was,' he said. In Greater Manchester, white men are overrepresented in online child abuse cases, accounting for 82 per cent of suspects — a higher proportion than the local white population of 76 per cent. However, Asian men are disproportionately represented in group-based child abuse cases — those involving multiple perpetrators or multiple victims — and make up more than half of such offenders. Robbie Moore, the MP for Keighley and Ilkley who helped to compile the dossier about Bradford, accused the local council of obstructing independent insight into the scale and nature of sexual offending. He said: 'It defies belief that over two decades ago since my predecessor Ann Cryer first bravely exposed the grooming gangs crisis right here in Keighley, the Bradford district has still never had a full independent inquiry.' Susan Hinchcliffe, leader of Bradford Council, said: 'This is an appalling crime that blights victims' lives. In Bradford we take this extremely seriously, so I welcome the renewed focus on this nationally. 'We work hard with the police to identify historic victims of CSE [child sexual exploitation] to get them justice and provide support. So far this has resulted in 52 perpetrators receiving prison sentences totalling 570 years. 'Over the last ten years we have published over 70 reports, independently authored reviews and data, including ethnicity data, for open scrutiny on this subject. We have nothing to hide.' Chief Superintendent Richard Padwell of Bradford District Police said tackling child sexual exploitation 'remains a top priority'. He added: 'We are taking a proactive approach and have invested significant resources into tackling exploitation and abuse. 'The work we have undertaken has resulted in hundreds of perpetrators now serving lengthy prison sentences totalling thousands of years. Many investigations are still underway, with more suspects set to stand trial between now and 2027.'
