Elon Musk’s pot stirring over child sex abuse gangs has renewed focus on the issue, but why was so little done after the IICSA report in 2022?

Has anything about the past week in politics felt a bit familiar to you? Some elements, like the political class suddenly talking about a years-long scandal merely because a tech billionaire started stirring the pot, have been novel. But others have been a depressingly normal part of Westminster culture, such as the flurry of activity from ministers as they announced they were implementing recommendations from the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, while resisting calls to set up another inquiry into the specific question of grooming gangs.

Resisting an inquiry is a stage that every government seems to go through with every scandal. Initially, they argue that another inquiry won’t tell us anything new, and that it will cost money and time. Then, they tend to agree to a limited non-statutory inquiry. Then it becomes clear that the problem with a non-statutory inquiry is that it can’t summon witnesses to give evidence under oath, and so the very thing ministers didn’t want to happen ends up going ahead anyway. We have seen that with inquiries into hospitals, such as the Mid Staffs inquiry, which initially wasn’t a public inquiry but ended up having to take on those powers just to get to the bottom of what had happened, and the continuing inquiry into mental health deaths in Essex.