The former children’s commissioner Anne Longfield will chair the national grooming gangs inquiry in what will be a “moment of reckoning” for the nation, the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has announced.
Lady Longfield, who will resign the Labour whip in the House of Lords, was recommended by Louise Casey after a long-delayed search during which some victims quit the inquiry’s advisory panel amid disagreements over the chair appointment.
“For years, the victims of these awful crimes were ignored. First abused by vile predators, they then found themselves belittled and even blamed, when it was justice they were owed,” Mahmood said.
“Today, I have announced the chair and panel of an inquiry which will shine a bright light on this dark moment in our history. They will do so alongside the victims of these awful crimes who have waited for too long to see justice done.
“This inquiry is theirs, not ours. So I call on all those present to put politics aside, for a moment, and to support this chair and her panel in the pursuit of the truth.”
Mahmood said the £65m three-year inquiry would focus exclusively on grooming gangs rather than wider child sexual exploitation and ask specifically about how ethnicity, religion and cultural factors affected the authorities’ response and the crimes themselves.
An earlier audit by Lady Casey found that there was an “over-representation among suspects of Asian and Pakistani heritage men”.
Mahmood, who is of Pakistani Muslim heritage, said it was the “sickening acts of a minority of evil men” and added: “Like every member of our community whom I know, I am horrified by these acts. We must root out this evil once and for all.”
But she warned that the inquiry must not be used to “marginalise or demonise entire communities of law-abiding citizens”.
Longfield called the findings of the Casey audit “truly shocking, and I recognise that behind every heinous crime is a person, a child, a teenager, a family. I will never lose sight of this.” She said her inquiry would “follow the evidence and will not shy away from difficult or uncomfortable truths wherever we find them.
“The scourge of grooming gangs has not been adequately tackled over past decades. That must change and I will do everything in my power to make this happen.”
Casey, who was asked by the prime minister, Keir Starmer, to help re-establish trust in the inquiry, said in a letter to the remaining survivors helping the inquiry that she hoped the chair would have the qualities they were looking for.
Longfield’s affiliation with Labour is likely to come under scrutiny from some quarters, including some on the survivors’ panel.
Casey, who carried out a nationwide audit on the grooming gangs that recommended a full inquiry, told the survivors in her letter she hoped they would have the opportunity to meet the chair and panel this week, and promised she would stay involved in the inquiry.
Earlier this year a group of women quit the inquiry’s victim liaison panel, accusing the government of attempting to widen its remit to consider other forms of child sexual abuse. Two candidates for the chair quit during the turmoil, citing a lack of confidence from the survivors.
Several demanded the resignation of the safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, though a number of other women on the panel then wrote to defend Phillips.
Longfield will be joined by two other panellists, Zoë Billingham, who was formerly a lead inspector with HM Inspector of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services, and Eleanor Kelly, the former chief executive of Tower Hamlets and Southwark borough councils.
Mahmood also said the government was pressing ahead with reopening previously closed investigations as part of a national police operation and said the inquiry would not prejudice the police from bringing new charges against alleged perpetrators.
The government will also seek to overturn all convictions and cautions for what was then described as “child prostitution” which were used against many exploited girls.
The Guardian understands that Longfield did not meet the survivor panel prior to being announced as chair but will speak with members in the coming days.
In an open letter to survivors published on Tuesday afternoon, Longfield, Billingham and Kelly said that writing to those affected by the scandal was their “first formal act of this vitally important work”.
They said they would “scrutinise the actions, and inactions, of public bodies” which allowed offending by grooming gangs to take place. They added they would not avoid examining difficult issues “including relating to any culture drivers of offending and the ethnicity of perpetrators”.
The women said that any new evidence of offending would be passed to Operation Beaconport, a National Crime Agency investigation which will run alongside the inquiry.
They added: “We know that every survivor is different. You each have your own story, and of course your own views and opinions. Therefore, we know that every survivor may not always agree with every decision we make.
“Our commitment to you is that we will approach this work with honesty, empathy, and resolve. We will not allow voices of victims and survivors to be silenced or your experiences to be minimised.”
Casey told panel members in a letter that she had recommended Longfield for the post after being assured she had a “personal commitment” to “shining a light on what has gone wrong and not shrinking away from uncomfortable truths”.
The final terms of reference will be agreed with the home secretary and published in March 2026, but a draft released on Tuesday suggested the investigation would cover England and Wales from January 2000 onwards, with the aim of “identifying systemic, institutional and individual failings” at local and national level in relation to group-based child sexual exploitation perpetrated by grooming gangs.
The push for a national inquiry was partly born of the government’s initial decision not to hold a statutory inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham, Greater Manchester, after a campaign by local survivors.
In the interim, it was proposed that Oldham should have a local inquiry with statutory powers led by the former judge Tom Crowther, who chaired a child sexual exploitation inquiry in Telford which reported in 2022.
Crowther – mooted at one point as a possible chair for the national inquiry – has been stood down and the Oldham investigation will be absorbed into the national inquiry as part of a series of local investigations. The inquiry will decide on which other local areas to focus on within three months of its being established.
