A public inquiry with the “fullest investigatory powers” is to be set up to look at grooming gangs in Scotland, Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth has announced.
It will be chaired by Professor Alexis Jay, the independent expert that Justice Secretary Angela Constance was accused of misrepresenting in a row last year.
Ms Gilruth said Prof Jay has “unrivalled experience” of chairing inquiries into child sexual abuse and exploitation, as well as “vast experience” of child protection issues in more than 30 decades of professional experience in social work.
As well as the public inquiry, the Scottish Government also plans to establish a “Truth Project” to allow victims and survivors of childhood sexual abuse and exploitation to tell their stories.
Announcing the plans, Ms Gilruth told Holyrood the decision to establish the inquiry had not been taken lightly, given the cost to the public purse.
But she added: “Nonetheless, I consider the establishment of a public inquiry is now an essential one.”
She said the inquiry will “consider directly Scotland’s response to group‑based child sexual abuse and exploitation”.
While the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry, which was established by the Scottish Government in 2015, is to look at similar issues, Ms Gilruth said this had a broader remit and the new inquiry will “focus specifically on group-based child abuse and exploitation”.
The new inquiry is “critical” in “encouraging openness and participation from victims and survivors”, the minister added.
She said: “It will focus on the potential prevalence of group-based abuse now and in the more recent past.
“The inquiry will, therefore, have the fullest investigatory powers required.”
The Scottish Conservatives, who have been demanding a specific Scottish inquiry into grooming gangs, said the move is a “long overdue U-turn by the SNP” and “the very least that survivors of grooming gangs deserve”.
Roz McCall, the party’s spokeswoman for children and young people, said ministers “had to be dragged kicking and screaming into finally granting one”.
Victims of grooming gangs “have had to fight tooth and nail for the public inquiry which they hope will deliver justice”, the Tory MSP added.
Referring back to the row with Ms Constance, she said: “It defies belief that an SNP minister lied to Parliament in order to block Scottish Conservatives’ efforts to secure a grooming gangs inquiry.
“Months later, John Swinney has had to be dragged kicking and screaming into finally granting one – headed by the very expert whose views his Justice Secretary so shamefully misrepresented.
“This inquiry must not be an SNP whitewash. It must be genuinely independent, properly resourced and unrestricted in who it can call and what it can examine.
“Above all, it must have victims at its very centre. Anything less would be another betrayal of survivors by the SNP.”
Labour justice spokesperson Pauline McNeill said she fully supported the establishment of the new inquiry, but added: “While this was the right decision, SNP ministers need to explain what has changed and why we lost months to their dither and delay.”
With an inquiry now promised, Ms McNeill said: “It is crucial that this process is now conducted with the urgency needed and with total transparency.
“Survivors deserve justice and the next generation of children must be kept safe.”
