Sadiq Khan said London didn't have a grooming gang problem. This inquiry will prove him wrong

The Greater Manchester town of Oldham is a well-established hotspot of long-standing grooming-gang activity, with work reportedly already underway there.

Back in 2022, an independent review into historic child sexual exploitation in Oldham was published, finding that vulnerable children had been failed by various agencies which were responsible for their protection and well-being.

The report concluded that procedures had not been properly followed and casework was of a generally very poor standard.

This included a severe cross-institutional failure, which resulted in a notorious grooming-gang ringleader being employed as a welfare rights officer at Oldham Council.

The details contained in the report were horrifying. One survivor of abuse, Sam, was attacked by a total of eight men during a 24-hour period and raped on multiple occasions at the age of just twelve.

Some of the grimmest accounts of group-based child sexual exploitation and gross institutional mismanagement are from the Greater Manchester region – specifically Oldham.

Further local investigations are needed for the town, considering much of the national attention paid to the topic has tended to be on the likes of Rotherham in South Yorkshire and Telford in Shropshire.

The inclusion of London in the grooming-gangs inquiry in terms of being subject to local investigation is most welcome.

Despite the capital’s political and law-and-order leadership's tendency to downplay the prevalence of grooming gang activity in London, recent evidence has emerged which suggests that it is a serious problem.

The Mayor of London, Sir Sadiq Khan, has previously been dismissive of claims that the capital has experienced the kinds of grooming-gang activity which have plagued a number of English towns.

However, back in February, the sheer ridiculousness of this claim was finally exposed. It was revealed that the Metropolitan Police decided to re-examine 9,000 cases of child sexual exploitation as part of a major London grooming-gang probe.

The decision was made by Scotland Yard after an investigation by the Standard found that many young girls in London reported allegations of rape but were met with institutional indifference.

Bradford and Keighley's inclusion as one of the first three areas which will be subject to local investigation under the national statutory inquiry into grooming gangs should equally be welcomed.

This part of West Yorkshire was recently thrust into the national spotlight after a Bradford child sex abuse ring was jailed for a total of 188 years for the four-year abuse of a teenage girl.

The gang of fifteen men all appear to be of South Asian Muslim origin and were jailed for a collective total of 88 counts of rape.

While most of the gang members are from Bradford, some are from towns in the West Yorkshire region such as Keighley, Halifax and Batley.

The local investigation in Bradford must explore to what extent grooming-gang activity is driven by a biraderi-style clannishness – reinforced by cousin marriage – which solidifies community-based bonds of secrecy and protection.

In this sense, we are potentially referring to organised multi-generational ethnic mafias.

The sorry reality is that previous local investigations into grooming-gang activity in Bradford have been thin at best, almost as if they were some sort of tick-box exercise.

The national statutory inquiry into grooming gangs still has a great deal to do in terms of winning public confidence. Considering various organs of the British state have a great deal to answer for, it must not come across as an establishment stitch-up.

But we should be somewhat encouraged by the initial choice of geographical areas for local investigations.