What a comprehensive review of this issue; please send this to every member of parliament marked ‘urgent’. Yes I concede most MPs don’t have the intellectual faculties to comprehend the specifics but hopefully some of their SPADs will.
I believe that the HRA and ECHR should be used to validate the terms of the announced national inquiry into grooming gangs.
My jaundiced view is that politicians reflexively design inquiries to avoid any findings that may embarrass them or the Establishment, together with setting such long reporting targets that the findings will be someone else's problem in a future Parliament. Just look at the COVID inquiry as an example.
And so not only is there a strong case to be made that the national inquiry which Starmer has announced ought to address the UK’s Article 3 obligations specifically, but the Article 3 obligations should be used *in advance* to ensure that the inquiry doesn't drag on for a further 10 years and find that 'lessons' that should have been learned have been lost amongst all the administrative reorganisations and changes that have occurred in the meantime.
That is exactly my own jaundiced view, which is why I think it is important to get things right from the outset. I completely agree - the UK's duties under Article 3 should be foregrounded so as to ensure the scope is as wide as possible. I already get the feeling that local councils are being set up as the fall guys...
It didn’t need the Casey review to flag the need for a proper enquiry into the grooming gangs. There’s been enough evidence for a long time and yet Starmer, Mr HRA himself, ruled one out at the start of the year when he should logically have been eager for it.
I therefore conclude that Starmer, and all his friends in Labour circles, put their tribal instincts ahead of doing the right thing. He knows that a proper enquiry is going to implicate Labour councils and councillors galore and outrage Labour’s Islamic voter base.
The Casey review has put him in a corner. He can’t refuse the enquiry that Casey has demanded yet the reasons for Starmer refusing it that applied before haven’t gone away. I therefore fully expect that it won’t be the sort of enquiry that you suggest which allows the HRA to be used against its usual advocates. It will be another carefully stage managed event with a tame chairman, a tight terms of reference and a reporting date way into the future. And when the report does come, which will be full of the usual laundry list of lessons to be learned but no heads to roll, Starmer will be long gone.
I hope your optimism proves to be well founded and my cynicism to be misplaced. We shall see.
I am sure that you are right - this is precisely what he has in mind. But now he has committed to the concept the question has to turn to making sure the inquiry is actually effective. This is why appealing to his own commitment to human rights could bear fruit.
He’s committed to having an enquiry because he no longer has a choice. That doesn’t mean he’s committed to it being ‘actually effective’!
However, it’s an opportunity for Kemi to show what she’s made of by holding his feet to the fire and trying to make sure it is effective. But he’s such a devious and slippery lawyer, supported by a huge parliamentary majority, that he will probably get away with the traditional whitewash enquiry at huge public expense.
Thank you for the clarity. It makes perfect sense, and I really hope they use Article 1 and 3 to it's maximum. I also hope that Mr Starmer ensures a totally honest, and fully independent head and team, are appointed to carry out this vital work to root out those people who allowed this to happen.
I like this article and it touches on something that I've mulled over for some time. We're constantly told that the ECHR is a "living instrument" which is the justification for it to be adapted for more outlandish outcomes (eg insisting that inadequate climate policies are a violation of human rights).
So why is the living instrument only ever in one direction? Why not allow use that doctrine to argue for conservative interpretations of the ECHR?
Exactly my own thinking. "Living instrument" is taken to mean that human rights align themselves with the march of progress, based on a pretty tendentious reading of the preamble and the travaux. It need not be that way.
Whether an enquiry is organised under a legal human rights banner or a political banner is beside the point. WIll the many collaborators (in effect) of council workers, social workers, police and politians both local and national, be identified by name and face consequences? The terms of reference will be such as to ensure that doesn't happen.
No enquiry is going to actually get anything done about the officials who failed to deal with these issues. Demands for an inquiry are a political device of the Opposition, and will be met by the government ensuring that any enquiry it is forced to mount will be toothless.
The enquiry is a distraction from the real demand, which ought to be that our hapless government takes actual action on the subject.
Quite. I wonder if Labrokes will give us odds on 1) the enquiry lasting until after the 2029 election and 2) immunity for witnesses most of whom are Labour.
"It is understood that the Government received the report 10 days ago and has already (sic) started work on setting up the framework (sic) for the inquiry. A chairman is expected to be appointed “within weeks” (sic)."
Loved the analogy of the knife fight - use their weapons against them, which is particularly apt given, as you brilliantly highlight, the PM and AG using their slavish adherence to international law to undermine our national sovereignty. If they don’t engage with the approach you outline, then we’ll know that like the Convid inquiry these so-called human rights are not universal, but subject to a “pick and mix” partisan approach. It would then really be two tier justice!
Unfortunately, the partisan nature of human rights as captured by the grievance-industrial complex has been apparent for a long time, but Prof McGrogan has identified an excellent vehicle for making the Left live by its own rules.
The visibility, sensitivity and timing in the political arc (with the "vibe shift" of the US election and the rise of Reform) of the grooming gangs inquiry makes it ideal for mounting a fightback. If the terms of reference are insufficiently oriented towards the victims: judicially review the decision setting out the terms of reference, relying on the Government's own absolute fealty to the ECHR; if the inquiry is structured à la Covid Whitehall Farce to exclude inconvenient topics; same again. What will be difficult is mustering sufficient legal firepower to take up the fight: it would be an interesting litmus test of the Bar's commitment to fundamental rights to see if its pro bono unit would take on such challenges.
Very interesting idea... Although I tend to think that charges of being an accessory to child rape, for example, under normal British law, might be sufficient against guilty individuals who turned a blind eye.
Why do we need to bring the UK's "compliance with its international obligations" into this?
Let's not let this get bogged down with an argument about the rights and wrongs of "international law".
It’s because it requires more than just prosecutions, which are about individual criminal acts, and implicates the structure of the state. The two are not mutually exclusive of course!
As with the Supreme Court ruling on the trans issue, Starmer now has someone who has told him what to think. Setting that aside, I share the concerns of the nature of this Inquiry; Yes Minister was, once again, very observant on this. Last thought, the Bloody Sunday Inquiry took 12 years to report on the events in a geographically contained area on a single afternoon. How long will this take?
I've always wondered why this isn't done, because it seemed so obvious. I still don't understand why, but I'm happy to have my naive intuitions validated by an expert.
What, as in if you don't like human rights law you don't use it? These folk could get properly subversive with these laws, but I suppose they calculate that it legitimises them when they'd rather detach from their jurisdiction. There's a logic to it.
What a comprehensive review of this issue; please send this to every member of parliament marked ‘urgent’. Yes I concede most MPs don’t have the intellectual faculties to comprehend the specifics but hopefully some of their SPADs will.
I believe that the HRA and ECHR should be used to validate the terms of the announced national inquiry into grooming gangs.
My jaundiced view is that politicians reflexively design inquiries to avoid any findings that may embarrass them or the Establishment, together with setting such long reporting targets that the findings will be someone else's problem in a future Parliament. Just look at the COVID inquiry as an example.
And so not only is there a strong case to be made that the national inquiry which Starmer has announced ought to address the UK’s Article 3 obligations specifically, but the Article 3 obligations should be used *in advance* to ensure that the inquiry doesn't drag on for a further 10 years and find that 'lessons' that should have been learned have been lost amongst all the administrative reorganisations and changes that have occurred in the meantime.
That is exactly my own jaundiced view, which is why I think it is important to get things right from the outset. I completely agree - the UK's duties under Article 3 should be foregrounded so as to ensure the scope is as wide as possible. I already get the feeling that local councils are being set up as the fall guys...
Applying human rights law in this way seems like an absolute winner. I wonder if there are other "rights" that can be similarly weaponized?
It didn’t need the Casey review to flag the need for a proper enquiry into the grooming gangs. There’s been enough evidence for a long time and yet Starmer, Mr HRA himself, ruled one out at the start of the year when he should logically have been eager for it.
I therefore conclude that Starmer, and all his friends in Labour circles, put their tribal instincts ahead of doing the right thing. He knows that a proper enquiry is going to implicate Labour councils and councillors galore and outrage Labour’s Islamic voter base.
The Casey review has put him in a corner. He can’t refuse the enquiry that Casey has demanded yet the reasons for Starmer refusing it that applied before haven’t gone away. I therefore fully expect that it won’t be the sort of enquiry that you suggest which allows the HRA to be used against its usual advocates. It will be another carefully stage managed event with a tame chairman, a tight terms of reference and a reporting date way into the future. And when the report does come, which will be full of the usual laundry list of lessons to be learned but no heads to roll, Starmer will be long gone.
I hope your optimism proves to be well founded and my cynicism to be misplaced. We shall see.
I am sure that you are right - this is precisely what he has in mind. But now he has committed to the concept the question has to turn to making sure the inquiry is actually effective. This is why appealing to his own commitment to human rights could bear fruit.
He’s committed to having an enquiry because he no longer has a choice. That doesn’t mean he’s committed to it being ‘actually effective’!
However, it’s an opportunity for Kemi to show what she’s made of by holding his feet to the fire and trying to make sure it is effective. But he’s such a devious and slippery lawyer, supported by a huge parliamentary majority, that he will probably get away with the traditional whitewash enquiry at huge public expense.
Thank you for the clarity. It makes perfect sense, and I really hope they use Article 1 and 3 to it's maximum. I also hope that Mr Starmer ensures a totally honest, and fully independent head and team, are appointed to carry out this vital work to root out those people who allowed this to happen.
I like this article and it touches on something that I've mulled over for some time. We're constantly told that the ECHR is a "living instrument" which is the justification for it to be adapted for more outlandish outcomes (eg insisting that inadequate climate policies are a violation of human rights).
So why is the living instrument only ever in one direction? Why not allow use that doctrine to argue for conservative interpretations of the ECHR?
Exactly my own thinking. "Living instrument" is taken to mean that human rights align themselves with the march of progress, based on a pretty tendentious reading of the preamble and the travaux. It need not be that way.
Whether an enquiry is organised under a legal human rights banner or a political banner is beside the point. WIll the many collaborators (in effect) of council workers, social workers, police and politians both local and national, be identified by name and face consequences? The terms of reference will be such as to ensure that doesn't happen.
No enquiry is going to actually get anything done about the officials who failed to deal with these issues. Demands for an inquiry are a political device of the Opposition, and will be met by the government ensuring that any enquiry it is forced to mount will be toothless.
The enquiry is a distraction from the real demand, which ought to be that our hapless government takes actual action on the subject.
Quite. I wonder if Labrokes will give us odds on 1) the enquiry lasting until after the 2029 election and 2) immunity for witnesses most of whom are Labour.
And here we go. The Telegraph is reporting...
"It is understood that the Government received the report 10 days ago and has already (sic) started work on setting up the framework (sic) for the inquiry. A chairman is expected to be appointed “within weeks” (sic)."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/06/16/councils-covered-up-grooming-gangs-scandal/
Using the HRA and ECHR AGAINST the globalist agenda. Game on!
How might this be actioned? That is, how might this approach actually be adopted by the national inquiry? Is there anything that normal people can do?
I am working on it. Politicians need to take it up and ask Keir Starmer in PMQs. They need to talk about it in the media.
Thanks for this brilliant summary. Please consider sharing https://thesurvivors.co.uk/
Thanks!
Loved the analogy of the knife fight - use their weapons against them, which is particularly apt given, as you brilliantly highlight, the PM and AG using their slavish adherence to international law to undermine our national sovereignty. If they don’t engage with the approach you outline, then we’ll know that like the Convid inquiry these so-called human rights are not universal, but subject to a “pick and mix” partisan approach. It would then really be two tier justice!
Unfortunately, the partisan nature of human rights as captured by the grievance-industrial complex has been apparent for a long time, but Prof McGrogan has identified an excellent vehicle for making the Left live by its own rules.
The visibility, sensitivity and timing in the political arc (with the "vibe shift" of the US election and the rise of Reform) of the grooming gangs inquiry makes it ideal for mounting a fightback. If the terms of reference are insufficiently oriented towards the victims: judicially review the decision setting out the terms of reference, relying on the Government's own absolute fealty to the ECHR; if the inquiry is structured à la Covid Whitehall Farce to exclude inconvenient topics; same again. What will be difficult is mustering sufficient legal firepower to take up the fight: it would be an interesting litmus test of the Bar's commitment to fundamental rights to see if its pro bono unit would take on such challenges.
Very interesting idea... Although I tend to think that charges of being an accessory to child rape, for example, under normal British law, might be sufficient against guilty individuals who turned a blind eye.
Why do we need to bring the UK's "compliance with its international obligations" into this?
Let's not let this get bogged down with an argument about the rights and wrongs of "international law".
It’s because it requires more than just prosecutions, which are about individual criminal acts, and implicates the structure of the state. The two are not mutually exclusive of course!
As with the Supreme Court ruling on the trans issue, Starmer now has someone who has told him what to think. Setting that aside, I share the concerns of the nature of this Inquiry; Yes Minister was, once again, very observant on this. Last thought, the Bloody Sunday Inquiry took 12 years to report on the events in a geographically contained area on a single afternoon. How long will this take?
I've always wondered why this isn't done, because it seemed so obvious. I still don't understand why, but I'm happy to have my naive intuitions validated by an expert.
Nobody wanted to take up the cause on one side, and the other side is too wedded to knee jerk suspicion of human rights law. Toxic combination!
What, as in if you don't like human rights law you don't use it? These folk could get properly subversive with these laws, but I suppose they calculate that it legitimises them when they'd rather detach from their jurisdiction. There's a logic to it.