Issue 403  21st June 2025

'Casey report: Children and teenage girls were blamed for crimes against them, ‘damning’ grooming gangs inquiry finds'

Children and teenage girls were blamed for crimes perpetrated against them, a “deeply disturbing” report into grooming gangs has found. Yvette Cooper has vowed to take immediate action on 12 recommendations by Baroness Louise Casey following a rapid national audit on grooming gangs in Britain. The home secretary said there had been “too much denial’ and “too little justice” for victims as she announced a string of measures, including a time-limited national inquiry and mandatory collection of data on the nationality and ethnicity of perpetrators...

In her 200-page report, Baroness Casey called for tougher prosecution of men who have sex with under-16s to ensure their charges are never downgraded from rape. She said we have “failed in our duty” to properly understand this kind of group offending as she hit out at an “appalling” lack of data over offenders’ ethnicities. After her report’s publication, she told Sky News that she was even “following through on a children's file in archive and found the word 'Pakistani' tippexed out”. “ "I thought whoever did that inadvertently was giving ammunition to the English Defence League that were every week, in and out, campaigning and doing their stuff in that town,” she said. And in the report, she wrote: “If we’d got this right years ago – seeing these girls as children raped rather than ‘wayward teenagers’ or collaborators in their abuse, collecting ethnicity data, and acknowledging as a system that we did not do a good enough job – then I doubt we’d be in this place now”...

No 10 said the new inquiry will look at how young girls “were failed so badly” and institutions who failed to act to protect them will “not be able to hide and will finally be held to account for their actions”. The Home Office has confirmed that the National Crime Agency (NCA) will follow up on more than 800 cold cases and work with police to re-examine past cases that “were not progressed through the criminal justice system.”

The report can be found here.

'MPs vote to decriminalise abortion in biggest change to reproductive rights in decades'

MPs have voted to decriminalise abortion in England and Wales in a historic step that will usher in the most far-reaching change to reproductive rights in decades. After an emotional and impassioned debate in the House of Commons, MPs voted by 379 to 137 in favour of the reform. They overwhelmingly backed an amendment by Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi to remove “the threat of investigation, arrest, prosecution, or imprisonment” of any woman who acts in relation to her own pregnancy...

The reform is designed to protect women while retaining penalties for abusive partners or medical professionals who terminate a pregnancy outside the current framework of the law... Under the current law, abortion in England and Wales is a criminal offence but is legal up to 24 weeks, with the sign-off from two doctors. It is also allowed under limited circumstances after this time, including when the mother’s life is at risk...

'Shabana Mahmood says UK will seek reform of human rights convention'

The justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has said Britain will pursue reform of the European convention on human rights (ECHR), both at home and in Strasbourg, saying “public confidence in the rule of law is fraying”. Mahmood’s warning in her speech at the Council of Europe came as the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said she would undertake an examination of how the courts were applying the right to freedom from degrading treatment. Ministers are understood to be exploring whether change could come in the form of guidance to courts, or even whether to legislate on the issue...

“Our convention was never meant to be frozen in time,” Mahmood said. “It has been amended, extended and interpreted over decades – responding to new threats, new rights and new realities. And we must consider doing so again. That is why the UK is not only open to this conversation, we are already actively pursuing it in how we implement the convention domestically – not to weaken rights, but to update and strengthen them. This is not a retreat from principle. It is the very essence of the rule of law... They believed in a country where institutions were independent, where power was accountable and where justice didn’t depend on who you were, but on what was right,” she said. But she said there was a growing feeling – “sometimes mistaken, sometimes grounded in reality” – that human rights were too often being used by criminals to act with impunity. “When the application of rights begins to feel out of step with common sense, when it conflicts with fairness or disrupts legitimate government action, trust begins to erode,” she said. “If a foreign national commits a serious crime, they should expect to be removed from the country. But we see cases where individuals invoke the right to family life, even after neglecting or harming those very family ties. Or take prison discipline. Being in custody is a punishment. It means some privileges are lost. But dangerous prisoners have been invoking article 8 to try to block prison staff from putting them in separation centres to manage the risk they pose. It is not right that dangerous prisoners’ rights are given priority over others’ safety and security. That is not what the convention was ever intended to protect. Prisoners claiming a right to socialise – under article 8 – is not just a legal stretch. It damages the public perception of human rights altogether.”

'Northamptonshire police apologise to Harry Dunn’s family for failures investigating his death'

Police investigating the death of the teenage motorcyclist Harry Dunn have apologised for “clear and significant shortcomings” after a scathing review found the force “failed his family on a number of fronts”. The 118-page report, which examined every aspect of Northamptonshire police’s investigation, found a failure in senior leadership meant a critical incident was not declared when it should have been. It also criticised the force for not arresting the driver involved, Anne Sacoolas, after the crash, and not informing Dunn’s family she had left the country until 10 days after they were notified she had done so.

The force’s head of protective services, assistant chief constable Emma James, said: “On behalf of Northamptonshire police, I want to apologise to Harry’s family for what is now clear was a failure on our part to do the very best for the victim in this case, Harry, and his family who fought tirelessly in the years that followed to achieve justice for him.” She said the “picture which emerges” from the review was one of a force that had “failed the family on a number of fronts, and we hope the findings – which are troubling in several respects – will provide some answers to questions which the family will have wanted to know in the years that have passed”.

Dunn was 19 years old in 2019 when he was killed after his motorcycle collided with a car driven by Sacoolas, a US citizen who was driving on the wrong side of the road outside RAF Croughton. Sacoolas returned to the US after Dunn’s death, forcing his family to launch a years-long campaign for justice that resulted in her being convicted of causing death by careless driving in December 2022...

The report can be found here.

'Strangulation in pornography to be made illegal'

Recognising how dangerous online material is perpetuating the growing epidemic of violence against women and girls, the Government will criminalise pornography that depicts acts of strangulation. The announcement, as campaigned for by Jessica Asato and others, follows the Independent Porn Review, conducted by Baroness Gabby Bertin, which found that media sources such as pornography have effectively established strangulation during sex as a ‘sexual norm’, and a belief that strangling a partner during sex is ‘safe’ because it is believed to be non-fatal despite overwhelming evidence that is is believed there is no safe way to strangle a person. This is the latest step on the Government’s pledge to halve violence against women and girls, part of the Plan for Change.

The amendment will be made to the Crime and Policing Bill - central to the Government’s Plan for Change - making streets safer and the justice system stronger for victims... The amendment builds on protections already in place within the Obscene Publications Act 1959, and the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 which criminalises the possession of extreme porn, which includes the depiction of life-threatening acts. Further details of the amendment will be set out in due course.

'BBC slammed after blaming magistrates for fast-track justice scandal'

The BBC has blamed magistrates for harsh convictions against vulnerable people in Britain’s fast-track courts, and is opposing a key reform that could end the scandal. TV Licensing prosecutions have been in the eye of a storm over the last two years around the Single Justice Procedure (SJP), a court system in which magistrates hand out convictions in private. The Standard’s award-winning investigation has revealed deep flaws in the SJP system, and exposed that sick pensioners, people with complex mental health problems, and bereaved families are regularly facing criminal convictions for not keeping up with household bills.

The Labour government is considering changes to the fast-track justice system, including forcing prosecutors – like TV Licensing and the DVLA - to read all mitigation letters so that cases which are not in the public interest can be withdrawn. Magistrates have backed the idea, suggesting prosecuting bodies should be engaged throughout the criminal process and assess all the evidence and information that comes to light. But the BBC is opposing the change, The Standard can reveal, suggesting it would be “impractical and “inefficient”, and accusing magistrates of failing to intervene to highlight troubling cases passing through the courts...