Whitehall officers tried to persuade Michael Gove to go to court docket to cowl up the grooming scandal in 2011, Sky Information can reveal.
Dominic Cummings, who was working for Lord Gove on the time, has instructed Sky Information that officers within the Division for Training (DfE) needed to assist efforts by Rotherham Council cease a nationwide newspaper from exposing the scandal.
In an interview with Sky Information, Mr Cummings stated that officers needed a “complete cover-up”.
Politics newest: Grooming gangs findings unveiled
The revelation shines a lightweight on the institutional reluctance of some key officers in central authorities to publicly spotlight the grooming gang scandal.
In 2011, Rotherham Council approached the Division for Training asking for assist following inquiries by The Occasions. The paper’s then chief reporter, the late Andrew Norfolk, was asking about sexual abuse and trafficking of youngsters in Rotherham.
The council went to Lord Gove’s Division for Training for assist. Officers thought of the request after which really helpful to Lord Gove’s workplace that the minister again a judicial evaluate which could, if profitable, cease The Occasions publishing the story.
Lord Gove rejected the request on the recommendation of Mr Cummings. Sources have independently confirmed Mr Cummings’ account.
Training Secretary Michael Gove in 2011. Pic: PA
Mr Cummings instructed Sky Information: “Officers got here to me within the Division of Training and stated: ‘There’s this Occasions journalist who needs to put in writing the story about these gangs. The native authority needs to judicially evaluate it and cease The Occasions publishing the story’.
“So I went to Michael Gove and stated: ‘This council is making an attempt to really cease this and they are going to use judicial evaluate. It is best to inform the council that removed from siding with the council to cease The Occasions you’ll write to the decide and hand over an entire bunch of paperwork and truly blow up the council’s JR (judicial evaluate).’
“Some officers needed a complete cover-up and have been on the aspect of the council…
“They needed to assist the native council do the cover-up and cease The Occasions’ reporting, however different officers, together with within the DfE non-public workplace, stated that is utterly outrageous and we must always blow it up. Gove did, the judicial evaluate obtained blown up, Norfolk tales ran.”
Grooming gangs sufferer speaks out
The judicial evaluate needed by officers would have requested a decide to determine concerning the lawfulness of The Occasions’ publication plans and the implications that might stream from this info coming into the general public area.
A second supply instructed Sky Information that the recommendation from officers was to aspect with Rotherham Council and its makes an attempt to cease publication of particulars it didn’t need within the public area.
One of many motivations cited for stopping publication could be to stop the identities of abused kids coming into the general public area.
There was additionally a concern that publication may set again the present makes an attempt to halt the scandal, though incidents of abuse continued for a few years after these instances.
Sources steered that there’s additionally a pure danger aversion amongst officers to publicity of this type.
Learn extra on grooming gangs:
What we do and don’t know from the data
A timeline of the scandal
Mr Cummings, who ran the Vote Depart Brexit marketing campaign and was Boris Johnson’s right-hand man in Downing Road, has lengthy pushed for a nationwide inquiry into grooming gangs to reveal failures on the coronary heart of presidency.
He stated the inquiry, introduced in the present day, “shall be a complete s**tshow for Whitehall as a result of it’s going to reveal how a lot Whitehall labored to try to cowl up the entire thing.”
He additionally described Mr Johnson, with whom he has a long-standing animus, as a “moron’ for saying that cash spent on inquiries into historic baby sexual abuse had been “spaffed up the wall”.
Requested by Sky Information political correspondent Liz Bates why he had not pushed for a public inquiry himself when he labored in Quantity 10 in 2019-20, Mr Cummings stated Brexit after which COVID had taken priority.
“There are one million issues that I needed to do however in 2019 we have been coping with the constitutional disaster,” he stated.
The Division for Training and Rotherham Council have been approached for remark.
