Barrister: I asked Home Office ‘do you still want me?’ on grooming inquiries
Tom Crowther was named in January as someone who would help the Government with their work to tackle child sex abuse and grooming gangs.
A barrister announced as a key figure in drafting plans for locally-led child grooming inquiries has said he asked a Government official at one stage “do you still want me?”, amid an apparent lack of communication about his role.
Tom Crowther KC said that, six weeks after having first been named by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper as someone who would be working with the Home Office on its efforts to tackle child sexual abuse and grooming gangs, he asked the question.
Now, almost three months since the initial announcement in January, he indicated to a committee of MPs that he is no further forward on how that work has progressed and that his role appeared to have changed along the way.
Mr Crowther chaired the inquiry into abuse in Telford, Shropshire, which in 2022 reported findings that more than a thousand children were sexually exploited over at least 30 years amid “shocking” police and council failings.
He was named on January 6 by Ms Cooper as having agreed to work with the Government and local councils “where stronger engagement with victims and survivors is needed or where more formal inquiries are required to tackle persistent problems”.
Ten days later, the Home Office gave more details, saying Mr Crowther would be working with the department to “develop a new effective framework for victim-centred, locally-led inquiries, and to work with Oldham Council and four other pilot areas to implement it”.
Giving evidence to the Home Affairs Committee on Tuesday, Mr Crowther said: “Ultimately, in answer to the question how is a national framework being developed? I would say, at this stage, I don’t know.”
He read aloud a detailed timeline of events since January, including phone calls and text messages with a Home Office official.
He said being named in Parliament on January 6 came just hours after a call he had had from safeguarding minister Jess Phillips, asking him if he would work with the Government.
Mr Crowther said that period was “peak Musk” – a reference to the period early in the new year when billionaire X-owner Elon Musk had been posting online about grooming gangs and calling on the UK Government to set up a national inquiry.
The barrister said he had offered Ms Phillips, whom Mr Musk accused of being a “rape genocide apologist”, his sympathies about how she was being “traduced”, before accepting the role.
He said the Home Office official initially suggested, on January 10, “the instruction would be to create a framework for a local inquiry – it to be essentially basic but intensely practical, a couple of sides of paper – that a roundtable meeting tentatively scheduled for the following week was envisaged, with representatives of the five (local areas)”.
He was later updated to say the roundtable would not be going ahead that week.
Mr Crowther also detailed how, having asked for an update on progress in preparation for his committee appearance, he had felt it necessary to contact his friend and former justice secretary Robert Buckland for advice, amid a lack of reply from the Home Office official.
Mr Buckland passed him Ms Phillips’ number and Mr Crowther sent a text message asking if she could follow up “on what I was likely to be asked to do and when”.
In a phone call on February 14 with the Home Office official, Mr Crowther asked: “Do you still want me?”
Mr Crowther said: “He (the official) said that the framework, the draft framework, was now to be ministerial and adviser-drafted, but that my comment would be welcome on any draft, which he told me was expected the following week.”
The barrister said he asked the official if they could continue their contact by email rather than text, and was assured of a follow-up email that day.
Seven days later Mr Crowther said he had messaged again to say: “A week ago, you told me you would send me an email so we wouldn’t have to conduct this through text. Would still welcome that.”
He told MPs he is now to have a meeting on Wednesday with the Home Office.
Ahead of that a different department official told him “we wouldn’t be asking you to endorse the framework, rather we would be interested in understanding if the themes we’ve identified from Telford’s approach are the right ones, and whether there are any omissions that we should explore further”.
Committee member Liberal Democrat MP Paul Kohler said Mr Crowther’s evidence had been “very interesting”.
The MP asked: “Would it not be more logical for you to draft the framework and for the Home Office to comment on that?”
After a pause, Mr Crowther replied: “You may think that, I couldn’t possibly comment.”
Mr Kohler also questioned the sum of £5 million, which the Government announced in January for locally-led inquiries.
The MP said: “You’ve mentioned of course that Telford cost at least £5 million, probably more.
“What’s £5 million going to buy for five inquiries? What are they going to have to lose out on?”
Mr Crowther said: “I just don’t know about procurement. I suspect it’s run into procurement problems, but I fall back on, ‘I just don’t know’.”
He also said he was unsure as to whether the locations of the other areas for locally-led inquiries would be announced by Easter.
Mr Crowther said he had taken it upon himself to meet the Oldham Council leader, having been “painfully aware that my name was associated with Oldham, formally in the sense of a press release, but on Twitter to a great extent as well”.
He was confirmed by the council last month to be chairing their inquiry, and said his understanding is this will go ahead “whatever the Home Secretary announces”.
In another reference to Tesla owner Mr Musk, Mr Crowther said while putting inquiries on a statutory footing can be “necessary and useful”, this is not automatically needed in all cases.
He said: “Of course, in the ‘Musk sphere’, at the moment, statutory powers have become a talisman.
“What I’m saying is, there will be circumstances in which statutory powers are necessary and useful.
“But in my inquiry in Telford, they were not.”
He said that “an effective local inquiry can be had without statutory powers”.
He added: “I know because I’ve done one, and (Professor) Alexis Jay did one in Rotherham in 2013.”
