Maggie Oliver: if we can’t trust our politicians to deliver what a statutory inquiry recommends, what is the point?

Police whistleblower Maggie Oliver has said the government are “hypocrites” as she took them to court over claims that they have failed to implement the recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.

Speaking on GB News, she said: “What absolutely horrifies me is that what the government have just said there, they don’t even want to discuss the recommendations.

“They are trying to get our whole case thrown out on legal arguments and they are going to extraordinary lengths to avoid discussing this and implementing these recommendations.

“They are saying that any promises made by a government in any statutory national inquiry are literally just recommendations; that their promises mean nothing.

“What they are arguing is that the promises made for the past 15,16 years to survivors and victims, thousands and thousands of them, that IICSA would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change things for children of the future.

“They are saying that those recommendations mean nothing; that they are not to be implemented, and they are relying on parliamentary privilege. They’re saying that those promises were made in Parliament and they’re unenforceable.

“What our legal team are saying is that actually, yes, they were, but successive Home Secretaries and Keir Starmer, Jess Phillips, Yvette Cooper, Grant Shapps, Theresa May have all also made those promises outside the Houses of Parliament.

“They’ve published them on the government website. So that’s one technical argument they’re trying to use to prevent even fighting the case.

“The other one is they’re trying to say that neither myself nor the Maggie Oliver Foundation have got standing to bring this case. But the reality is that there’s 7500 people who gave evidence to IICSA.

“We’ve had to do it through the vehicle of the foundation. If I brought it, or a victim brought it, you could lose everything you have got.

“Sexual abuse will never go away. This case, yes, we’re hanging on IICSA, but it’s far wider than that. You know, I see statutory national inquiries with my experience. And what I’ve seen in the last six, seven years – because I was a core participant in IICSA – I see a statutory inquiry as a convenient political tool for successive governments to kick the ball down the road.

“So we get a public outcry, whether it’s about the Post Office scandal or Grenfell or now the Nottingham inquiry. There’s a huge outcry, and the government said, “You know what? We’ll have a statutory national inquiry.”

“We have it. We wait seven years in IICSA. We get 20 recommendations. Four years later, we’re still waiting for them to be implemented. And they say, You know what? Promises are protected by parliamentary privilege.

“And so, if we can’t trust our politicians to deliver what a statutory inquiry recommends, what is the point?

“And as we go into the next inquiry in December, and I’m a core participant in that as well, what on earth is the point of going down that road?

“The Casey audit. You know, I spoke to Louise Casey, and the starting point for her recommendations are that these 20 recommendations have been implemented, and they haven’t.

“So they are dismissive of that. They’re playing games with people’s lives, and they’re asking vulnerable people to retraumatise themselves in the hope that change will come.

“I’ve worked on Rochdale, I worked on Augusta, I know about Rotherham and Oxford and Telford and Huddersfield, and they have covered up grooming gangs for decades, and they don’t want scrutiny.

“But one of the key recommendations was the mandatory collection of data. We need that, and you know what? It’s not just about grooming gangs. It’s about understanding the landscape of sexual abuse in our country.

“I’m not saying that we only collect data for Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs. It should be for everybody.

“The other thing is pain compliance techniques, which IICSA described as torture. Why will the government not outline that on vulnerable children?

“Regulation of care home staff. Yeah, it’ll cost some money, but you know, if you’re a child at 11, and Kelly is one of our ambassadors at the foundation.

“She was put in care at the age of 11; tortured, sexually abused, and raped from the age of 11 by the care home staff. 30 years later, in August, she’s just got convictions.

“We’re trying to protect children of the future, not just of grooming gangs and the government should hang their heads in shame.

“They are hypocrites. They are lying. If you make promises to vulnerable people, you honour them. And if a government can’t do that, what are we playing at in our country?