Sadiq Khan obfuscated when I grilled him on grooming gangs but the truth is even more shocking - Susan Hall

It has now been nine months and seven days since I asked Mayor Khan a fairly simple question: “Just how many grooming gangs have we got in London?”

Little did I expect a tirade of excuses, obfuscation and deflection when discussing what every expert and victim insists is happening across the country, including here in London.

This issue should be above politics. Yet, I appear to be banging my head against a brick wall due to a Mayor who refuses to answer any question that might cast his administration in a negative light.

In avoiding the truth, I fear he not only fails Londoners but also belittles the lived experiences of victims of these horrific crimes and deters other survivors from coming forward.

I have asked nine times now how many grooming gangs operate in London, referencing the cases in Rotherham, Rochdale and Bradford, and dreading what the scale might be in a city that holds 13 per cent of the nation’s population.

Whilst I appreciate that the modus operandi of these groups may differ slightly, their outcomes are tragically the same.

The violent rape and exploitation of girls and boys by groups of men across our city. How many such gangs exist, and what is being done to hunt down the perpetrators and support the survivors?

That is all I wanted to confirm. Instead, I am met with evasion and deflection from him and his sycophants as I try to understand the scale of London’s problem.

Meanwhile, predators continue to roam free, preying on our most vulnerable and young girls are threatened into silence and submission.

The sexual exploitation of a child should provoke outrage, not semantic debates about subtle differences in the kind of rape gangs we have compared with the rest of the country.

A truly civilised society is measured by its ability to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

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However, I fear that the Mayor’s apparent attitude towards grooming gang victims mirrors his wider mismanagement of the Metropolitan Police; best described by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services as “inadequate".

It has taken the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to finally lift the veil and admit that there is a “steady stream” of child sexual exploitation offences in London, with numerous live investigations underway.

The Mayor’s continued obfuscation on one of the most heinous crimes in our society is not just irresponsible and inadequate, it is negligent. His attempts to politicise the issue are akin to his Prime Minister.

Reducing a matter of life-shattering trauma to partisan point-scoring.

This is not “dog whistle” or “bandwagon” politics, it is about the fundamental duty of leadership for which we were elected.

We must ensure that London is fully included in this national inquiry so that survivors in our great city receive the justice, protection and recognition they deserve.

So that their abusers are finally brought to justice; and no victim will be deterred from speaking out as it does not fit the Mayor’s profile of what a Grooming Gang is.

Delay, political point scoring, and denial demean the lived experiences of survivors.

Such behaviour is unworthy of the leader of our capital and falls far short of the compassion, integrity and courage that Londoners expect.