Candidates to lead grooming gangs inquiry may now think twice about role

When Sky News needed an independent investigator to examine evidence we had gathered of a grooming gang operating in Humberside, we approached Jim Gamble.

The former head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Service (CEOP) agreed to help, and what happened next was just one example of why it would be a shame to reject him from the inquiry. After examining hundreds of documents, including transcripts of interviews, diaries, texts, photos and school logs from alleged victims, he told us the evidence showed "significant corroboration" between victims and the case should go to court.

"If they need additional evidence, then go out and get it," he added, referring to Humberside Police. For someone who'd been hardened by the toughest of police work, he was visibly affected by some of the things he read in one of the victims' diaries.

Picking out a poem a teenager had written, he concluded that only a true victim could have written it. Shifting from compassion to anger, he said: "We need to declare war on this type of behaviour.

We need to say it is a priority. "It's not just about exploitation, it is about rape by appointment." Yet here we are today, with a man who is capable and passionate about child protection withdrawing from the grooming gangs inquiry, having been a frontrunner to lead it.

Some victims had expressed concern that Mr Gamble's background in policing might lead to a conflict of interest. But who do critics have in mind who would do a better job? I have huge respect for the survivors on the panel, including those who have resigned, citing their mistrust of the police.

Fiona Goddard, the first to go, was failed by multiple agencies who showed no interest when, aged 13, she would go missing from her care home. The concern wasn't even spiked when she became pregnant.

Why should she trust anyone? However, someone who would have taken her case seriously was Mr Gamble. During the Humberside case back in 2021, he told me: "I think if we're looking at how do we really make a difference from a criminal justice point of view, that is that we do need to treat this (grooming gangs) as seriously as we treat terrorism.

"That we use technical surveillance, so that we can monitor where they are, and who they're talking to. This is organised, industrial-level rape." Gamble understands the scale of this problem, and he knows the detail.

He is a seasoned investigator, but despite being a former police officer, he will tell the police when they've got it wrong. In 2022, he led an independent inquiry into the police strip-search of a black schoolgirl in Hackney known as "Child Q.