Vital paperwork for grooming gangs inquiry may be lost, says MPs

Key documents for the grooming gangs inquiry may already have been lost due to Home Office errors, say MPs. The independent inquiry into grooming gangs is about to begin its work after a major row over who should chair it, amongst other questions. Now two MPs on the Home Affairs select committee have raised concerns that councils have not been instructed to keep paperwork as they should have been. Conservative MP Robbie Moore said the revelations were "staggering" and Labour MP Chris Murray suggested the errors meant senior leadership teams were "not fit for purpose". The Home Office said officials who failed to produce documents without "reasonable excuse" could face a prison sentence. Baroness Anne Longfield, a former children's commissioner, will chair the inquiry into child sexual abuse by grooming gangs, which Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has promised will be a "moment of reckoning". The inquiry will hold a series of targeted local investigations into the group-based child sexual exploitation of girls by grooming gangs, including in Oldham in Manchester, and these will be overseen by a national panel. Investigators will "explicitly" consider the backgrounds of offenders, inc