Tory leadership candidate Liz Truss has stated that she will hold officials “who didn’t do anything” about rape gangs accountable.
“It appears at the moment that we live in a society where the police will happily turn up at your doorstep and slap you in handcuffs if you have the audacity to insult someone on Twitter and slap you in handcuffs, but if you’re part of a grooming gang they turn the other cheek,” a viewer question to the Foreign Secretary suggested recently when she appeared on GB News, asking what she was “prepared to do to confront and bring to justice the perpetrators.
“Of course those criminals need to be brought to justice but, more than that, I want the people held to account — the council officers, the councillors and the police who didn’t do anything about it,” she said.
“Even, not just turned a blind eye, but actually condoned this behaviour. They need to be held to account because, until those people understand that their role in this was enabling those appalling crimes to be committed I don’t believe we will fully deal with that.
“I will make sure that those people are gone after by the relevant authorities.”
Her remarks come after the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) dropped an investigation into three Greater Manchester Police (GMP) officers who were referred to them as part of a probe into grooming gang failures.