Leading candidates to chair grooming gangs inquiry revealed with both set to face a survivors’ panel this week

A former police officer and a social worker are the leading candidates to chair the government’s national inquiry into grooming gangs, Sky News has learned.

The two prospective candidates, Jim Gamble and Annie Hudson, are due to meet a survivors’ panel on Tuesday.

That group will then pass on their reflections of the candidates to the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to decide who leads the inquiry.

The prime minister launched the inquiry into grooming gangs after an audit by Baroness Louise Casey showed the scale of the problem.

Some victims have already expressed concern that the two candidates’ backgrounds in policing and social work might lead to conflicts of interest.

“These are exactly the institutions that let us down,” said one campaigner.

Others want the inquiry to be judge-led, including shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick, who believes the chair should have “deep experience” of criminal cases.

However, both candidates have had careers tackling child abuse, and Mr Gamble has on several occasions challenged police and other institutions over child protection failures.

He began his career as a police officer in Northern Ireland, rising to become head of RUC special branch in Belfast, but is best known for his work combating child abuse.

In 2006, he headed up the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, which revolutionised the approach to policing online child abuse networks.

Its investigations are said to have led to more than 1,000 arrests before Mr Gamble resigned in 2010 when the then Home Secretary Theresa May decided to merge his unit with other departments.

In 2021, he examined evidence gathered by Sky News into an Asian grooming gang in Humberside and was critical of the police investigation, calling on forces to treat group-based child abuse “as seriously as we treat terrorism”.

He added: “This is organised, industrial-level rape.”

In 2022, he led an independent inquiry into the strip-search of a black schoolgirl in Hackney known as “Child Q”, concluding that racism was a factor, including “adultification bias”, in which adults perceive black children as being older than they are because they see them as more streetwise.

The rival candidate, Annie Hudson, was appointed as chair of the child safeguarding practice review panel in December 2020.

Before that, she was director of children’s services at the London Borough of Lambeth, having held the same role at Bristol City Council.

Hudson was also previously chief executive of the College of Social Work.

In 2012, she was given a national Social Worker of the Year award for her ‘outstanding contribution to social work’. She is also the lead trustee for safeguarding at Oxfam.

Political heat has been ramped up on the government to show progress with the inquiry.

Last week, a motion in parliament expressed “deep concern” that four months on from the announcement of the inquiry,”no chair has been appointed, no terms of reference have been published, and no hearings or local investigations have begun”.

A Home Office Spokesperson said: “The abuse of children by grooming gangs is one of the most horrific crimes imaginable. We will do everything in our power to ensure these crimes never happen again.

“We are working urgently to appoint the best chair to take forward this work, to get to the truth and deliver justice to the survivors. It would be wrong to provide a running commentary on that process while it is still under way.”