Reform UK pledges to 'open the books' on grooming gang scandal and pursue public officials

Reform UK has pledged to "open the books" on grooming gangs within the first 100 days of taking power. Zia Yusuf - who will be Home Secretary if Nigel Farage becomes prime minister - has committed to the release of "all files held by public bodies relating to the grooming gangs going back 40 years". Reform has condemned the grooming gangs scandal as the "greatest state failure in British history" and is convinced "public bodies and politicians aided and abetted the mass rape and sexual exploitation of children".

In March, the Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs formally started investigating the "sexual abuse and exploitation of children by grooming gangs across England and Wales". It is due to report back within three years.

But Mr Yusuf said: "Reform will quadruple funding for dedicated police taskforces to hunt down all perpetrators and enablers of the grooming gangs and release all files and internal communications of councils, police and ministers to the public."

Under Reform's plans, police and National Crime Agency taskforce funding will increase to £400million so "they can adequately investigate both the perpetrators and complicit police, social workers and politicians".

Former Greater Manchester Police detective Maggie Oliver - who blew the whistle on inaction over grooming gangs - strongly welcomed the pledge to hold to account people who looked the other way.

She told the Express: "If what Reform are saying is true, and they follow through on their promises with meaningful action and criminal prosecutions should they come into government, then I would fully support that 100% and would help in any way I could to ensure this came to pass. In all honesty, this is what victims and survivors are demanding, and have been demanding for many years now.

"It is the cover up and corruption by the state that enrages them and has traumatised them - in many cases the trauma caused by the systemic failures has been as bad as, if not even worse, than the abuse itself. Had the agencies acted to protect them as is their duty when this first became known to the authorities in the late 1990s, then we would not be in this position some 30 years later, still going round the same rabbit hole time and time again - empty words and promises, followed by game playing, secrecy and cover ups."

Ms Oliver, who has founded a foundation which fights for justice for survivors, added: "There is nothing I would like more than to see criminal prosecutions of those senior public servants who in my opinion are responsible for this national shame, and the destruction of so many young lives - chief constables, council leaders, even home secretaries. When that happens, I will feel my work is done, but until then I will not rest."

Reform's intervention comes as Reform seeks to stop Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham winning the Makerfield by-election and being in a position to become prime minister.

Reform claimed Mr Burnham did not do enough to stop grooming gangs in the years following his election as MP for Leigh in 2001 as a minister in the Blair and Brown Governments and as mayor.

Mr Yusuf claimed the "thousands of survivors are rightly furious, including the ones in the Makerfield constituency".

A spokesperson for Mr Burnham said: "Andy has always been clear that these young women were seriously harmed and appallingly failed by the very institutions meant to protect them, and that the truth of what happened to them needed to be told. When others looked the other way, he didn't. Within days of taking office he set in motion an inquiry that vindicated the whistleblowers, exposed institutional cover-ups, and led to arrests and convictions of perpetrators who would otherwise have walked free. When he hit the limits of what local power could do, he called for a national inquiry - before it was politically convenient to do so."