The Scottish parliament has voted in favour of allowing government ministers to mislead it. That is the effect of a vote at Holyrood yesterday afternoon.

The Scottish parliament is a failed institution that lurches between national irrelevance and terrible law-making

The background is this: the SNP-run Scottish government is doing everything in its power to avoid holding a Scotland-wide inquiry into child grooming gangs, both by pivoting to the pre-existing but scope-limited Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry and by running a strategic review group to coordinate a re-examination by several institutions (Police Scotland, the NHS, etc) of their handling of past allegations.

Keen to force the Scottish government’s hand, in September the Scottish Conservatives’ Liam Kerr moved an amendment to the Victims Bill, which creates a victims commissioner for Scotland, requiring the commissioner to carry out an investigation into grooming gangs north of the border.

SNP justice minister Angela Constance opposed the amendment and cited in support of her opposition Professor Alexis Jay, who chaired a grooming gangs investigation for England and Wales and now sits on Scotland’s strategic group. Constance told MSPs that Professor Jay:

‘[S]hares my view and has put on the record and stated to the media that she does not support further inquiries into child sexual abuse and exploitation, given the significant time and resource already spent in the review that she led, the Casey audit and other reviews. She says that it is now time that “people should just get on with it”.’

Following this, Kerr’s amendment failed to pass and there has still been no national grooming gangs inquiry in Scotland. Only, Professor Jay did not share Constance’s view and

© The Spectator