Both Reform & Conservatives Promised to End the Rape Gang Cover-Up
West Yorkshire's Rape Gang Cover-Up: Three Reform Led Councils and No Excuse Left
The document being written right now by the National Inquiry will determine whether Bradford, Calderdale, and Kirklees receive the investigations their victims were promised, a managed version that protects the institutions that failed them, or nothing at all. It is called the area selection criteria.
Baroness Longfield must publish it by 13 July. Once published, it fixes the scope and depth of every local investigation the inquiry conducts. All three West Yorkshire councils have the legal power and the political arithmetic to place formal demands on the public record before those terms are set. None of them has done it.
Stephen Place, Reform UK's newly elected leader of Bradford Council, has written personally to Longfield. Dan Sutherland, who took outright majority control of Calderdale Council on 7 May with 34 of 54 seats, has made no formal demand. In Kirklees, Reform won 29 seats from a standing start on a platform of ending the rape gang cover-up and then sat in the council chamber five days after 277 years of sentences were announced and admitted they did not understand the procedural rules of the institution they had just won.
Only a formal council motion passed by an elected majority is an act Longfield cannot file away. The window to change that is six weeks.
277 Years of Sentences Were Hidden From the Public Until Last Week
On 20 May 2026, West Yorkshire Police announced that twenty men had been sentenced to a combined 277 years for offences committed in Dewsbury and Batley, north Kirklees. One victim was twelve years old when the abuse began in 1995. The offences ran until 2003. Six separate trials at Leeds Crown Court began in July 2023 and concluded in September 2024. Reporting restrictions concealed the outcomes from the public throughout that entire period. Twenty men committed those offences across eight years. The public was told none of this until last week.
Ciaran McGrath
Before those 277 years were announced, Operation Tendersea had already produced convictions for 42 men for offences against 18 girls aged between eleven and seventeen in Huddersfield. The offences ran from 2004 to 2011. Twenty men were convicted in 2018 alone, sentenced to a combined 221 years. Further convictions followed across multiple trials through to 2023. The total number of men convicted of offences against children in Kirklees across both sets of proceedings stands at 62.
Kirklees is one of the primary sites of this scandal. The institutions that presided over the years those networks operated have published reviews and issued statements. Those institutions gave the truth they chose to give. Compelled testimony under oath would extract the rest.
Fifty Men Convicted in Calderdale. Not One Institution Has Been Compelled to Explain Itself.
Six men were jailed in Halifax this week. The offences ran between 2006 and 2009. The victim was thirteen years old when the abuse began. Mohammed Shehban received fourteen years for two counts of rape. Adal Manaf received eight years. Mohammed Adnan received four and a half years. The victim's statement read to the court described men who had deliberately identified her vulnerability and used it. At the time she was inside it and could not see it. She sees it clearly now.
Alex Lloyd
These six men join more than fifty others convicted of rape and child sexual exploitation in Calderdale since 2016.
In 2016, fifteen men were convicted at Leeds Crown Court for systematically grooming and sexually abusing teenage girls in Halifax between 2009 and 2011. A Court of Appeal judge, when six of the men challenged their sentences, said one girl's ordeal transcended the imagination of most people. She had been passed around and used as a sex toy. The longest sentence was twenty-five years. Between 2021 and 2024, a further twenty men were convicted across multiple trials at Bradford Crown Court for raping and abusing four girls aged between twelve and sixteen in Calderdale. The offences covered the period 2001 to 2010. Reporting restrictions concealed those outcomes from the public until November 2024.
More than fifty men have been convicted across three decades of offending and multiple trials at two court centres. Calderdale has not been named in the inquiry's confirmed list of areas for investigation. The people responsible for oversight during the years those networks operated have never faced a statutory process. They have not been asked a single question under compulsion.
A Motion Was Blocked, 5,000 Signatures Were Dismissed, and Bradford Council Called It Caution
In October 2025, eight men were jailed at Bradford Crown Court for sexually abusing one child between 2002 and 2004. She was thirteen when the abuse began and was in local authority care throughout the offending period.
Emma Glasbey and Jennifer Smith
Three separate trials were required. Raja Zulqurnean received twenty-three years, increased from eighteen on appeal under the Unduly Lenient Sentence Scheme. Basharat Iqbal Khaliq received twenty-one years. Mohammed Shezad Hussain received twelve years. Reporting restrictions concealed the case from the public until the final sentences landed. The specialist prosecutor described men who had passed the victim around and shown a callous disregard for her wellbeing and dignity.
Switalskis Solicitors
Robbie Moore, the Conservative MP for Keighley and Ilkley, has spent five years documenting what lies behind that single prosecution. He told the Home Affairs Select Committee that the scale of child sexual abuse across the Bradford district was feared to dwarf that of Rotherham. David Greenwood, one of the country's leading child abuse compensation lawyers, said he feared Bradford had its own scandal and it would dwarf Rotherham. Both men said it on the basis of evidence and neither said it in isolation.
Bradford's institutional response to those warnings is also on the record. In January 2025, the Bradford District Safeguarding Children Partnership, comprising Bradford Council, West Yorkshire Police, and the local Care Partnership, stated publicly that examining child sexual abuse in Bradford would cost a huge amount of money and was unlikely to provide any new learning.
In the same month, Conservative Group Leader Councillor Rebecca Poulsen brought a formal motion before Bradford Council demanding a full independent national inquiry. Labour blocked it. The reason given, stated openly in the chamber, was fear of becoming the next Rotherham.
Shipley
Then in January 2026, Fiona Goddard stood in that same council chamber and presented 5,000 signatures from Bradford residents demanding accountability. Susan Hinchcliffe, who had led the council since 2016, was in her seat. Goddard was given a prepared non-answer. The signatures were received and nothing followed.
Goddard has not stopped. She co-signed Moore's letter to Longfield demanding Bradford's immediate inclusion in the inquiry and his subsequent letter to Place welcoming the new leader's approach. She has stated publicly that many grooming gang cases across the country have links to Bradford, with children trafficked there from across the country, and that without Bradford at the heart of the national inquiry, survivors of grooming everywhere are failed alongside Bradford's own.
Hinchcliffe lost her seat in May 2026 and the councillors who voted down Poulsen's motion are gone. The safeguarding partnership that said a Bradford inquiry would offer no new learning has not been asked to explain that position under compulsion. The networks those councillors feared being associated with operated in Bradford while they held power, and the accountability they refused to demand is now the responsibility of the people who replaced them.
Longfield's Criteria Can Bury These Cities Before Any Investigation Begins
On Tuesday, Baroness Longfield told the Home Affairs Committee that Bradford has a strong case for inclusion in the inquiry's local investigations. She said an announcement would come in six weeks. Eleanor Kelly, one of the inquiry's panellists, explained at the same hearing why no announcement has been made yet. Announcing areas before the criteria are published would expose the inquiry to judicial review by the councils being named.
That works against Bradford, Calderdale, and Kirklees only if those councils remain passive. A council that formally demands inclusion before the criteria are published forces its way into the political landscape in which those criteria are drafted. Longfield must account for a formal institutional demand on the public record. She does not have to account for a letter.
The criteria document is not an administrative formality. It sets which institutions are examined and fixes the time periods and scope of each local investigation. It is being written now by a team that has received no formal institutional demand from Bradford, Calderdale, or Kirklees. Once published, it fixes the terms for every authority it covers.
The leaders of all three authorities may say they are engaging constructively with the inquiry process. Constructive engagement without a formal motion on the record is not engagement with the criteria document. It is participation in a process whose terms are being set without them. A council that passes a formal motion before the criteria land shapes the scope of its own investigation. The alternative is accepting whatever scope the inquiry imposes.
The wider legal position makes this considerably more urgent. Under the Inquiries Act 2005, only a statutory national inquiry can compel witnesses to attend and require testimony under oath. A local council inquiry has neither of those powers. It is confined to internal documents and the voluntary participation of current staff. It cannot force the truth from the people most likely to resist giving it.
Without statutory compulsion, every official and police decision-maker who presided over the years those networks operated can simply decline. The room cannot be forced on them and the questions cannot be made compulsory. If the criteria document scopes Bradford, Calderdale, or Kirklees narrowly, or excludes any of them, those people walk. They give voluntary statements when it suits them and decline when it does not.
A formal council motion, passed before the criteria are published, enters the political landscape in which those criteria are being drafted. It puts on the public record that Bradford's council, Calderdale's council, and Kirklees' council demanded full inclusion and full scope. It creates the basis for a legal challenge if the criteria emerge in a form designed to limit the scope of any local investigation. Longfield cannot draft around three West Yorkshire councils acting together in the same week.
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Bradford's New Majority Has the Votes and a Letter That Carries No Institutional Weight
Bradford Council has 90 seats. Reform holds 29. The Conservatives hold 18 and have formed a group with independent councillor Luke Majkowski. Labour holds 18. A majority requires 46 votes. Reform and the Conservatives have 48 between them. The people who blocked Poulsen's motion and gave Goddard a prepared non-answer are gone, and the arithmetic has reversed.
Place can requisition an extraordinary council meeting with Reform's 29 members alone under the Local Government Act 1972. Any five members of the council can call one at any time. He does not need to wait for July or the next scheduled full council date. He can put a formal motion demanding Bradford's full referral to the National Rape Gang Inquiry before the full council this month, inside the window in which the criteria are still being written.
After Tuesday's Annual Meeting, Place wrote personally to Longfield. He described it as his first act as leader and added that if Bradford is not included in the inquiry, his administration would undertake all steps necessary to begin the process of an independent inquiry. A council motion on the public record is what Longfield cannot simply acknowledge and set aside.
Place's letter is not on Bradford Council's record and cannot be cited in any challenge to how the criteria are applied to Bradford. It binds no one and creates no institutional demand that Longfield must reckon with when her team writes the document that fixes Bradford's fate. It is the minimum visible action that allows a leader to say he raised it while the real decision is made without the council's formal voice in the room.
Why Place's Threat of a Local Inquiry is Weak
Under the Inquiries Act 2005, only a statutory national inquiry can compel the officials and decision-makers who presided over Bradford's years of abuse to attend and give testimony under oath. The Bradford District Safeguarding Children Partnership stated publicly that a Bradford inquiry would offer no new learning. A council-led local inquiry cannot force them into a room or require any testimony at all. A formal council motion demanding full statutory scope, passed before the criteria are published, is what makes compulsion possible.
Bradford's victims need a formal council motion passed before 13 July. The votes are there.
Calderdale Has an Outright Majority and Has Said Nothing
On 7 May 2026, Reform won 34 of 54 seats on Calderdale Council. That is an outright majority of fourteen. Dan Sutherland is leader. The Conservatives were wiped out. Reform needs no coalition and no other group's votes. Sutherland can requisition an extraordinary meeting this week with Reform members alone, pass a formal motion demanding Calderdale's full referral to the National Rape Gang Inquiry, and place his council on the public record before the criteria are published.
Six men were jailed in Halifax this week. More than fifty have been convicted in Calderdale since 2016. The institutions that failed those victims have never faced a statutory process. Calderdale is not on the inquiry's confirmed list and the officials who presided over three decades of offending have not been asked a single question under compulsion.
Of the three leaders in this piece, Sutherland holds the simplest position. Reform's outright majority means he needs no one, and the criteria are being written. Calderdale has not demanded its place in them.
Reform Kirklees Did Not Know What Standing Orders Were. The Conservatives Used That to Block Accountability.
Five days after West Yorkshire Police announced 277 years of sentences for offences hidden from the public for years, Kirklees Council held its Annual Meeting. Reform group leader Sarah Wood and Green group leader Andrew Cooper both nominated themselves for council leader.
The Conservatives hold 9 seats on Kirklees Council. Reform plus the Conservatives equals 38 seats. A majority requires 35. The Conservatives had the arithmetic to put Reform's candidate into the leadership. They voted against Cooper and refused to support Wood. Both nominations fell. No leader was elected.
The Conservatives campaigned on grooming gang accountability. Five days after the largest Kirklees sentencing announcement in recent history, they cast votes that guaranteed paralysis in the authority where it happened. That choice has a consequence. The consequence is that Kirklees has no elected leader and no formal institutional demand on the record when Longfield's team sits down to write the criteria that will determine what the inquiry examines there.
Sarah Wood said publicly in the chamber that her group did not understand the procedural rules they were operating under and were voting without knowing what they were deciding.
Reform in Kirklees won 29 seats from a standing start on a platform of ending the rape gang cover-up and then sat in the chamber where the largest local sentencing announcement in years had just been made without understanding the tools available to them.
A second leadership vote will now take place. If that fails, chief executive Steve Mawson assumes executive control. None of that removes the extraordinary meeting power. Under the Local Government Act 1972, five members of Kirklees Council can requisition an extraordinary meeting at any time. They do not need a leader's approval or Mawson's permission. The leadership question is irrelevant to it. Reform has 29 members. Five of them can call that meeting this week.
A narrowed or excluded Kirklees investigation means the institutions that failed to stop 62 convicted men face no compelled account of how it happened. Five Reform members can use the extraordinary meeting power regardless of what happens to the leadership question.
The Conservatives hold the votes that would pass the motion alongside Reform. They used those votes five days after 277 years of sentences were announced in their authority to guarantee paralysis. They also now have a second opportunity. What they do with it is the question that follows them out of the chamber.
Three Coordinated Extraordinary Meetings Before the Criteria Land
Bradford, Calderdale, and Kirklees have documented histories of organised child sexual exploitation stretching back decades. Three sets of recent convictions sit on their records, two of them hidden from the public until the past six months. All three have new administrations where Reform holds the decisive arithmetic, and all three face one six-week window before Longfield's criteria fix the terms of what happens to them.
Three coordinated extraordinary council meetings, called in the same week, passing the same formal demand, create a political fact that cannot be drafted around. A single council acting alone can be managed into the margins of the criteria document. Three acting together in the same week cannot be.
Place wrote a letter. Sutherland, with an outright majority, has made no public demand. Wood's Reform group admitted in the council chamber that it does not understand the procedural tools available to it, and the Kirklees Conservatives used their votes once to guarantee paralysis and face a second opportunity today.
A formal council motion, passed by an elected majority and placed on the public record before the criteria land, is what forces Longfield's hand. It is the only thing that cannot be filed away.
The people reading this in Bradford, Calderdale, and Kirklees who voted Reform because they were promised an end to the cover-up now know what their councillors must do and what they have done with that promise so far. Send this to your Reform councillors and to the Conservatives in Bradford and Kirklees. The extraordinary meeting power belongs to all of them. The votes are available and the criteria document is being finalised. The window is six weeks and it is already closing.
They have the power and the votes. You gave it them. Writing letters and parliamentary speeches are what politicians do when they do not have the power to act. If Reform and the Conservatives fail to call these extraordinary council meetings, people across Bradford, Calderdale, and Kirklees will know precisely what the promise of fighting for the victims of the rape gangs was worth. The cover-up did not end with the election. It changed hands.
Three West Yorkshire councils have six weeks to demand their local authority areas are fully included in the National Grooming Gang Inquiry before the document that fixes the scope of every local investigation is published.
Bradford. Calderdale. Kirklees. Reform holds the decisive arithmetic in all three. The Conservatives have the votes alongside them in Bradford and Kirklees. Calderdale's Reform majority needs no one.
None of them has called an extraordinary council meeting. Why?
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I’m Raja Miah MBE. For seven years, I led a campaign that exposed how senior Labour politicians helped protect Pakistani rape gangs. The people of my town helped force the national inquiry.
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