TELFORD ESCAPED THE FIRST STATUTORY INQUIRY. ANNE LONGFIELD MUST NOT LET IT ESCAPE AGAIN.
Force Telford’s former leaders to give evidence under statutory powers and the consequences could be devastating, not just for those who ran the town, but for the Labour Party that stood behind them.
SHAUN DAVIES FOUGHT THE TELFORD RAPE GANG INQUIRY. ANNE LONGFIELD MUST PUT HIM UNDER OATH.
Shaun Davies fought the inquiry into the rape gangs of Telford. As leader of Telford & Wrekin Council, he wrote to the Home Secretary on 22 September 2016 to say that “we do not feel at this time that a further inquiry is necessary”, claiming that Alexis Jay’s statutory inquiry was “already committed to looking at what happened here in Telford”.
That was not the position later uncovered by Tom Crowther KC, the barrister appointed to chair Telford’s eventual independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation. Crowther found that there had only been “a suggestion” that the national inquiry might examine what had happened in Telford, and that the extent of any investigation was unclear. Telford was never selected for the dedicated statutory investigation Davies had relied on to argue against another inquiry.
The statutory investigation Davies said was coming never came. What Telford eventually got instead was a local inquiry with no legal power to compel witnesses, and Davies has since admitted to Parliament that people it wanted to question did not come forward.
He is now Telford’s MP. Anne Longfield chairs a statutory inquiry with the power to compel witnesses and documents.
She has not named Telford as a Local Area Investigation.
DAVIES TOLD THE HOME SECRETARY NO FURTHER INQUIRY WAS NECESSARY
Davies put his name at the head of that letter, with nine other signatories behind it. They were four councillors, two senior council officers, the head of the local NHS commissioning group, the chair of the safeguarding children board and the Police and Crime Commissioner, John Campion. It went to Amber Rudd after the town's MP, Lucy Allan, had asked the Government for an inquiry.
Tom Crowther KC has told Parliament that Telford's survivors wanted a statutory inquiry from the start. Davies told the Home Secretary that no further inquiry was necessary. His excuse was Ofsted and Alexis Jay, and Jay's inquiry never made Telford one of its investigations.
Davies knew what an inquiry without powers was worth. His own council said in 2018 that a council inquiry "cannot compel witnesses outside of the Council", and that Jay's inquiry was the best route because it had the statutory powers to compel organisations and individuals to give evidence. He knew the difference in 2016, and his answer then was to give his town no inquiry.
LUCY LOWE HAD BEEN DEAD FOR SIXTEEN YEARS WHEN DAVIES SIGNED
Lucy Lowe was sixteen when she was killed in 2000, alongside her mother and sister, in a fire set by the man who had made her pregnant at fourteen. Sixteen years after that fire, Davies told the Home Secretary a further inquiry was not necessary. The inquiry he opposed went on to record that the men who raped children in Telford used her death as a threat, telling girls they would be next if they spoke.
That inquiry could not determine how many children were abused. Crowther called the estimate of up to 1,000 girls measured, reasonable and non-sensational, and witnesses told him it was conservative. He wrote of children and "hundreds, if not thousands, of others" failed by the institutions that should have protected them, and his report records children raped by groups of men and trafficked out of the town.
DAVIES SAID A COUNCIL INQUIRY COULD BE SEEN AS NOT IMPARTIAL. THEN HE COMMISSIONED ONE.
Davies held his position for two years. In March 2018, after the Sunday Mirror published its estimate of up to 1,000 victims, he asked the Home Office to do the job for him. He said an inquiry commissioned by the council or the police "could be seen as not being impartial".
The Home Office refused him with the excuse he had used himself in 2016, that Jay's inquiry would cover Telford. Davies then commissioned the inquiry he had said could be seen as not impartial, and declared that "a council inquiry is better than no inquiry". Lucy Allan was initially told she could not address the council meeting that debated the inquiry, and after a public backlash the council backed down and allowed her to speak.
DAVIES ADMITTED THE WITNESSES DID NOT COME
Crowther's inquiry reported on 12 July 2022. Two days later Davies stood in front of his Cabinet, and the council's own minutes record his response: "In 1989, the Leader was 3 years of age." Two years later Telford elected him as its MP. He subsequently became a member of the Home Affairs Committee, scrutinising the Government's response to the rape gangs.
Davies commissioned that inquiry, and on 21 January 2025 he admitted to Alexis Jay that in Telford "people who the inquiry wanted to talk to did not come forward". Crowther's final report shows what that meant. Eleven people either refused to provide evidence, provided only very limited evidence or prevented the inquiry from contacting them. Another thirteen could not be reached despite repeated attempts, and seven could not be located.
Crowther then singled out four senior figures whose level of participation disappointed him.
- Victor Brownlees, a former chief executive of the council, declined to meet the inquiry and sent a brief statement by email.
- Two retired detective chief inspectors, Clive Harding and Geoff Harding, did not sit down with it, and Crowther called it remarkable that Geoff Harding could not remember.
- The fourth was Mark Pritchard, the MP for The Wrekin, who did not refuse but left the giving of evidence to others.
I do not accept that disappointment is an answer to senior people declining an inquiry into the rape of children. Crowther says their absence made no difference and that statutory powers would have changed nothing. He cannot know that because he never obtained the evidence he wanted from them. Jay told the committee that her inquiry tracked down people who went quiet and threatened prosecution when they would not cooperate.
There is another witness I cannot find in Crowther's published evidence. It is Shaun Davies himself. The report says the inquiry took evidence from 170 witnesses, including 60 current or former council witnesses. I can find no passage identifying Davies as a witness or showing him being questioned about the 2016 letter.
Crowther told Parliament in 2025 that Davies was the best person to answer detailed questions about the commissioning of the Telford inquiry, and that he had met him, particularly during the separate review of progress in 2024.
Telford deserves an answer to one question. Was Shaun Davies ever formally questioned, by the inquiry he commissioned, about his own decision to oppose one in 2016?
On 16 January 2025, five days before Davies made his admission, the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, told Parliament she wanted other towns to run the kind of inquiry Telford ran. The Government held up to the country an inquiry that witnesses could walk away from, and the man who commissioned it was sitting on the committee meant to hold the Government to account.
The truth was this was just another attempt by the Labour Party to prevent a National Inquiry.
DAVIES TOLD PARLIAMENT THE TORIES REFUSED TELFORD AN INQUIRY. HE LEFT OUT HIS OWN LETTER.
On 16 June 2025 Davies stood up in the House of Commons and said Telford held a local review because Amber Rudd and Rishi Sunak "refused to provide a statutory inquiry". The refusal he was describing came in 2018, after the scandal had broken nationally and he had changed his position. Davies told Parliament the second half of the story and left out the first.
Steerpike
He told MPs about the Conservative Government refusing him an inquiry in 2018. He did not tell them that before he asked for one, he had written to Amber Rudd himself to say a further inquiry was unnecessary. He presented himself as the man denied a statutory inquiry without telling Parliament that he had previously opposed one.
By his own account in the Commons, Telford was refused a statutory inquiry. Anne Longfield chairs a statutory inquiry that can compel the witnesses his inquiry could not. Davies has told Parliament that witnesses stayed away and that Telford was refused a statutory inquiry, and both are reasons to demand Longfield's.
TELFORD'S COUNCIL "WOULD WELCOME" AN INQUIRY. DAVIES HAS NOT DEMANDED ONE.
Longfield initially named Oldham, Bradford and Keighley, and London for Local Area Investigations. On 30 September 2026 she added Birmingham and announced a separate investigation covering Wales. Telford has no Local Area Investigation.
Longfield's national work will examine what previous inquiries found and why their recommendations were not always implemented. That is not a statutory Local Area Investigation of Telford, and it will not put the signatories of the 2016 letter under oath.
Telford & Wrekin Council passed a motion on 17 July 2025 saying it "would welcome" being included, and a council that would welcome an inquiry has not demanded one. Oldham, Bradford and London passed motions demanding to be investigated, and they have been named.
On 9 December 2025 Mark Pritchard, one of the four people Crowther named, stood up in the Commons and asked the Home Secretary to support the national inquiry coming back to Telford and Wrekin. A man criticised by the last inquiry has asked for the next one. The MP for Telford, who commissioned the inquiry those witnesses stayed away from, was not the one who asked.
SHAUN DAVIES MUST DEMAND A STATUTORY INQUIRY FOR TELFORD
Shaun Davies must write to Anne Longfield and demand that Telford is named for a Local Area Investigation. He must put himself forward to give evidence under oath on the 2016 letter, and so must the nine who signed it with him. Telford & Wrekin Council must pass a motion demanding that Telford is investigated.
Anne Longfield must name Telford without waiting for either of them. Her inquiry must summon the four people Crowther named and every person his inquiry sought and did not get, and it must take their evidence under oath. The over 1,000 children gang raped and trafficked in Telford have never had an inquiry with the power to compel a witness. They are owed one.
DAVIES WILL NOT DEMAND IT UNTIL HE IS FORCED
Davies opposed an inquiry until a newspaper front page made his position impossible to hold. He will not demand a statutory one because I have asked him to. Oldham was named because ordinary people in Oldham refused to let it go, and together we forced the Government to concede the National Inquiry it had resisted for years.
We must force Telford back onto the agenda in the same way we forced Oldham onto it. This means refusing to move on when the people responsible want the story buried. As well as Telford, we must do the same for every town Anne Longfield has not named.
Raja Miah MBE
Do Not Fear Them. Do Not Fear Any Of Them.
The National Inquiry is entering the phase that will decide where it goes, who it questions and what it is allowed to leave untouched. The people who covered this up for decades know that, and they are counting on the rest of us getting tired.
We are not tired. Red Wall and the Rabble is more than 15,000 strong. In the last three months alone more than 1,000 people have committed to a paid subscription, and 250,000 people have read one of my articles so far this year.
The Government refused Oldham an inquiry, and we forced Oldham onto the list. We showed the way in Bradford. We campaigned relentlessly in Birmingham and across Wales, and both have been named. None of it was handed to us. Every one of those places was fought for by ordinary people who refused to shut up about the rape of children.
Telford is next. Shaun Davies will not ask for it, his council will not demand it, and Anne Longfield will not name it until the pressure leaves her no other choice. We are going to be that pressure, and Telford will not be the last place we have to fight for.
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My name is Raja Miah MBE. For eight years I have exposed how politicians, police and public bodies failed working class White girls who were systematically raped by Pakistani grooming gangs. Together, with the support of the people of Oldham, we forced the Government to concede a National Statutory Inquiry after years of resistance.
Children gang raped, communities betrayed, politicians and police officers involved protected, and you expected to shake your head and carry on as if nothing more can be done because lessons have been learned.
For eight years, I have refused. The police repeatedly dawn raided my home and falsified evidence to try and silence me. The newspapers smeared me. And Pakistani gangsters, under the protection of Labour politicians, followed me home. Islamists openly incited my murder.
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