Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick has demanded the release of transcripts from grooming gang trials, following the rejection of a request made to a judge in Bradford.Jenrick's calls to Labour follow the decision by the judge to reject the release of transcripts from a key grooming gang trial, arguing that it would be "contrary to the public interest".FULL STORY HERE.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00It's deeply concerning that the public can't access historic rape gang trial transcripts.
00:07These aren't just legal documents, they're historical documents that tell the story in
00:13detail of some of the worst crimes in our recent history, how they were committed, how
00:19they were covered up and enabled and then belatedly finally exposed and brought to justice.
00:25And the fact that some judges are choosing to deny organizations the right to have these,
00:32to put them in the public domain, despite the fact that these were trials that were heard
00:36in public anyway, this was all on the public record.
00:40And it's only when people hear the full unalloyed details of these cases that actually it's
00:47often brought home to people.
00:48If you remember at the beginning of the year, it was when court transcripts began to circulate
00:53on social media that people realized that grooming gangs was really a euphemism and that this
00:59was absolutely abhorrent practices.
01:03And there was a fantastic speech in the House of Commons the other day by my colleague Katie
01:06Lamb, where very powerfully she read out an extract from one of the transcripts and the
01:12House was silent and her speech has gone viral and millions of people have watched it.
01:17So it's incredibly important that the full details of these trials gets into the public
01:23domain so people can understand what's happened and the public and victims can get the transparency
01:29that they crave.
01:31And because some of these are being almost covered up by judges, the victims and the public, I
01:37think, are right to ask, in whose interests are they serving?
01:40What possible rationale is there for doing this?
01:43And it just adds further insult to injury to the victims of these terrible crimes.
01:48Well, if it's so bad that there's a sense from judges that we need to be shielded from
01:52the content of it, then maybe that does really seriously imply how absolutely awful the situation
01:56is and how widespread it is.
01:58But is this within the current Justice Minister Shibana Mahmood's brief to do something about
02:02this, to issue some kind of ruling or dictat, that these need to be released?
02:06Is she capable of doing that?
02:07Yes.
02:08Well, it's generally left to the individual judges to make their decisions.
02:12But what we're seeing is that there's almost a postcode lottery where some judges are saying
02:18that the transcript should be released and some are not.
02:21And they're applying the law in an uneven way in different parts of the country, which
02:26just once again creates a sense of unfairness, ladling unfairness upon unfairness in this
02:32most terrible situation of the grooming gang scandal.
02:35And so what I'm asking for is the Justice Secretary to intervene, maybe with the Lady Chief
02:40Justice, as well as the most senior judge in the country, release these transcripts so
02:46they can finally be in the public domain.
02:48And can we have the disinfectant that comes through, openness and transparency?
02:53And I think that Shibana Mahmood should do this.
02:56I've written to her today asking her to do it.
02:58Well, let's have to find out.