Lord Michael Gove has told GB News that Whitehall officials attempted to "block journalists" from publishing investigations into grooming gangs in 2011.Speaking to Charlie Peters in an exclusive sit down interview, Gove confirmed Dominic Cummings's claims that he rejected advice from Department for Education officials, who suggested preventing journalists from publishing reports of abuse in Rotherham.FULL STORY HERE.
00:00It's been revealed that Whitehall officials tried to convince Michael Gove to go to court to cover up the grooming gang scandal back in 2011.
00:07Dominic Cummings, who worked for Lord Gove at the Times, said Whitehall tried to stop national newspapers exposing the scandal.
00:15Andrew Norfolk at the Times started to try to report the issue.
00:19The council went to officials inside the Department of Education and said,
00:23we want to bring a judicial review to have the courts suppress the Times' reporting and not allow it to happen.
00:31So what we ended up doing was saying to Michael Gove, you should write to the council and say that if you bring this judicial review,
00:38we will actually appear in court on behalf of the Times, not on behalf of you.
00:45That obviously blew up the judicial review attempt by the council to keep it secret,
00:49and then Norfolk could publish his piece in the Times.
00:53And I'm very happy to say that Lord Gove joins us now.
00:57You've heard what Dominic Cummings had to say there.
01:00What do you recall from that period on those claims?
01:02Well, Dominic's account is broadly absolutely correct.
01:06So Andrew Norfolk, the very brave and sadly deceased reporter at the Times,
01:10who was responsible more than anyone for initially uncovering the grooming gang scandal,
01:16had been investigating Rotherham.
01:19It was the case that he wanted to publish details that related to one particularly tragic case.
01:26Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council at the time didn't want the full details revealed.
01:31They approached the government and the Department for Education, where I was Secretary of State at the time,
01:35asked us to join them in a legal case in order to prevent the Times publishing.
01:39I looked at the material alongside Dominic and some other people in the department,
01:44and we contacted Rotherham Council and we said, yes, we will intervene in this case,
01:48but on behalf of the Times, because it's absolutely vital that the truth be told.
01:52Dominic Cummings said that there were some officials within the Department of Education
01:55who were more hesitant than that, who didn't want you to intervene on behalf of the Times.
02:00What do you recall about that in particular?
02:02Yes, it was absolutely the case that there were those who thought that it was appropriate for us not to intervene.
02:08So the documents in question revealed some details about one particular victim,
02:14and it was argued by the council and by some officials who were sympathetic to their case
02:19that revealing everything about the case might mean that other potential victims,
02:25other family members might be adversely affected.
02:27And there was also an argument that the council itself was making improvements,
02:33and that as a result of these improvements being made,
02:36that would be imperiled, potentially, if there were adverse publicity.
02:41And I think those arguments were made in good faith,
02:45but my view, Dominic Cummings' view, was that it was far more important that we told the truth.
02:51And the background to some of these decisions lies in the concept of what is known as serious case reviews.
02:59If a young person or a person who's been identified as at risk of abuse or neglect dies
03:04or faces some terrible consequence as a result of that abuse,
03:09then it's the responsibility of the local authority to conduct a review.
03:14In the past, before I was in government, before Dominic was my advisor,
03:18these reviews, when they were published, were censored and redacted.
03:24You could tell almost nothing from them.
03:26And one of the things that we did was to insist that there be full publication.
03:30The sort of social work establishment at the time said that this would be unfair,
03:35there'd be finger-pointing towards professionals.
03:38My view, very strongly, was that the only way to learn the lessons
03:42was by making sure that you had the greatest possible transparency.
03:46Do you fear now, with this national inquiry, that Whitehall won't be included?
03:51You want Whitehall to be included, I imagine.
03:52Oh, yes. No, completely.
03:54And on the back of that, are you nervous now that there'll be some documents being destroyed,
03:58as a judge warned about the infected blood scandal, for example?
04:03Do you worry that many people in Whitehall will be doing what they can
04:06to avoid them being dragged in front of a grooming gangs commission?
04:09I don't believe that anyone would be that foolish.
04:11And I think it's important that records are kept, and I've done my very best to keep my own records as well,
04:17of what went on, what we did right, what more we should have done.
04:21But I absolutely think that the inquiry should be much more than what it might appear to be at the moment.
04:27At the moment, it appears that the government may default and make the national inquiry
04:32simply a sort of umbrella for lots of specific local inquiries.
04:36As you have revealed, there are as many as 50 towns and cities across the country
04:42in which these gangs have operated or continue to operate.
04:46There are failures in policing at a national level that need to be addressed.
04:51And it is also the case that decisions that were made within the Home Office
04:55and other government departments do need to be scrutinised.
04:59And, of course, there is a culture of cover-ups that has affected this scandal right across the country.
05:04But Whitehall officials need to be part of that assessment.
05:08Are you nervous? Are you hesitant about the fact that some people in the government at the moment may resist those calls?
05:15Well, one of the things about this whole story, right from the very beginning,
05:20has been that there have been people who, for admittedly noble reasons,
05:23because they didn't want to see the details being exploited by the very far right,
05:27have tried to manage the flow of information.
05:32The do-good is that Barron's case exists.
05:34Exactly. Exactly. She was absolutely right about that.
05:37And I can understand why they wanted to do that.
05:40But what they did, and Andrew Norfolk was very clear about this,
05:43is that people actuated initially by what they thought was a good motive,
05:48ended up with a situation where we were not told the truth about what was going on.
05:54And some of the fundamental questions that need to be addressed about the cultural, ethnic and religious background of so many perpetrators
06:01were not addressed for fear of creating ethnic and community tensions.
06:07Now, it's very important that we do look carefully at how we can ensure that a multi-ethnic society succeeds.
06:17But those sensitivities, important as they are, must not come at the expense of ensuring that the victims of some of the most horrific crimes
06:26that we've seen in this country in the last 15 or 20 years, at last find out what went on.
06:31And in particular, there are individuals at local government level, and who knows where else,
06:36who didn't just fail to tell the truth, but would have been effectively allowing these crimes to continue by their inaction.
06:47And Lord Gove, MPs need to be part of this inquiry as well.
06:51We've seen a lot of MPs be quite hesitant about engaging with this situation.
06:56Many of those representatives come from towns that have been directly and widely affected by this scandal.
07:02Do you want to see politicians in the Commons also giving evidence in this inquiry?
07:06I absolutely do.
07:07And I think that people who've held political office and who've been either local government leaders
07:12or people in a national government at the time should give evidence.
07:18And I would fully expect that as someone who was Education Secretary between 2010 and 2014,
07:23that I would be asked about the decisions I took, whether or not it was in connection with Rotherham
07:27or the work that I did in order to try to improve the care of children who were at risk of abuse or neglect.
07:35And I would fully expect that in that, I might be taken to task for things that the government of which I was part should have done.
07:44I am not scared of that scrutiny.
07:46No one who's held elected office should be.
07:49There's talk at the moment, isn't there, about how long this inquiry should go on for.
07:53I think you've spoken previously about inquiries you ordered in Rochdale in sick care homes that returned, is it, in three months in one case?
07:59Yes. So it is the case that inquiries can be speedy.
08:02And it is the case in that particular situation, it was not a judicial inquiry.
08:07It was an inquiry, as far as I recall, carried out by the Children's Commissioner.
08:11But you can.
08:12And it is the case that inquiries can have interim reports before they come up with the full conclusions.
08:18A statutory inquiry has powers, normally judge-led, of course, to ensure that people appear, that they testify appropriately, that they can't resist scrutiny.
08:29But the problem sometimes with judge-led inquiries is that they can become a, you know, a feeding trough for lawyers rather than a determined effort to drive it.
08:39So one of the things that I would say is that whoever the judge is who's selected to lead this inquiry, it's vitally important that they have a team with them that are determined to press for urgency.
08:49And one of the people whom I would hope would be on that team was one of the first people to draw attention to this scandal.
08:55And that is Martin Neri, the former chief of Barnardo's, who at the time, when he pointed out the particular, you know, cultural, ethnic and religious dimension of some of the perpetrators, was vilified.
09:07He was one of a number of people, including, of course, Anne Cryer, the Labour MP for Keithley, who were denounced at the time.
09:15And if only we'd listened to them as a nation earlier, then the fate of any of these innocent victims might have been averted.
09:24And Andrew Norfolk spoke of a culture of silence he encountered from many people on that issue as well.
09:30Just very quickly, you've said you're happy to give evidence to this inquiry.
09:34Do you think there will be Conservative colleagues of yours from those 14 years who will be more nervous about giving evidence?
09:41No, I don't think anyone would be nervous about doing so.
09:44Because, again, you know, one of the points that Kemi Madoff made in the House of Commons is that successive Home Secretaries and other ministers, Theresa May, Amber Rudd, Sajid Javid, all sought to deal with this situation.
09:57I think, but it's the inquiry that will decide, that the main problems lay at a local level.
10:04But those problems were very widespread.
10:06And in particular, my starting point is that there was a failure in both local government and policing culture that was driven, as I say, by a sensibly noble motive, but ended up leading to tragedy.
10:20I noticed you didn't mention Priti Patel as your list of Home Secretaries there.
10:24And as the Home Secretary, she did release a report that was heavily criticised by Baroness Casey as promoting that sort of racial myth about the data.
10:33So I think there will be some questions for Conservative colleagues.
10:34I think that in that case that that report was one that reflected a Home Office culture rather than that Home Secretary's viewpoint.
10:43I don't think that anyone could doubt that Priti Patel took this issue incredibly seriously.
10:49But as Louise Casey pointed out, there were cultural problems in institutions about collecting data.
10:55Lord Gove, thank you very much for joining us this morning.
