‘Sickening but we won’t include football in abuse inquiry’
NICOLA Sturgeon yesterday rejected demands for an inquiry into the Scottish football child sex abuse scandal, despite admitting the revelations ‘sicken’ her.
The First Minister also refused calls to widen an existing inquiry into the abuse of children in care.
Former SFA chief Gordon Smith called for an inquiry, while Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale called at First Minister’s Questions yesterday for the existing one to be extended.
But while calling the allegations ‘extremely serious’ and saying they ‘sicken all of us’, Miss Sturgeon said a police inquiry must come first to ensure victims get justice.
She said widening the inquiry into abuse in care ‘would mean it would take perhaps many years longer to conclude its investigations and would risk becoming completely unwieldy’.
Delays would also put the Government ‘at risk of breaking our word to survivors of in-care abuse’.
Miss Sturgeon’s spokesman later said: ‘We are not looking at any separate inquiry at the moment.’
But Alan Draper, parliamentary liaison officer of In Care Abuse Survivors, said: ‘It is possible for the remit to be extended. The primary benefit of an inquiry is exposing what happened. People want those agencies that covered up the abuse, including football clubs, to be held to account.’
Miss Dugdale said: ‘[The inquiry] holds out the promise of justice but in restricting just who, and what, will be investigated, it will deny that justice.’
Tavish Scott, Scottish Liberal Democrat sport spokesman, said: ‘An independent inquiry must happen. The Government must get this moving.’