Council ‘were willing to carry on inquiry’

THE leader of Manchester council has revealed the local authority was willing to ‘continue resourcing’ the police investigation into child sexual exploitation before it was shelved.

Sir Richard Leese, who was leader of the council at the time, said police took ‘the wrong decision’ - but also apologised for the council’s own failure to protect young children in care.

Chief Constable Ian Hopkins has denied ‘claims’ the force tried to stop the report’s publication. He said in a statement: “Nothing could be further from the truth.” Police and the council have apologised. Working together, a new operation has been launched, codenamed Green Jacket.

Two arrests have been made. Sir Richard told a council meeting that he fully supported the review, which he described as ‘very, very painful reading’.

He said it was ‘abundantly clear’ that a ‘very significant number of young people were let down by us and by the police at that time’. He added: “Given I was leader of the council at the time, there is a fairly obvious question - did I know about any of this? The answer is No. If politicians had known, if they had been involved, it would have been in the review report.

“A question that I certainly would ask - should I have known? If I look at it from the practice we have now, we almost certainly would have known now. Then we operated in a very different legal framework, leaders of councils didn’t have the same statutory responsibilities that they do now.

“I wish I had known at the time but I’m not surprised that I and other politicians didn’t know.”

He described the closing down of Operation Augusta ‘for resource reasons’ as ‘the wrong decision’ and said the report revealed the council had ‘indicated that we were prepared to continue resourcing’ Operation Augusta. “What I can say, and again it’s clear within the review - and this is not about attributing blame, because these are decisions taken by people who are no longer either serving in GMP or the local authority - the decision to close Operation Augusta, and the review confirms this, was taken by senior officers within GMP.”

Chief Constable Hopkins said in his statement that contrary to reports, the force has ‘co-operated fully with the review team and acted with transparency and integrity throughout’. He said: “At no time has there been any effort from us to prevent the publication of the report.”

He said GMP would make sure ‘victims receive the justice today that they were denied 15 years ago’ describing it as an ‘absolute priority’.