Have the police lost Britain’s respect?

0:04Camilla: The Telegraph.

0:10Camilla: Britain is increasingly lawless, claims Nigel Farage. We're all being the victims of crimes that we're not reporting because we don't think the police will bother to investigate them. And trust in the force is at an all-time low. Or is it? Is Britain as lawless as we think it is or is that just an illusion? We're going to be joined by Peter Blexley, former detective that people will know of the TV series Hunted. And we'll also be talking to a lawyer who is representing victims of the Rotherham grooming gangs who say that they were abused by police officers. Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Camilla Tominy.

0:47And me, Gordon Rayner.

0:59Camilla: Crime and punishment, Gordon, it's been the theme of the summer, hasn't it? This perception that policing isn't going as well as it could be, that there are levels of two-tier policing. You've got Nigel Farage now, the Reform UK leader, really making this a central part of his mission to become Prime Minister, to actually appear much tougher on crime than the man who is famously a former director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer. Yes, and indeed Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary. Farage has promised a summer of revelations, really, hasn't he? He's just going to spend weeks trying to own the whole sort of law and order policy forum.

1:38And, of course, in the last few days, he has claimed that Britain has become lawless. He has claimed that crime is going up and that the crime stats are all fake. and there's been a lot of debate about whether or not those crime stats do give a true reflection of the state of crime in this country. And we're joined by former police detective Peter Blexley who people will know from the TV series Hunted. Is it just Hunted or Celebrity Hunted?

2:04Peter Bleksley: I did six versions of that show, four of the main show when the public went on the run and two versions of the Celebrity show. But, of course, I left it some years ago.

2:14Camilla: I know. You've moved on to other things, Peter. You've got going to be touring theatres with a true crime series. You were undercover for a long time. You were investigating murderers. You were the subject of a murder plot. You had to go into witness protection at one point. I mean, you were a proper copper. You talk about your career with the likes of GB News and others. So you're the perfect man to sort of, I mean, maybe we're all being a bit too nostalgic, Peter. Gordon and I were saying downstairs, are we harking for this sort of return to the 1950s or 60s, Dixon of Doc Green, Bobby's on the Beat, sort of fantasy that actually you can't replicate in 2024 in the advent of the smartphone?

2:58Peter Bleksley: Nostalgia is a brilliant word to choose in the first question that you put to me. And I'll expand on that, if I may. Years ago, a long time ago, when I was in uniform and I was a detective, we hated criminals. We absolutely detested them. And we took offence at crimes that occurred on our patch. I understand it's a long time ago and the policing world was a bit different. But what happened was when the, what I call the moderate mainstream of Britain, and they are, of course, tens of millions of people, When those people were unfortunate enough to have their flat or their house burgled or their car stolen or their van broken into and many other crimes, criminal damage and the such like, we went and visited them.

3:52Peter Bleksley: We had a crime book into which those crimes were recorded. They were allocated and you went out and you met those people. And if you were doing the burglaries and the car crime, you took a scenes of crimes officer with you, Somebody who would do the fingerprinting for you. OK? So we tried. We absolutely tried to solve those crimes. And even if we were very realistic with people about the chances of solving it, do you know what? They really liked to visit. They got to know us by name. They'd get our telephone number. And when we closed the door and left, I bet they all thought to themselves, well, at least they're trying.

4:34Camilla: Yes.

4:35Peter Bleksley: Then what happened in latter years as policing evolved and so many of those ambitious police officers that wanted to climb the greasy pole of promotion, that listened to Blair in 97 when he went education, education, education, they all went, we'll have some of that. And off they went and got their university degrees. Many of them in job time. So they were paid their police salaries while they went to university. and got their degrees. And so many of them came back to policing with their heads full of pseudo-intellectual Marxist claptrap, which really wasn't applicable to policing.

5:16Camilla: It's not the Sweeney, is it?

5:18Peter Bleksley: No.

5:18Camilla: It's too educational.

5:20Peter Bleksley: It's not get your trousers on, son, you're nicked. This is what we wanted me to do on this show.

5:25Camilla: But let's break it down. Can I please just carry on with that just for a minute more, please?

5:30Peter Bleksley: And what they decided then, from the comfort of a desk, was that, you know what, in order to reduce our commitment to investigating those crimes, we'll do what is now called screening out. So with the comfort of a biro, if they felt, no, we probably won't solve that one, we probably won't solve that one, so we'll screen it out, screen it out, screen it out, the visits stopped. That engagement with victims of crime stopped. So that moderate mainstream, who had been victims, didn't get to meet and know an officer because the visits stopped. And that was the start of the rot when it comes to public trust, confidence and perception of police.

6:15Camilla: Let's talk about public trust because YouGov has surveyed this repeatedly over the course of recent years. The latest poll that they did suggested that those who have a lot of confidence in the police is now at 3 % of British adults. It was 7 % in 2019. Altogether, more than half say that they do not have much confidence in the police to tackle crime locally. So that's 52 % compared to 39 % six years ago. So we have this row going on between Farage and actually Fraser Nelson, previously of this parish, former editor of The Spectator and one of our columnists here, because Fraser's saying overall crime has gone down.

6:56Camilla: But as you've alluded to there, Peter, I think there's a perception that petty crime is on the up, knife and violent crime is on the up, phones being taken every 60 seconds in London, you can't park your bike anywhere, and these days you can't even go out and design a watch. And those crime stats don't include fraud, which is massively up as well.

7:14Peter Bleksley: The elephant in the room, Gordon. That really is when it comes to crime. Thank you so much for highlighting that, because literally millions of people are victims of fraud in all its guises, from courier fraud to romance fraud to online cyber, all kinds of misdemeanours that are carried out upon people that wreck lives, sometimes forever, and it gets very little airtime, very few column inches, and when it comes to police being grilled over crime stats, they won't go anywhere near that because the useless action fraud are exactly that, useless, and police don't want to know, generally speaking.

7:59Peter Bleksley: So thank you very much for mentioning that elephant in the policing room.

8:04Camilla: But top cops do say, well, the reason we don't have as many bobbies on the beat is because crime has all gone online and therefore we just do not have the bandwidth to deal with what you've just pointed out, Peter, and the theft of bikes and phones.

8:18Peter Bleksley: Phone snatches, bike snatches, the harassment at best and the violence and so much more. At worst, that women suffer on the streets, on public transport, on a daily basis, so much of which does not get reported. and this is why I urge anybody who is a victim of any crime, if you do not report it, not only are you letting the police off the hook to a certain degree, but you're also benefiting the criminals because if you're the victim of a crime, somebody, and now I'm being optimistic, may just be analysing those crimes, may just identify a pattern and the police might just do something about it.

9:02Peter Bleksley: So please, when I speak to so many people and I say, have you reported this? The answer I always get is, what's the point? There is a point to it. There really, really is. So please, anybody unfortunate enough to be a victim, definitely report it.

9:18Camilla: We've got a few readers' comments about this, as you can imagine. Whenever we do anything on crime or petty crime not being solved, we get inundated. I've got to stop you there.

9:25Peter Bleksley: There's no such thing as petty crime. Fair play, Peter. There's no such thing as low-level crime. No. These are insulting terms that were dreamt up by people to downplay the seriousness of what goes on. You have your phone nicked, there's nothing low-level about it. Your bike and so on and so forth.

9:41Camilla: Peter, I shall restate it. A victim of crime, Richard Thompson, writes, a huge amount of shoplifting and petty crime simply isn't reported to the police. My daughter had her phone snatched out of her pocket in Soho last year. Did she go to the nearest police station and spend hours reporting it just to be given a crime number? Of course not. What would have been the point? Supermarkets don't report shoplifting anymore because police can't even be bothered to attend. Farage is right. Britain is lawless. Is that Farage's point to Fraser Nelson, that actually we can't trust any of the crime statistics because so many are unreported?

10:16Partly. Well, the crime survey asks people about crimes that they have been the victims of rather than crimes they've reported. So the crime survey does take that into account, but it doesn't take into account things like fraud, as we know. And I think Farage's point is that there is just a lack of willingness by the police to investigate things like shoplifting, things like phone thefts, all the things you're talking about. Whereas maybe even 20 years ago, if you'd been burgled or if there'd been a big shoplifting incident, you would have expected the police to turn up. Now people don't expect the police to turn up.

10:51Camilla: Can the police be expected to investigate to a certain degree every crime? This is what Colin Sutton was saying at the Reform Press Conference earlier this week. He was saying, yeah, if a crime is reported, then the police must investigate. If that investigation only lasts for five minutes and you realise there's nothing there, there's nothing there. Should it be the case for us to be able to say, even with the population what it is and officer numbers what they are, should every crime be investigated to a certain extent by police?

11:23Peter Bleksley: That should be the expectation of victims. That is what should happen. Now, let me just rewind again a little bit, if I may, as to why it doesn't happen. Those university-educated types that I've dismissively spoken about that prowl the corridors of policing power now, as they have done for a generation or more, and have got policing into the state that it is, or I hear them shouting at their radios about austerity, and I get that. Theresa May was the most hugely damaging politician to policing in the history of mankind, and Cameron didn't help either. Austerity did affect policing dreadfully, but we've moved on from that.

12:05Peter Bleksley: We have to reinvent and reimagine how policing can be done. What happened with all those types who led policing? When the Metropolitan Police changed from being the Metropolitan Police force to the Metropolitan Police service, a lot changed. it wasn't just the name. They then saw themselves, these Oxbridge types, they changed it to a service, they've morphed it into some kind of social service. There are things that the police deal with that they fundamentally should never have got involved in and they should remain what the public wants. The public wants a police, even if you call it a service, that patrols the streets, tries to maintain law and order, prevents crime, and when crime does happen, detects crime, investigates it promptly, professionally.

12:59Peter Bleksley: That's what the public want. That's what the public deserve. But when we're talking about crime statistics, which I am often very, very dismissive of, and I'll give you an example. Back to those ambitious senior police officers again, OK? Back in the day, there was a distinct problem with domestic burglaries, household burglaries, OK? They were at utterly unacceptable levels. There was political pressure being brought to bear. The police had to do something. So there was a nationwide initiative. They cooked the books, and I'll tell you how they cooked them. If you went to a crime scene and it was a front door and next to the lock there was a Science 10 boot mark, so clearly an effort to kick the door open, but the door had held firm.

13:49Peter Bleksley: They hadn't breached it. They hadn't got in. We were told to report that as criminal damage and not attempted burglary. Right? That's how crime stats could be manipulated. Likewise, if there were jemmy marks at somebody's rear French doors, put it down as criminal damage, not as attempted burglary. There are senior police officers who this month will be at the Notting Hill Carnival bending over backwards, weaving spells over their spreadsheets to have you believe that the Notting Hill Carnival was as peaceful as a village fate, as they try to downplay, downgrade and manipulate the crime stats.

14:35Peter Bleksley: Crime stats are very, very unreliable and so often untrustworthy. So the other thing I was going to ask you was that people who are old enough to remember things like village bobbies and I live in a village where there was a police house. Every village had one and I think people sort of yearn for the days when there was a local policeman who everybody knew, who knew who the troublemakers were, who could stop trouble happening before it developed, all that sort of stuff. I think the sort of message you get from on high is, oh, we can never go back to those days. But policing numbers aren't so different now from what they were when we had village bobbies.

15:13Why is it that we can't have that model anymore, or could we?

15:18Peter Bleksley: I think we should. I think there's actually an acceptance by politicians and senior police that neighbourhood policing is really important. It's what the public want. They want to know the name of that officer. They want to see them patrolling the street. But we'll go back to academia, if we may now, because those university-educated types that were in senior policing OK, they got their academic mates to do, I'm going to clumsily call it time and motion study, right, on patrolling. And of course, these academics came up with this notion that actually patrolling the streets made no difference to crime.

15:59Peter Bleksley: And they used that as an excuse to dump it. What they didn't grasp is that it's so important for communities. And prevention. Prevention, yeah, but they would say it didn't prevent. This was the whole argument. You can't measure that, can you? Well, the academics found a way, and they found a way to convince those daft police leaders. Hence, they took them off the streets. OK? Neighbourhood policing did get decimated to an extent after 9-11 and then definitely 7-7. That's when neighbourhood policing units, particularly in the Met and elsewhere, were shrunk almost to the point of being non-existent because officers were put on counter-terrorism work.

16:39Peter Bleksley: All right, OK, I can understand the need for that, but could it have been done another way? Why was it neighbourhood policing that was stripped away first and foremost? It is so, so important. A few years ago, we had a local PCSO, Police Community Support Officer, and he would cycle up and down our manor regularly. And whenever I was at home and I saw him, he knew there was a cup of coffee and a very nice chocolate biscuit waiting for him in my kitchen. And he was a lovely fella. And he used to come in, park his bike, I'd say bring it in, in case it's not there when we've had our cup of coffee.

17:22Peter Bleksley: Exactly. And over coffee and biscuits, we'd have a natter. And he would appraise me of everything, crime-wise, that was going on on our manor. And, of course, what would I do that night when I went for a drink with my mates, who, again, live in the same neighbourhood with their wives and with their children and all that, I'd tell them all about it. And what would they do? Go home and tell their neighbours about it. Be careful of this. Be aware of that.

17:48Camilla: But the point is, what's interesting about what you're saying about the so-called educated officer class is at the other end of the scale, Peter, we do have concerns now, and again, Nigel Farage raised them, about the level of training of your average copper. And we've done stories on The Telegraph, You know, some of them are illiterate and innumerate. Hendon, the police training college, has been massively downscaled. Are the people who are signing up good enough? And I slightly bring into it the Manchester airport situation, which we need to be careful about because proceedings are still active in that case.

18:21Camilla: So let's just be very careful. But, you know, question marks over female officers dealing with burly men throwing punches.

18:28Peter Bleksley: Where do I start? There's so much to unpick there, if I may. Let's talk about that contact with local officers and such. That's when there were so many more police stations than we had. They were particularly in the Met and elsewhere. Over 600 police buildings sold off. The family silver sold off. Short-sighted, stupid, and actually having to be reversed now because there are more and more police services saying, we're going to have a police building. They realise they need a building where people can go. for so many reasons and have that interaction like you did. But the other interactions that the public had, again, when they became victims of crime, or if they knew something that they wanted to report, you know, I love the great British curtain twitchers because they get to know so much about what goes on down their street.

19:21Peter Bleksley: And then, you know, so there's all of that. These points of contacts have largely been eroded and the police have shrunk back to their buildings, so many of which now are fortresses. Well, if you work in a fortress, you're going to get a siege mentality. That's the way I look at it. And it has affected the police. I think with regards to recruitment, standards, training, vetting, that has all fallen way, way short of what it should be. They don't do in-house training now. You don't go on a residential course for 15, 16 weeks, which you should do, because only by doing that do you learn from your peers, have a culture of togetherness, which is a good thing, not a bad thing, especially if you're standing there when it's all kicking off and you've got your lid on and a riot shield.

20:18Peter Bleksley: you want that person on that side and that side to be right by your side. And the training develops a culture of, yes, you've got to revise at night. Yes, you're in a classroom. Yes, you bring in people with experience and they give you that lived experience. So much of it is online modules. I have nothing but contempt for most of that. And consequently, all those things that policing relied upon and treasured were simply dismantled by people, senior police officers, with letters after their name as well as in front. Do police officers these days get trained in how to nick people? Do they get told, you know, here's how you deal with somebody who's being a bit violent or who's a bit handy?

21:05Because it's a physical job as well as everything else, isn't it?

21:09Peter Bleksley: Officer safety training. I have been contacted in very recent times by officers who are complaining about what they regard as lamentable officer safety training. They are not taught to be robust enough. Now, back in our day, and I know policing wasn't perfect. In fact, policing will never be perfect because it's full of people. There was a kind of prevailing attitude that we didn't want to get hurt. And this is rich coming from a bloke who was stabbed in the neck, in the neck, faced down guns on more occasions than I care to mention, held hostage, lived in witness protection, you know, and got bashed about on occasion.

21:53Peter Bleksley: But by and large, we would tend to be, I'll say, a bit on the front foot. In other words, people will find this expression galling. But quite frankly, I don't care. Sometimes if that kind of policeman's nous, that instinct that you had told you that it was just about to kick off and you do sometimes know that, get your revenge in first. Because I'd rather introduce someone to the pavement and cuff them than get hurt myself. But policing has shied away from all that now. Now, the Office of Safety Training is described to me as being appalling, got shortcomings, lamentable, not fit for purpose. This is what I hear from cops that have undergone it recently.

22:42Peter Bleksley: And that is because there is a liberal, wokey kind of theme running through it all. Well, do be careful of doing that because you may be held to account. And what has happened in policing, some with the best of intentions to get rid of wrongdoing, but it's making officers turn in on themselves and look at that colleague and that colleague and it's creating a reluctance to use force. You can use force when it's proportionate, reasonable and necessary.

23:12Camilla: But then you can understand the caution. If we look at the officer involved in the Chris Cabber shooting, he was tried for murder and was cleared. He didn't have much political support, not least from the Mayor of London that sided with Cabber's family against the officer. We then had, just to go back to Manchester, again, let's be careful, I'm just using it as an example, question marks over whether the officers involved in that altercation now must face disciplinary proceedings. It seems to me that, yeah, the public has lost faith in the police, but politicians haven't been supportive enough of the police doing their jobs.

23:50Camilla: And we've had allegations, of course, of two-tier policing of things like the pro-Palestinian marches and this sort of obsession with how they're perceived

23:58Peter Bleksley: I completely agree that politicians, Parliament, and now increasingly the public, are not supportive enough of the police. We can rewind, which I told you about, when that trust in the police started to unravel. If you then leap forward and look at the monsters like Carrick and Cousins, who are hugely damaging to the reputation of police, if you then look at the increasing kind of divide between the moderate mainstream and policing, which has allowed to grow. And once again, much of that is down to the senior police officers that you see behind the microphone at these press conferences. They look and sound like politicians.

24:41Peter Bleksley: They obfuscate, they duck, they are not truthful, they are not upfront and honest with people. And the public go, look at him or look at her, just like a politician. and we don't want our police to be like politicians. We want our police out there patrolling, nicking, keeping us safe.

25:04Camilla: But then behind every criminal, there will be a lawyer arguing for, OK, giving them a right to a defence. Every criminal or suspect deserves that, but also sort of making claims on behalf of their human rights. I mean, should we move on to migrant hotels? Can we just deal with lawyers for a moment, please, if we may?

25:26Peter Bleksley: When I trained, we had a mock court at Hendon, and you went into the witness box and you gave your evidence and you were cross-examined. There are now senior officers of chief inspector and superintendent rank that have never given evidence at a Crown Court. I used to love rinsing defence lawyers, absolutely loved it. Give me the cut and thrust of a Crown Court trial, Old Bailey, wherever, I don't care, bring it on. I'm a witness of truth, so I've got nothing to be afraid of. Bring it on. Let's just talk a little bit about migrant crime. So our Home Affairs editor, Charles Hymas, wrote this week about record numbers of foreign sex offenders and violent criminals being held in jails in England and Wales.

26:09The numbers, 1 ,731 foreign sex offenders were jailed as of June, up nearly 10 % in a year, and almost triple the rise for British offenders. 3 ,250 foreign violent offenders are now in prison, the highest on record, up 8.8 % year on year. So how do you assess the levels of migrant crime we've got in the country at the moment and how do we go about solving it?

26:38Peter Bleksley: First of all, I hereby volunteer to be at the prison gates for each and every one of them when they get released from their sentence to put them straight in the back of a van and drive them to a waiting aeroplane to send them where they need to be deported to.

26:51Camilla: Where you'll meet their lawyers.

26:52Peter Bleksley: I can still shift some furniture, even at my age, and I'll get a bit fitter and I'll happily do that job just in case any of them decide to kick off. I volunteer for that. We have completely unacceptable levels of crime and these people have, so many of them, have simply been allowed to come to this country, abuse the hospitality, create victims, and they should not be anywhere near here. Should be gone. Forever.

27:18Camilla: We've had another story that we're going to examine in the second part of the podcast, Peter, and you mentioned Carrick and Cousins there, two criminal coppers.

27:26Peter Bleksley: Monsters.

27:27Camilla: We've got a situation now where in Rotherham, a number of rape gang survivors have accused officers of being complicit in the sexual abuse that they suffered some decades ago. Does it surprise you to hear that some police officers may have abused their positions of power in those cases and indeed sexually assaulted and even the accusation is raped, some of the girls caught up in this horrific scandal? It grieves me but doesn't surprise me

28:06Peter Bleksley: because if you look at the names that you've mentioned of monsters like that, There are clearly people in policing or have been in policing that are utter vermin. I sincerely hope that all the investigations into these frightening allegations are thorough, are professional and are successful in bringing those responsible for these abominable crimes to justice. And if they are put in front of a court and found guilty, then quite frankly, there aren't jail terms long enough for them. They should be incarcerated until they gasp their last. Well, thanks ever so much for coming in and being on the Daily Tea, Peter.

28:48If only all our guests were as straight-talking as you are, our job would be a lot easier.

28:53Camilla: I tell you what, I wouldn't want to be caught committing a crime with Peter Blexley in the area, let me tell you that, Gordon. Quite so. Anyway, thanks again, Peter. Thank you for having me. Well, coming up next, we're going to be speaking to the lawyer who is representing some of these survivors.

29:19Camilla: As we just discussed with Peter there, the rape gang scandal has just got a lot more sinister. And I couldn't believe this, reading this in the week, that we now have some of the victims of the grooming gangs accusing South Yorkshire police officers of also sexually abusing and raping them, that they were complicit in the criminal activity they should have been policing. Yeah, and there's some truly awful accusations that have been levelled against police officers. There's one victim of the grooming gangs who says that she was raped in the back of a marked police car and that a serving officer said that if she didn't comply, he would hand her back to the gang.

30:00Another woman says that she reported abuse by a non-police officer to the police. And then when she went to the police station to be interviewed, the person who turned up to interview her was a policeman who had abused her. So quite astonishing, these allegations that are now being investigated.

30:17Camilla: Earlier, we spoke to the lawyer, Amy Clowry. Now, she's representing a number of these women. Her firm Switalskys has worked with nearly 200 women who were victims of grooming gangs in Rotherham. And of those, 30, 3-0, have said that they were abused or witnessed abuse or had their abuse by grooming gangs ignored by South Yorkshire police officers.

30:47Amy, you've been working on this case for about 10 years, I believe. Can you just tell people who may not have been following this particular part of the Rotherham scandal what exactly it is that has gone on here? Of course, and thank you for having me. Over the last 10 years, we've gathered a significant amount of information which would indicate that there was abuse being perpetrated by police officers, serving police officers at the time. and in addition we have obtained accounts from a number of women that have made other allegations which essentially relate to corruption within the police force and we've been trying to get the authorities to act in relation to this.

31:26In around 2015 there were a number of criminal trials and we thought that all of this would be unearthed as part of those criminal trials. That didn't happen and then we had Operation Linden which was an investigation directed by the Independent Office of Police Conduct. And we thought again, that all of this would be unearthed in that report and that investigation. That didn't happen. There were a number of police officers that were, that received misconduct hearings. I think the worst reprimand was a written warning. And thereafter, we then realised that this just wasn't going to be addressed.

32:02So we wrote to the National Crime Agency, the Office of Police Conduct, and thereafter South Yorkshire Police to try and get them to act on it. And it took until October last year for the matter to be passed to the major crime unit of South Yorkshire Police, at which stage we were saying, this is not appropriate. It shouldn't be handled by South Yorkshire Police because of the risk of conflict of interest and the lack of faith that these women have in South Yorkshire Police to get the best outcome for these women. It really ought to be passed to an outside force. And every time that we've requested this, it's been refused.

32:37So as a result of that, we're now trying to get the public behind us and some political push, political sway to get this out of South Yorkshire Police's hands. OK, just to break it down. So just explain to us what exactly these women allege happened to them. There are some terrible stories on there about girls who say they were raped in marked police cars. And just tell us a bit about what the allegations are against these three officers, I think it is, isn't it? Yeah, so the allegations are much wider than that, but I can't go into those details because there is a live police investigation and I wouldn't want to prejudice that.

33:15They are just some of the more generic allegations that we've received. So, for example, I think class A drugs to the rape gangs being involved with having sexual intercourse with children and raping children and, you know, just general corruption, handing the girls to the men, for example. But it is much wider than that. And there are some really horrendous allegations that have been made against police officers that were serving in Rotherham during the time that child sexual exploitation was ongoing.

33:46Camilla: I mean, we understand the kind of legal restrictions around this, Amy, because as you say, these are allegations at this stage. You've been waiting. You've been pressurising the authorities to take action. I think the general public will not quite be able to fathom this. We have a situation where child rape has been covered up for decades. And now it is slowly emerging that some police officers might have been complicit in that scandal. Clearly, there's been a long dialogue about people in positions of authority covering this up. We interviewed our own survivor on the Daily Tea, a lady called Gaia Cooper.

34:23Camilla: She spoke about how she was treated like she was the criminal, labelled a so-called child prostitute, wasn't treated particularly well by the police. My question is, we had Alexis Jay's investigation into what happened in Rotherham. Why did this never come to light then? Was it not known then or was it known but suppressed? Well, I don't quite have the answers to that. But I do know that we have been repeatedly talking about this for over a decade. And at that time, what should have happened is there should have been an investigation into South Yorkshire Police and their handling of child sexual exploitation in Rotherham.

35:08And if that had have happened, then I would anticipate that this would have all been unearthed, but it never happened. And I can only speculate as to the reasons why that didn't happen. My gut feeling is that this is something that the authorities want brushed under the carpet. And I do understand why, because obviously it's not good for trust in the justice system and trust in South Yorkshire Police. However, in my view, without accountability and without this all becoming unravelling, I don't think there will ever be faith in the South Yorkshire Police and the justice system. And it's important that these women are able to have some accountability for what happened to them.

35:48South Yorkshire Police have a history of being accused of corruption. How was it that we've got to the position where they are investigating themselves effectively? They're investigating their own officers, these three officers who are currently under investigation. How did that happen? Whose decision was that? And what do the victims now want to happen instead? Well, I can only tell you what I know from the outside, of course, but in around the background of it is in around 2022, I think it was summer 2022, we wrote the National Crime Agency and then subsequently wrote to the IOPC because we expected that an investigation into former officers in Rotherham related to child sexual exploitation would be covered as part of Operation Stovewood, which was National Crime Agency's long-standing investigation looking at CSE in the town between from sort of 1997 onwards.

36:43They never picked this up. We were effectively ignored. So we then wrote to South Yorkshire police and said this needs to be dealt with was then passed to their professional standards department which is the department that deals with police complaints and looks at misconduct it doesn't look at criminality and it doesn't look at retired police officers so we explained to them that we thought it was ridiculous essentially that they'd got hold of this and there was definitely criminality involved and it ought to be passed to an investigating team it took quite a significant period of time for it then to pass the major crime team in October 2024 and if you think about that we initially wrote to them in I think June 2022 when we were initially writing to the authorities about this and now we've got to the position where we immediately said to the major crime team we're really pleased that somebody's looking at it but actually we don't think it should be you you really ought to pass it over to another force they then got the IOPC involved and the IOPC agreed to direct the investigation.

37:44The National Crime Agency are also assisting with that investigation. But in our view, it should now be passed to another body or another police force to investigate. You asked me what the survivors think about that. And what I can say is that the ladies that I've been working with, a number of them are engaging with the police reluctantly, but I don't think they would be if they'd not been involved with us initially, because we've encouraged them to to engage with the police they've all said that they would prefer it to be an outside force that deals with it and one of my clients who had an ABE a video interview with the police said that she found it really difficult because the South Yorkshire police officer was interviewing her and she felt an automatic dislike of this person just simply because of what they represented despite the fact that the officer hadn't actually done anything untoward it was just what she represented.

38:35So I do think that if the investigation was outside of South Yorkshire, outside of Rotherham, we would see much better results, much better interviews, and many more victims coming forward to tell the authorities what's happened to them. What does the Home Secretary say about this? Does Yvette Cooper not have the authority to order South Yorkshire police to hand this over? Well, interestingly, that's the next door on which we will be knocking. And we are hoping that in light of this being in the media so much over the last couple of days, we will now have the backing of the government for this matter to be moved outside of South Yorkshire.

39:11Camilla: Amy, how are these women? I mean, you've sort of been subject to gang rape as a child. You're now alleging that as well as being let down by all of the authorities, that local police were complicit in it and also sexually abused you. These survivors are now adults. I mean, how are they faring? I honestly, I don't know how they're doing it. They're so brave and I'm so proud of them for coming forward and putting their head above the parapet and saying, this happened to me because it's such a scary thing to do when not only somebody's hurt you in the past, but that person is in a position of power and you've been told that nobody's going to believe you because I'm a police officer.

39:54all of my clients have significant mental health difficulties because of horrendous abuses that they've suffered and it impacts every aspect of their lives so you think about the way in which they bring their children up the relationships they have the jobs they're able to undertake the education they had because obviously they couldn't concentrate at school because of what was going on many of them have addiction issues it really does impact every aspect of their lives But in relation to the current investigation, I think that there is no doubt some element of fear because they're standing up against the South Yorkshire Police.

40:29Overall, we've represented nearly 200 women in Rotherham, but we also represent a number of women throughout the country, to be honest, particularly West Yorkshire and Manchester. I think there will be other areas that do come out more in the future. But unfortunately, we're still waiting for those areas to accept that child sexual exploitation has gone on. So what we normally see is in Motherham there'll be a report and then people will come forward and say that happened to me. So I think there's lots more to come in different areas of the country and particularly in the south of England.

40:58Camilla: Gosh. Amy Clowry, thank you very much indeed for joining us today on The Daily Tea. Thank you for having me. Well, Camilla, as awful as the statistics that Amy was citing there were, She also told us that while her firm has dealt with 200 victims, of whom 30, so 15%, said they had been abused by police officers or witnessed abuse, the actual number of victims is more like 1 ,400. And she thinks that it's reasonable to assume that 15 % of the total would have been similarly either abused by police officers. So we could be talking about well over 100 victims here. Yeah, it's probably just the tip of the iceberg.

41:38Camilla: And initially this was reported by the BBC and the Assistant Chief Constable Hayley Barnett of South Yorkshire Police responded with this statement. We know how hard it must be for a victim or survivor who has been so badly let down in the past to put their faith into the South Yorkshire Police of today. She added that victims and survivors were at the heart of the investigation with all actions being taken in their best interests.

42:09Camilla: Before we go, shall we discuss how popular our names are, Gordon? Yes. And Camilla, I'm not sure they're up there in the top ten charts that have been released today by the Office for National Statistics. What are people calling their babies in 2025? It's easiest to say what they're not calling their babies. Yes. So this has all come about because the ONS has released its annual statistics for baby names. The top line that we went with on our website today was that the name Keir has completely died off. Who would have thunk it? There were no Kears born in 2024. There were four Kears born in 2023, so there is a trend.

42:43And we got slightly addicted to looking up baby names on the tool that we've got on our website where you can put in any name and see how many children were given that name in the last year. So needless to say, we both looked up our own names to begin with. How many Camillas were there, Camilla?

42:58Camilla: 62, which surprised me because my name lost a degree of popularity after Princess Diana described the other Queen Camilla as the third person in her marriage to Prince Charles. Yeah, and I thought that such a high-profile figure would mean that people would want to be a bit more original. They wouldn't want to sort of give their kids that name because everyone will just say, oh, is she named after the Queen? Anyway, how many Gordons were there? Well, only nine. Oh, Gordo. I think Gordon Brown kind of did for my name. Possibly. But it does mean that it's a very exclusive name, you know. So exclusive.

43:33Camilla: Five Nigels. Yes. So apparently Nigel peaked in the 1960s. Yes. I'm not sure what Faraj will think of that. Yes. I looked up Kemi. There have only been 119 Kemi's since 1996. The most popular for girls, it's Olivia. For boys, inevitably, it's Mohammed. There were 5 ,721 Mohammeds, spelt a certain way. But if you add up all the different spellings, it's more like nearly 9 ,000 Mohammeds. The second most popular name is Noah. Noah, a flood of Noahs, as our colleague Harry de Kepfil just joked down in the newsroom. He was very pleased with that joke. He was so delighted. And we were also just raising slight eyebrows at the growing popularity of some old-school names, such as Arthur, which has gone up, and Elsie, which is a name I would associate with sort of little old ladies.

44:24I know, I knew a little old lady called Elsie when I was a kid. I also knew there were lots of people when we were children called names like Gary. There were only eight Garys.

44:32Camilla: Gaza. Fewer Garys than Gordon's. And there were only 14 Trevors. Oh, Trev. Only five Keiths as well. Oh, how many Daves? I counted that. I actually put Dave in and there was about 100. Literally being christened, not David, Dave. Call me Dave. Which is bold, isn't it? Call me Dave. Well, we will be back tomorrow to discuss a very important topic. One that's very close to my heart, actually, Gordon. Why are the left so nasty? Back at 5pm. Thank you.