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IN FULL: Michael Gove details attempted Whitehall 'cover-up' of grooming gangs in GB News exclusive
Jun 19, 2025
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.
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It'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
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Dominic Cummings, who worked for Lord Gove at the time, said Whitehall tried to stop national newspapers exposing the scandal
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Andrew Norfolk at the time started to try to report the issue. the council went to officials inside the department of education and said we want to bring a judicial
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review to have the courts suppress the times as reporting and not allow it to happen so what we
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ended up doing was saying to michael gove you should write to the council and say that if you
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bring this judicial review we will actually appear in court on behalf of the times not on behalf of
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that obviously blew up the judicial review attempt by the council to keep it secret
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and then Norfolk could publish his piece in the Times. And I'm very happy to say that Lord Gove joins us now
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You've heard what Dominic Cummings had to say there. What do you recall from that period on those claims
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Well, Dominic's account is broadly absolutely correct. So Andrew Norfolk, the very brave and sadly deceased reporter at the Times
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who was responsible more than anyone for initially uncovering the grooming gang scandal
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had been investigating Rotherham. It was the case that he wanted to publish details that related to one particularly tragic case
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Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council at the time didn't want the full details revealed
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They approached the government and the Department for Education, where I was Secretary of State at the time
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asked us to join them in a legal case in order to prevent the Times publishing
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I looked at the material alongside Dominic and some other people in the department and we contacted Rotherham Council and we said, yes, we will intervene in this case, but on behalf of the Times, because it's absolutely vital that the truth be told
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Dominic Cummings said that there were some officials within the Department of Education who were more hesitant than that, who didn't want you to intervene on behalf of the Times
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What do you recall about that in particular? Yes, it was absolutely the case that there were those who thought that it was appropriate for us not to intervene
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So the documents in question revealed some details about one particular victim, and it was argued by the council and by some officials who were sympathetic to their case that revealing everything about the case might mean that other potential victims, other family members might be adversely affected
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And there was also an argument that the council itself was making improvements and that as a result of these improvements being made that would be imperiled potentially if there were adverse publicity And I think those arguments were made in good faith But my view Dominic Cummings view was that it was far more important that we told the truth And the background to some of these
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decisions lies in the concept of what is known as serious case reviews. If a young person or a
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person who's been identified as at risk of abuse or neglect dies or faces some terrible consequence
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as a result of that abuse, then it's the responsibility of the local authority to conduct a review
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In the past, before I was in government, before Dominic was my advisor
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these reviews, when they were published, were censored and redacted. You could tell almost nothing from them
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And one of the things that we did was to insist that there be full publication. The sort of social work establishment at the time said that this would be unfair
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there'd be finger pointing towards professionals. My view, very strongly, was that the only way to learn the lessons
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was by making sure that you had the greatest possible transparency. Do you fear now with this national inquiry that Whitehall won't be included
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You want Whitehall to be included, I imagine. Oh, yes. No, completely. And on the back of that, are you nervous now that there'll be some documents being destroyed
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as a judge warned about the infected blood scandal, for example? Do you worry that many people in Whitehall will be doing what they can
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to avoid them being dragged in front of a grooming gangs commission? I don't believe that anyone would be that foolish
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And I think it's important that records are kept, and I've done my very best to keep my own records as well
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of what went on, what we did right, what more we should have done
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But I absolutely think that the inquiry should be much more than what it might appear to be at the moment
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At the moment, it appears that the government may default and make the national inquiry simply a sort of umbrella
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for lots of specific local inquiries. As you have revealed, there are as many as 50 towns and cities
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across the country in which these gangs have operated or continue to operate
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There are failures in policing at a national level that need to be addressed, and it is also the case
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that decisions that were made within the Home Office and other government departments do need to be scrutinised
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And of course, there is a culture of cover-ups that has affected this scandal right across the country
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But Whitehall officials need to be part of that assessment. Are you nervous? Are you hesitant about the fact that some people in the government at the moment may resist those calls
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Well, one of the things about this whole story, right from the very beginning
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has been that there have been people who, for admittedly noble reasons, because they didn want to see the details being exploited by the very far right have tried to manage the flow of information The do is that Barron case is Exactly exactly She was absolutely right about that
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And I can understand why they wanted to do that. But what they did, and Andrew Norfolk was very clear about this
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is that people actuated initially by what they thought was a good motive
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ended up with a situation where we were not told the truth about what was going on
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And some of the fundamental questions that need to be addressed about the cultural, ethnic and religious background of so many perpetrators were not addressed for fear of creating ethnic and community tensions
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Now, it's very important that we do look carefully at how we can ensure that a multi-ethnic society succeeds
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But those sensitivities, important as they are, must not come at the expense of ensuring that the victims of some of the most horrific crimes that we've seen in this country in the last 15 or 20 years
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At last, find out what went on. And in particular, there are individuals at local government level and who knows where else who didn't just fail to tell the truth, but would have been effectively allowing these crimes to continue by their inaction
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And Lord Gove, MPs need to be part of this inquiry as well
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We've seen a lot of MPs be quite hesitant about engaging with this situation
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Many of those representatives come from towns that have been directly and widely affected by this scandal
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Do you want to see politicians in the Commons also giving evidence in this inquiry
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I absolutely do. I think that people who've held political office and who've been either local government leaders
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or people in national government at the time should give evidence. And I would fully expect that as someone who was Education Secretary
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between 2010 and 2014, that I would be asked about the decisions I took
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whether or not it was in connection with Rotherham or the work that I did in order to try to improve the care of children
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who were at risk of abuse or neglect. And I would fully expect that in that, I might be taken to task
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for things that the government of which I was a part should have done
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I am not scared of that scrutiny. No one who's held elected office should be
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There's talk at the moment, isn't there, about how long this inquiry should go on for. I think you've spoken previously about inquiries you ordered in Rochdale
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in sick-air homes that returned, is it, in three months in one case? Yes. So it is the case that inquiries can be speedy
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And it is the case, in that particular situation, it was not a judicial inquiry
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It was an inquiry, as far as I recall, carried out by the Children's Commissioner. But you can and it is the case that inquiries can have interim reports before they come up with the full conclusions A statutory inquiry has powers normally judge of course to ensure that people appear that they testify appropriately that they can resist scrutiny
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But the problem sometimes with judge-led inquiries is that they can become a feeding trough for lawyers rather than a determined effort to drive it
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So one of the things 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
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And one of the people whom I would hope would be on that team was one of the first people to draw attention to the scandal
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And 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
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He was one of a number of people, including, of course, Anne Cryer, the Labour MP for Keithley, who were denounced at the time
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And if only we'd listened to them as a nation earlier, then the fate of any of these innocent victims might have been averted
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And Andrew Norfolk spoke of a culture of silence he encountered from many people on that issue as well
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Just very quickly, you've said you're happy to give evidence to this inquiry
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Do you think there will be Conservative colleagues of yours from those 14 years who will be more nervous about giving evidence
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No, I don't think anyone would be nervous about doing so. Because, again, one of the points that Kemi Madoff made in the House of Commons is that successive Home Secretaries and other ministers
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Theresa May, Amber Rudd, Sajid Javid, all sought to deal with this situation, I think
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But it's the inquiry that will decide that the main problems lay at a local level
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But those problems were very widespread. And 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 ostensibly noble motive, but ended up leading to tragedy
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I noticed you didn't mention Priti Patel as your list of Home Secretaries there
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And 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
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So I think there will be some questions for Conservative. I think that in that case that that report was one that reflected a Home Office culture rather than that Home Secretary's viewpoint
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I don't think that anyone could doubt that Priti Patel took this issue incredibly seriously
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But as Louise Casey pointed out, there were cultural problems in institutions about collecting data
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Thank you very much for joining us this morning. OK, that's back to you, Bev and Andrew. Thank you very much for that
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