South Yorkshire's police and crime commissioner, Shaun Wright, is facing mounting calls to resign in the wake of the child sex abuse scandal in Rotherham.
Wright was a Labour cabinet member for children and young people's services at Rotherham council from 2005 to 2010 when he received three reports about widespread abuse but failed to act, according to Prof Alexis Jay's damning report on the sexual exploitation of 1,400 children over 16 years in the South Yorkshire town.
Before he was elected police and crime commissioner in 2012, Wright was also a member of the South Yorkshire police authority. Jay's report exposed repeated failures in both the council and the police to tackle the abuse.
Rotherham's Labour council leader, Roger Stone, resigned within hours of the publication of Jay's report. There have been several calls for Wright to do the same.
Paul Lakin, deputy leader of the council and Wright's successor as cabinet member for children's services, offered only partial backing for the commissioner.
Speaking to BBC Radio's 4 Today programme, he said: 'The decision on whether the police and crime commissioner should go is clearly an issue for him and for him alone. There are clearly people who are either councillors within the council or working for other authorities who really need to take a look at their role throughout this time and then decide on their position.'
Asked directly whether Wright should go, Lakin said: 'I'm not going to take that view. Commissioner Wright, since he has been in his current role, has taken an active view on sexual exploitation and has put in a lot of resources to tackle this. Some may say that's a little too little and too late, but I'm not going to give you a view on whether he should resign, that's clearly down to him.'
Lakin added: 'We need to go through the report in depth. Clearly governance arrangements came out as one of the issues.'
Lakin, himself a councillor since 1999, said he was not aware of depth and scale of child abuse in Rotherham until the publication of Jay's report.
Colin Ross, the leader of Sheffield's Liberal Democrat party, said: 'It's difficult to see how people can have confidence in him [Wright] to continue.'
Ukip's Yorkshire and Humber MEP, Jane Collins, added: 'I categorically call for the resignation of everyone directly and indirectly involved in this case. The Labour council stand accused of deliberately ignoring child sex abuse victims for 16 years. The apologies we have heard are totally insincere and go nowhere near repairing the damage done.
'These resignations should include South Yorkshire's police and crime commissioner, Shaun Wright. I also call for a criminal investigation by a force not directly linked with this scandal in to all those implicated in this scandal. There is no place for these people in public life.'
Jay's report did not criticise Wright directly but it noted that he passed on concerns to other bodies and called for further investigations after he receiving reports about widespread child abuse in Rotherham.
So far Wright has issued an apology for the council's failures but refused to discuss his future. His spokeswoman issued a statement: 'The commissioner has previously apologised for the failure of Rotherham council while he was in its cabinet from 2005 to 2010. He repeats that apology today and he fully accepts that there was more that everyone at Rotherham council should have done to tackle this terrible crime.
'Since becoming police and crime commissioner he has repeatedly publicly made tackling child sexual exploitation his number one priority.'
Conservative councillor Chris Middleton also called Wright to stand down describing his position as untenable.
Posted by Unknown on Wednesday, August 27, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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