Today's grooming gangs announcement offers hope for thousands of victims - and the state cannot hide

But after the release of the draft terms of reference last year, the language and direction suggested that the team behind the probe had not recognised the scale of the crisis ahead of them, nor the hunger for justice and full examination.

To start with, the team said it would not be an “exhaustive” investigation and that it would not look back further than 2000.

And to make matters worse, there seemed to be some delicate wording about how the inquiry would assess the impact of race, culture and religion in the grooming gangs scandal.

The drafted terms of reference suggested they would only access these factors according to how they impacted institutional responses.

That is to say, they would only care about race, culture and religion in reference to how it might have prevented investigations or caused hesitancy in the police or council due to political correctness.

This was totally inadequate.

The only pressure applied to this problem from the start came from GB News.

To his credit, Mike Tapp, Labour MP and Home Office Minister, appeared to recognise this issue when asked about it by our Political Editor Christopher Hope.

In private correspondence with some Labour and Government figures since that interview, I have heard some mood music that they might shift their stance.

The team, headed by Baroness Longfield, has now formally recognised this shortcoming.

In a lengthy statement announcing the new terms of reference, Baroness Longfield said that “it was also clear that we needed to at ethnicity, culture and religion - not just through the lens of how the state responds - but also at the role they might play as a driver of abuse.”

Breakthrough.

With this update, the state cannot hide from the difficult questions. And there are many for them to press on with answering.

GB News has gathered countless bundles of evidence pointing to the grooming abuse network not being a scandal of isolated communities, but rather a nationally connected network of organised criminal gangs.

Such a sophisticated and powerful network could only operate with the links of in-group loyalty and bonds.

There is no doubt in my mind that this has been furnished through a dangerous mixture of so-called "Biraderi" brotherhood culture, common among Mirpuri communities, and extreme criminality, particularly involving Class A drugs such as heroin, and the trafficking of weapons.

Reporting from dozens of towns and cities across the country, I have seen links between perpetrators and victims alike.

The same men, the same locations, sometimes even the same vehicle trafficking them across the country.

The extreme violence and control and the interlinking families of abusers all point to something far darker and insidious than has been probed by the Government so far.

Most shocking has been the information we have revealed that police officers in some districts weren't just covering up the abuse but directly involved with it themselves.

i am limited to what I can say at this stage due to live legal issues, but the role of brotherhood and in-group loyalty has played a key role in both examples of cover-up and complicity.

I know from speaking to several victims and survivors that have met with Baroness Longfield's team that these concerns have been raised directly with her. It is clear that she has heard them and taken it on.

Credit for this shift must also go to Tory MP Katie Lam, who insisted on it in a campaign earlier this year. She also met with Baroness Longfield’s team to raise them directly, which undoubtedly had a major impact.

This inquiry is now due to return before March 2029, before the next General Election.

In her opening statement, Baroness Longfield writes: “I understand why victims, survivors and others will ask: why will this inquiry be any different?”

But with this major shift from the drafted terms to the final product, it’s clear, perhaps for the first time, that grooming gang victims finally have an investigative team that should prioritise their demands over wider political worries.

If Baroness Longfield and her team can stick to the standard they have set with this update, then confidence in them among the thousands of survivors, who have waited for this moment for far too long, will grow.

They have been let down by countless state apparatchiks, lazy lawyers and duplicitous politicians for far too many years.

This is the last chance. It has to work.

Attention now turns to the locations that will get local investigations feeding into the national inquiry.

Oldham is guaranteed, and has been politically impossible to ignore since GB News revealed last year that Jess Phillips had rejected their request for a Government-led inquiry.

But where else will it go? Based on conversations with survivors who have met the inquiry team, I am highly confident that Bradford and London will be included.

Wales also seems highly likely. There could be up to 10 specific locations.

But it can’t be a postcode lottery of investigations. The inquiry has committed to follow the evidence, whatever it reveals, and that means that no area must be written off for investigation.

“The children who were abused deserved better,” so ends the inquiry’s latest statement.

It is true, as a grave understatement.

Only now they might hope that change is finally coming.