Campaigner, whistleblower and former Detective Constable Maggie Oliver appeared on Nigel Farage’s GB News show last night as her foundation takes the government to the High Court over its failure to implement recommendations from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.
Oliver said victims who had received promises for years felt “that they are being trampled all over again, that they don’t matter”.
“Promises are easy and we keep hearing them. Let’s see the promises convert into action”, she said.
The Maggie Oliver Foundation’s judicial review is currently being heard and challenges the government’s alleged failure to honour the commitments made following IICSA, which spent seven years examining institutional failures to protect children. It published 20 recommendations back in 2022.
The foundation argues that repeated assurances by ministers created a legitimate expectation that those commitments would be honoured. Its concerns include collecting better information about abuse, ending pain-inducing restraint on children in custody and improving access to justice for children in care.
Speaking outside the High Court in March, when her foundation secured permission to proceed with the judicial review, Oliver said: “I hope that this will shame those in power and make them re-examine their principles and their conscience, and that they will bring in the 20 recommendations that were the result of a seven-year inquiry.”
She questioned whether survivors should endure another lengthy investigation, with all the trauma that involves, if the government can ultimately decline to implement its recommendations.
Speaking on his programme, Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage questioned the value of another grooming gangs inquiry if ministers fail to act on findings already delivered.
“Why bother with another inquiry if you can’t even be bothered to implement the recommendations from the last one?” he asked.
The grooming gangs scandal has exposed both the rape and sexual exploitation of mostly working-class British girls at the hands of predominantly Pakistani-heritage men and the willingness of the establishment to turn a blind eye. Farage highlighted the scale of the scandal, describing “the rape and sexual exploitation of tens of thousands of girls up and down this country over the course of the last quarter of a century or maybe even longer”.
The Home Office is contesting the foundation’s legal challenge, with one spokesman claiming that the government was “going further than ever” to tackle child sexual abuse and exploitation.
For Oliver, the test remains whether those commitments actually produce meaningful change for survivors. Farage urged other broadcasters and newspapers to give her campaign the attention it deserves: “I hope the other broadcasters and newspapers and others reflect the gravity of this.”
While much of the British mainstream media has been reluctant to confront the full scale of the grooming gangs scandal, Farage said: “The rest of the world has looked on at this stuff and thought, how could this possibly be happening?”