Justice secretary apologises to child abuse expert over grooming gangs row

The Scottish justice secretary has apologised to a respected child abuse expert over a grooming gangs row.

Angela Constance said she owed Professor Alexis Jay a “professional apology” after quoting her while rejecting calls for an inquiry into grooming gangs in September.

Both women were summoned to give evidence at the Scottish education committee on Wednesday morning.

“Allow me to put on public record the apology that I gave Prof Jay privately for having so much focus not on her imminent work, nor on the subject of child protection, but on remarks made by me in the chamber,” Constance said.

“It was never my intention to have Prof Jay be the subject of so much intrusion and attention, and I very much regret that.”

The justice secretary made the apology less than 24 hours after surviving a no-confidence vote in the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday.

Scottish Labour and Tories claimed she “brazenly misrepresented” Prof Jay, who led the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham in 2014, on the issue of grooming gangs in Scotland.

When Constance rejected calls for an inquiry into grooming gangs in September, she told MSPs Prof Jay agreed with her that such a probe was not needed.

Emails made public by the Scottish Government later revealed Prof Jay later contacted the justice secretary to say she would “appreciate” her position “being clarified”.

On Wednesday morning, Constance denied that she had broken the ministerial code, as has been suggested by opposition parties.

“I did not state that Professor Jay was commenting on Liam Kerr’s amendments; I was making a general point on Professor Jay’s views for further inquiries,” Constance said.

“I correctly quoted her, but [the comments] were in the context of a public inquiry in England and Wales, not [Liam] Kerr’s amendment [to the Victims, Witnesses and Justice Reform bill].”

The justice secretary told MSPs that she scheduled a “private” phone call with Prof Jay to apologise.

Education convener Douglas Ross brought up paragraph 8.13 of the ministerial code, which states that a government official should be present for “all discussions relating to government business”.

When asked about why Constance did not make the call to Prof Jay in the presence of an official, she said had “asked to make a private call”, and said she was “not aware of ministers being prohibited from making personal calls”.

Constance said: “Let me conclude by addressing the most important people here in all of this, which is victims themselves,” says Angela Constance.

She hopes that after today, attention can turn to victims and survivors and “the work that we can do together to protect our children”.