The new Home Secretary needs to act quickly to ensure that the national abuse inquiry doesn’t lose its momentum or integrity, as Richard Scorer explains
The resignation of Dame Lowell Goddard as chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse (IICSA), the third chair to resign since the inquiry was established in 2014, has caused much anguish among abuse survivors. In her resignation announcement, Goddard suggested that the inquiry has struggled to shake off its past "legacy of failure". The Home Secretary has stated unequivocally that "the work of the inquiry will continue". Meanwhile some commentators have argued that the inquiry's remit is impossibly wide, and have questioned whether the inquiry can continue in its current format, or needs to be reformed.
Powers & terms of reference
IICSA initially started life in 2014 as a non-statutory panel inquiry, becoming a statutory inquiry in 2015. Accordingly its chair now exercises judicial powers. Its terms of reference are “to consider the extent to which state and non-state institutions have failed…to protect children from sexual abuse” and to identify
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