are not being that case to ensure that children are not being protected and that this would happen on operation span, resources were not put into it, victims were ring fenced, a tiny number, dozens and dozens of other victims were left to their own devices. i have to take this back to operation augusta. i was extremely grateful to andy burnham for cutting phase one into announcing the first stage of the series of reviews. that independent review, done by gary malcolm, is something i never thought i would ever read. a damning truth about how those children had been failed. a young girl who had died. and the officialfinding of that report was that the reason that happened is because gmp would not

put resources into investigating that case. after that report, i think it was five senior officers and retired officers referred to the iop see for investigation. none of them would be interviewed. ultimately, the independent office for police conduct couldn't bring any action against them because there was sufficient evidence. the minutes of the meeting where operational gusto was closed down had gone astray, they were lost. so now we still have nobody held accountable for failing dozens and dozens of children in 2005, allowing 100 paedophiles to continue to walk the streets. on this case again, gary and malcolm make it very, very clear that there was a tiny number of the abusers ever held to account in relation to years of abuse. they are still walking the streets of rochdale. ruby, who is child three

in this report, and she will not mind me saying that, came face—to—face with her rapist in asda in rochdale several years after the court case. he is back in rochdale. that is notjustice. he wasn't charged with rape. the charges brought were insufficient. we need more serious charges. we need proper sentencing. we need a change in the system. you know, i'm talking about this now, i've got so many notes but i'm not reading them. but i think the easiest way to try and explain what i'm saying is to refer you all back to the drama on at the moment, all about the post office. i am afraid to say that if anybody scratched the surface and really dug deep about what has happened, not just within greater manchester police, throughout the country, about how victims are being silenced, how they do not have a voice, how the police complaints

system is unfit for purpose, that's where we need to see change. we need accountability at the top and i have to give credit where it is due that i do want to see movement. i want to see conversations. i have not made friends on this journey because i speak the truth. i don't want to make friends with anybody. we are not funded by gm ca or the police, we are funded by the public. and thatis we are funded by the public. and that is a really deliberate decision because i want to be able to stand here and say it as it really is, without fear that somebody is going to withdraw funding. the truth is a really uncomfortable truth and it is not one i would... it is one i would like to be different. i would like to say today that things are a million times better. but if i went to everyone and of the victims and survivors who approached the maggie oliver foundation every day who say, are things different? they would

say, no, there are not. there are far too many victims who are not being heard, who are being criminalised, who are being intimidated, who are being silenced when they dared to raise their head above the parapet. that officer in that cse unit has tried desperately to get the resources put into the case that she was dealing with, a complex case, begging and pleading. those resources were not forthcoming. what i would really like to see from the chief constable is a call for more resources, for priority in policing, because, i'm sorry, but whilst we hear people in positions of authority saying that things are better, everything has improved, we no longer have these problems reported in this review, nothing will change. for me, the buck stops at the top. this needs to be addressed properly, from government level. we need a radical overhaul of the policing of the

criminaljustice overhaul of the policing of the criminal justice system. overhaul of the policing of the criminaljustice system. we need extra resources. we need better training. we need support for officers on the ground who are not getting that support. if they are carrying out crime queue are a0 complex kinds, you can't blame that individual officers are not investigating them thoroughly. this is about leadership. it is about resources. it is about prioritising what we as a country think is important. i think that this report really clearly shows where those failures are. but it is notjust a report. this is a story of thousands of children's lives that have been blighted and a lack of willingness to listen where these mistakes are happening. if they are heard at the start of the journey, the future journey for those children can be changed. but without people listening, we never going change

things. i could go on all day and i know i have missed a lot. but what i would like the media here to do today is to realise that this is not a local manchester problem. the media are very much london centric. this is a national problem about the state of policing, about a system that doesn't work, that actually needs more resources, needs better training. and actually, accountability for people at the top who are not resorting these investigations properly. i think if you read the report, gary and malcolm make it very clear that there has been no accountability for these failures. and that whilst these failures. and that whilst these are institutional failings, behind all these decisions are individuals. these are individual decisions that have prevented

resources going into these cases. and that is where the solution lies, in resulting them properly. in not... empty words and gas lighting when we get a report which is as thorough and as honest as this one is. i want to see accountability. i want to see change. i want to see people listening and at the foundation, we are helping people today to be heard. giving them a better chance of wriggling their way through a system which is really hostile, very difficult to navigate and wear one voice carries no weight. in this report, we have got a lot more than one voice but in the foundation now, we are sharing the voices of over a000 victims that we have supported since 2019. this is my life's work. i think this is

probably why i was put on this earth. i wish it wasn't but now i am not on my own, we have a team and i know my subject. i don't want this to be a sorry about what happened in the past, i want it to be a commitment to what is going to change in the future. i know you say that we are communicating, and we are, and we did meet two years ago and i am extremely grateful to you personally for apologising to those girls but i haven't heard a word from you in two years. i am here, just ask me. communication is the key. if nobody communicates, nothing will change and i want to see change. i don't want my life to have been this broken record that keep saying the same thing. it takes good people and andy burnham, i do really credit you for putting these reviews together. i am grateful, ok? credit you for putting these reviews together. iam grateful, ok? i hope the review will be as honest as this one. gary and malcolm, you have my

eternal gratitude and the greatest respect. i know you got a lot of criticism about the old review, i know that. what i would say is that is because there was nobody working there who knew what was going on. operation augusta and pottable are honest and thorough, they are the truth and the reason they are truthful is because i knew the inside story. i worked on these cases. i shared that truth with you and you took it and you wrote reports. sadly, in old it didn't happen, all the victims there were forbidden to speak to the review team except for one and the reason she spoke to the team as she came to me and said, i want to speak to that team. so the report was very limited because the truth was not in there because the truth was not in there because you were prevented from hearing that truth. accountability, progress, communication, working together, that is what this report

shows didn't happen. i fully agree with you, sara, the vast majority of officers approached refused to be interviewed by the review team. that shouldn't be allowed to happen. they shouldn't be allowed to happen. they should be forced to speak about where their failures lay. if i was accused of murder with you, sara, and i refused to say was you when you refused to say it was me, we would havejoint you refused to say it was me, we would have joint enterprise. you refused to say it was me, we would havejoint enterprise. for me, everybody who is responsible for these mistakes should be held accountable, notjust a police officer on the ground who is overwhelmed with a crime 0 that they cannot manage. they need support to do theirjob properly. so i don't them, i blame the resourcing, the decision making, there prioritising and those decisions matter. now if you don't believe what i am saying, i want to finish off by reading a quote from the report,

which struck me on friday when i read this report. because don't listen to me, this detective chief superintendent b, i know who she was. it was one of the first people that i spoke to when i was trying to raise these problems. that was 12 years ago. 12 years of my life and 12 years of sara's life and all of these children. she was forbidden from saying this when she was a serving police officer, in the same way that in the post office drama, the guy who worked in fujitsu was unable to speak the truth because you are silenced by an organisation. ifelt at you are silenced by an organisation. i felt at the time that she got what i felt at the time that she got what i was saying but she was prevented from doing anything about it. finally, 12 years later, she said, and she is not all that long ago resigned. "i had a very painful last few years in gnp, as a result of trying to push the victims�* agenda,

in terms of vulnerability and the way we deal with victims, in particular the way we record crimes and some of the ethical stuff all around it. notjust me, there were a number of us and we were hitting a very big brick wall. pockets of good practice, pockets of things happening, but basically then overridden and overruled by this attitude that our victims are lying, particularly around sexual offences. and i don�*t understand where it comes from, because nobody automatically assumes if you are reporting a burglary that you are lying. but if a woman is reporting a rape, there is this assumption that they are not telling the truth for whatever reason, and i couldn�*t get past it and there was a number of us, we tried for a very long time to get past it and we never could. it just kept coming round and round and round again. gmp is clap at dealing

with victims because they don�*t believe them half the time and that is specifically around sexual offences, adults and child, and domestic abuse and i don�*t know why." that is a current quote from a very senior officer and i would add that to the officer who recently resigned from the specialist unit saying that she was unable to get any resources to investigate serial, serious child abuse. i don�*t really need to say any more but please read every page of this report and remember the children that have shared their stories for this truth to come out. and please, mr watson, allows some of the survivors of operation augusta, operation green jacket, to be interviewed because at the moment your legal department is

not allowing them to speak to the review team. so that is something which they need to hear in order to assess properly where we go in the future. organisations like the police, like rochdale council, like the crown prosecution service, are powerful organisations and a little voice like mine or sara�*s, we are squashed. and if we don�*t have any chance of being heard, how on earth would a child like ruby or amber or daisy or all these other children, they must be heard and we must see change. i would asked the media to shine a spotlight on those corners that normally don�*t get attention because it is only with your help and public support and public outrage continuing that really we will see the changes that we must haveif will see the changes that we must have if we are going to avoid another report like this in ten years. thank you.

i know every one of us will have the survivor�*s of the terrible abuse laid bare in this report at the very top of our minds today. the appalling acts they suffered at the hands of the men who attacked and exploited them were compounded by the unforgivable failures of the very statutory agencies whose role should have been to protect them. ijoined should have been to protect them. i joined the should have been to protect them. ijoined the mayor, the chief constable and the leader of rochdale council in offering our profound apologies to all the survivors. i also want to add my tribute to

sara rowbotham and maggie oliver, whose warnings were repeatedly dismissed or ignored. they were criticised and stigmatised and they should have been listened to and their warnings acted on. they, and their warnings acted on. they, and their survivors, are vindicated by today�*s report. i am very grateful today�*s report. i am very grateful to the independent review team, to malcolm and gary, for their meticulous work in preparing this report. andy and malcolm have also both acknowledge the role of my predecessor as deputy mayor, baroness beverley hughes, in progressing this review and i echo their tributes to her. it will fall to me, my responsibility as her successor, to ensure that the lessons that we have learned from

their sand from earlier reports are accepted in full, understood and embedded in professional practice across all statutory agencies in greater manchester. that the resources are in place to enable them to serve and support survivors today, those in the future and those who have experienced abuse in the past. to ensure that those bodies recognise and meet their responsibilities for safeguarding vulnerable children in every part of the city region. with the knowledge that we have today, there can be no excuses. i look forward to receiving the independent review team�*s for the report later this year, which i hope will give assurance to the mayor and to me that our structures and

governance are fit for purpose, to meet our solemn obligation to protect our children from abuse. the chief constable and councillor emmett have already exclaimed, however, that we have not waited for these reports to put our house in order. now that is not to deny that mistakes will still be made, that there is more to do and maggie this morning has highlighted the support that she continues to offer to survivors and she and sara are right to continue to press us to be the best we can and for change. but much has changed since 2013, when this report concludes. i had the privilege of visiting the sunrise team in rochdale last week and i saw for myself the dedication and professionalism of the team members

and the work that they are doing to protect and support vulnerable children and families. that multidiscipline, multi—agency approach that is adopted in sunrise is a model of the good practice that we will strive to see everywhere and the team can be very proud of their work. but as we have heard, as malcolm observed in his opening remarks, there remains much to be done to secure justice there remains much to be done to securejustice for there remains much to be done to secure justice for survivors. the chief constable has described the substantial ongoing investigative work that is taking place and in my role... that was the findings of a review into the historic child sexual exploitation in rochdale from 200a-2012. we exploitation in rochdale from 200a—2012. we heard there that girls were left at the mercy of paedophile

grooming gangs for years in rochdale because of failings by senior police and council bosses. i nowjust want to take you live to defence secretary grant shapps, who is speaking in london, where he is expected to announce the uk will be sending some 20,000 personnel to take part in one of nato�*s largest deployment since the end of the cold war, let�*s take a listen. the notion that while our defences should be maximised at times of tension, they can be minimised in times of peace. now conflict didn�*t disappear, of course, but with no great power menacing the world, piece gave the impression of being just around the corner. yet not everybody got the memo. in fact, our adversaries were mobilising. the belligerent autocratic state was

making a comeback. having got away with his illegal annexation of crimea in 201a, and emboldened putin launched his brutal invasion of ukraine eight years later. and, as russia continues its illegal campaign in ukraine, china is assessing whether the west loses its patients. today, russia and china have been joined patients. today, russia and china have beenjoined by new patients. today, russia and china have been joined by new nuclear and soon nuclear powers. north korea promising to expand its own nuclear arsenal. and then there is iran, who enriched uranium is up to 83.7%. the level at which there is no civilian application. back in the days of the cold war, there remained a sense that we were dealing with rational

actors. but these new powers are far more unstable, irrational. can we really assume that the strategy of mutually assured destruction that stopped wars in the past will stop them in the future, when applied to them in the future, when applied to the iranian revolutionary guard or north korea? i am afraid we cannot. particularly since there is now another new worrying consideration, our adversaries are more connected with each other. for example, we have seen how iranian proxies are causing havoc from israel to the red sea. that russia has blocked the two countries describe as a no limits partnership with china, with whom they conduct regularjoint exercises. meanwhile, putin is

relying on iranians drones and north korean ballistic missiles to fuel his illegal bombardments in ukraine. with friends like these, the world is becoming more dangerous. and has donein is becoming more dangerous. and has done in recent years. the other threats that plague us at the start of the 21st century, well, they haven�*t gone away either. the spectre of terrorism and threats from non—state actors, as october the 7th showed, still haunts the civilised world. put it all to gather and these combined threats risk tiering apart the rules —based international order, established to keep the peace after the second world war. today�*s world, then, is sadly far more dangerous, with the un reporting that we are facing the highest number of violent conflicts since the second world war. now some

argue these threats are not existential to the uk and what happens elsewhere quickly happens here. in the past few years, we have seen terrorist attacks on the streets of london, attempted assassinations in salisbury, theft of intellectual property, attempted interference in our political processes. a cost of living crisis brought to you by putin that is hurting families here at home. and now, ourtrade, 90% of hurting families here at home. and now, our trade, 90% of which comes by c, is the target of terrorists. —— that comes by sea. proving not only do our adversaries have at the end and tend to target as but have a widening array of weapons with which to wreak havoc. in our online world,

our adversaries don�*t need to fire a missile or board a submarine or strap into a fighterjet to hurt us. cyber warfare simply means hacking into our networks and watching the economic carnage unfold. last year, almost a third of british businesses suffered a cyber attack or breach and the total cost to the uk economy, well, that runs into billions. we know significant number of those attacks come from russia and china, where they are also developing satellite killing technology, capable of degrading us from space. even mass migration can be cynically used as a weapon of war, as poland, norway and finland have been experiencing. in other words, nation states plus non—state actors, with greater connections between them, plus more creative weapons all adds up to a much more

troubled world. and over the last decade, this government has made great strides in turning around that defence tanker. there are refreshers of the integrated review and defence command paper have been instrumental in ensuring britain is defended and there more dangerous world. we have uplifted our defence spending, investing billions into modernising our armed forces and bringing in a raft of next—generation capabilities. from our new aircraft carriers to f 355, from new drone5, the submarine programme, better trained troops and creation of a national cyber force. when the world has needed u5, national cyber force. when the world has needed us, we have risen to the moment. giving ukraine unwavering support in galvanising others to their cause, including with our

biggest everfunding their cause, including with our biggest ever funding package announced ju5t biggest ever funding package announced just last week. taking action, we�*ve stamped out, worked to stamp out the global and dish —— —— ambitions of dae5h. by sending a royal navy ta5k ambitions of dae5h. by sending a royal navy task force group, a company of royal marines, surveillance planes and life—saving aid to gaza. and taking a lead role within the global forces to protect freedom of navigation in the red sea. not only that, but we have also strengthened britain�*s place in the world with expanded partnerships from the gulf to the indo—pacific. we are playing a major part in stirring the west into renewed commitments to defence, using our 201a nato summit in newport to bring the alliance nations together to stop the rot. by committing to spending 2% of gdp on defence. and

today, for the very first time, the government is spending more than £50 billion a year on defence. in cash terms, more than ever before. and we have made the critical decision to set out our aspiration to reach 2.5% of gdp on defence and, as we stabilise and grow this economy, will continue to strive to reach that as soon as possible. but now is the time for all allied and democratic nations across the world to do the same thing and ensure their defence spending is growing, to. because, as discussed, the era of the peace dividend is over. in five years�* time, we could be looking at multiple theatres, including russia, china, iran and north korea. ask yourself, looking at today�*s conflicts across the world, is it more likely that that

number grows or reduces? i suspect we all know the answer, it is likely to grow. so 202a must mark an inflection point. for ukraine, this will be a year when the fate of their nation may well be decided. for the world, this will be the greatest democratic yearin this will be the greatest democratic year in history, with nearly half of the world�*s population actually going to the polls. and for the uk, it must also be a moment to decide the future of our national defences. the choice is stark. some people, especially on the left, have a tendency to talk britain down. they believe britain can no longer have the power to influence world events, that we should somehow shrink into ourselves and ignore what is happening beyond our shores. i passionately believe these britain

doom mongers are simply wrong on their weight would lead to sailing blindly into an age of autocracy. so we must make a different choice. and the history of our great island nation actually shows us the way. britain has often accomplished the seemingly impossible before. our history is littered with moments when we faced down the threat and we have triumphed. but looking ahead, we are in a new era and fee must be prepared. to deter our enemies, to lead our allies, and defend our nation. in terms of deterrence, it is about the uk gaining a strategic advantage over our enemies. the foundation of that advantage is of course on nuclear enterprise. at a time of mounting nuclear danger, are

continuous at sea deterrent provides