Poor Excuses

When articles in The Times exposed the street-grooming scandal in 2012, the council’s response was to dismiss the investigation as a "politically motivated" attack on a Labour authority by the "Murdoch press". Now Rotherham council is to come under central government control after an independent inspection of its handling of child sexual exploitation concluded it was not fit for purpose and was more concerned about protecting its own reputation than its most vulnerable citizens. Meanwhile the Times reporter Andrew Norfolk won the Paul Foot award.