Fact check: Home Office memo advised police how to deal with vulnerable children

The Home Office circular did not contain the quote, or sentiments, that online users have attributed to it.

Tuesday 07 January 2025 14:47 GMT

The quote does not appear in the 2008 Home Office guidance (Kirsty O’Connor/PA) (PA Archive)

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Correction: amends typo in second paragraph from the end

A series of claims have been shared about a 2008 communication sent by the Home Office to police across the country.

One social media post – which was amplified by billionaire X boss Elon Musk – claimed the Home Office guidance said about victims of “rape gangs”: “We believe they have made an informed choice about their sexual behaviour and therefore it is not for your police officers to get involved.”

Another claim – also amplified by Mr Musk – was that “According to Keir Starmer, girls below the age of consent, ‘made informed choices’. In an email sent to police forces across the country.”

The post added that the Home Office memo which “suggested the girls… had made ‘informed choices’,” was sent in 2008. It then said “Starmer was director of public prosecutions in 2008”.

Evaluation

This quote does not appear in the 2008 Home Office guidance. The document, which does not deal directly with grooming gangs, instead guides police officers on how to use their powers under the Children Act 1989.

The quote comes from a 2018 interview with a former senior prosecutor – not Sir Keir – who was discussing the Home Office guidance. That prosecutor has since said this was the incorrect way to interpret the guidance.

Sir Keir Starmer led the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for five years from 2008, however the Home Office guidance was sent several months before he joined the service, while he was still working as a barrister.

The facts

What did the 2008 Home Office guidance say?

The National Archives has a page which lists the circulars sent from the Home Office to police forces around the country. In 2008 there were 32 such communications, many dealing with pensions or police pay.

Only one of these circulars, issued on July 18 2008, would appear relevant to these claims. It is titled The Duties And Powers Of The Police Under The Children Act 1989″ and is also known by the log number 017/2008.

The full quote shared on social media appears nowhere in this document, nor is it in a Police Protection Checklist attached to the circular as appendix A. Key phrases from the quoted passage such as “informed choice” or “sexual behaviour” also do not appear in the circular.

Appendix B to the document was a leaflet titled Why Are The Police Protecting Me which “provides information about the use of police protection for children, their parents and carers”. This leaflet is not accessible on the website of the National Archives, and does not appear to exist elsewhere on the internet.

The circular does not specifically deal with grooming gangs. It says that its purpose is to “give greater clarity” about when and how police should use their powers under the 1989 Act.

Where does the quote come from?

The quote which purports to be from a Home Office memo to police is actually from a 2018 BBC interview with Nazir Afzal, who prosecuted the Rochdale grooming gang in 2012 when he was chief crown prosecutor for north-west England.

Although that programme is no longer available on the BBC’s website, a video which purports to be a clip of the interview has been uploaded to YouTube.

The YouTube video was uploaded on July 5 2019, nine months after the programme was broadcast. However, a blog post and an article on a different website, which were both posted just weeks after the interview, contained the same quote from Mr Afzal as can be heard in the YouTube clip.

The fuller quote from Mr Afzal is: “You may know this, but back in 2008 the Home Office sent a circular to all police forces in the country saying ‘as far as these young girls who are being exploited in towns and cities, we believe that they have made an informed choice about their sexual behaviour and, therefore, it’s not for you police officers to get involved in’. If that’s the landscape coming from the top down in 2008, rest assured, all agencies are going to listen to it.”

Is the quote an accurate representation of what the circular said?

Since giving that interview, Mr Afzal has explained that he never saw the circular in question, and instead was relaying what he had been told by police officers.

In 2019, he was contacted by Jacqui Smith, who was the Labour home secretary in 2008. She asked him to clarify what he had based his claims on. In response Mr Afzal said that “dozens of police officers” had told him that Home Office Circular 17/2008 “had supporting guidelines (issued by whom I don’t know) which referred to children making an ‘informed choice’.”

Mr Afzal added he had “never seen it (I’m not police)”.

On November 6 2024 Mr Afzal further said that the interpretation of the guidance by some officers – which he had repeated during the BBC interview – was “wrong”.

“According to some police, Home office guidance… was interpreted by them to mean that lifestyle choice was a factor in whether or not victims were safeguarded,” he said.

“This was their WRONG interpretation but nonetheless one that contributed to inaction”.

He added: “There was NEVER any circular or guidance specifically on ‘child rape gangs’ or ‘grooming gangs’.”

Are the any other potential documents with this sentiment?

The Home Office said: “There has never been any truth in the existence of a Home Office circular telling police forces that grooming gangs should not be prosecuted, or that their victims were making a choice, and it is now clear that the specific circular which was being referred to does absolutely no such thing.

“We are and have always been clear that perpetrators of vile child sexual abuse and exploitation must be pursued and prosecuted wherever it is found.”

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in 2023 dealt with a complaint from someone who had requested a Home Office memo from 2008. The request – made after Mr Afzal’s interview – asked the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for a copy of a memo which supposedly said that victims had made an “informed choice”.

The CPS said that it did not hold information falling in the scope of that request. The CPS said that in 2008 its policy was to hold administrative files for five years and then destroy them if they were no longer required. Such a Home Office memo would probably have been eligible for destruction after five years.

The ICO accepted the CPS’s reasoning that it did not hold the relevant information.

Assuming that Home Office circular 017/2008 is the document referenced in the claims, which is the document Mr Afzal himself has named, it clearly does not include those quotes or sentiment.

Whether the detail appears in the missing Appendix B is impossible to determine for certain. However, that appendix was a leaflet intended to be given to children and their families, rather than guidance for police officers.

Was the circular issued by Sir Keir Starmer?

No. The circular in question was issued by the Home Office in July 2008. Sir Keir became director of public prosecutions in 2008, but not until November of that year, several months after the circular was issued.

He was previously a barrister working out of Doughty Street Chambers.