Yvette Cooper MP, Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary, responding to the victims’ groups statement on the historic child sex abuse inquiry, said:

“The inquiry into child abuse is immensely important for understanding why institutions failed to protect children, failed to get them justice and making sure children are protected in the future.

“So it is appalling that this inquiry has now staggered through four months of confusion and crisis and has not even yet started work. Theresa May has repeatedly failed to establish this inquiry in the right way so it has confidence of victims and everyone else and can get on with the job.

“The Home Secretary should have met with victims at the very start of the inquiry, but she failed to do so then and no Home Office minister even met them today. Theresa May has twice failed to consult with victims’ groups and carry out sufficient background checks on her appointed chair. Having failed once, it is incomprehensible that she could then fail a second time to consult widely enough to ensure Fiona Woolf would have the support needed to carry out this vital role. The inquiry cannot go on like this, lurching from problem to problem without any proper leadership from the Home Secretary.

“Theresa May has put Fiona Woolf in an impossible position. We had hoped the Home Secretary would be able to sort this out, so that the inquiry could get going this month, but she has failed to do so. Sadly it is now impossible to see how Fiona Woolf can carry on in this position.

“It should not be beyond the wit of the Home Secretary to establish a credible inquiry. There have been difficult and sensitive inquiries before that have required public confidence and have delivered extremely important results - from the Bishop of Liverpool’s inquiry into Hillsborough to Michael Bichard’s inquiry into the Soham murders. Theresa May needs to urgently sort this out and re-establish the inquiry on a firm footing so it can get on with its work on child protection.”