The UK’s ‘Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs’ was formally launched on 13 April 2026 and is mandated to last no longer than three years, concluding by March 2029.
In an article last month, Raja Miah highlighted Sir Michael Lyons, a prominent figure in British public administration who, at one time also chaired the BBC Trust. Why? Because during his tenure as Chief Executive of Birmingham City Council, the Council voted down an inquiry into a 1995 report on the Muslim rape gangs.
Lyons has never been asked what he knew about the report or the suppression of it during his time on the Council. The rape gang inquiry should compel Lyons to testify and provide answers under oath, Miah says.
Let’s not lose touch…Your Government and Big Tech are actively trying to censor the information reported by The Exposé to serve their own needs. Subscribe to our emails now to make sure you receive the latest uncensored news in your inbox…
In a Substack Note, Raja Miah introduced an article he published in March as follows:
In 1991, Birmingham City Council commissioned a report into the rape of girls in its own care.
The researcher found the girls. She named them. She interviewed them. She documented the networks. She identified the private hire drivers. She put it all in writing. The council ordered the evidence removed, the ethnicity erased and the copies destroyed.
Four years later, a motion was tabled demanding a full inquiry into what had happened to that report. The council voted it down.
The man running Birmingham City Council when that vote was cast went on to be knighted, to lead a major government inquiry into local government finance and to chair the BBC Trust.
He has never once been asked what he knew.
That is where this rabbit hole begins.
After Birmingham, They Gave Him the BBC
By Raja Miah, 22 March 2026
Sir Michael Lyons chaired the BBC Trust and advised Ministers on Public Accountability. He was also running the Birmingham City Council when it voted down an inquiry into a suppressed child rape report. He has never been asked what he knew. The national inquiry should change that.
Let Me Introduce You To Sir Michael Lyons
Knighted in 2001 for services to local government. One of the most influential figures in British public administration of his generation.
He chaired the Lyons Inquiry into Local Government Finance for the UK government between 2004 and 2007. He served as Chairman of the BBC Trust from 2011 to 2014, overseeing the governance and accountability of the BBC itself. He spent decades advising governments on how public institutions should function and be held to account. Today, he chairs the government’s New Towns Taskforce, advising ministers on the creation of a new generation of towns as part of the UK’s long-term housing strategy.
In other words, he became one of the country’s most senior figures responsible for holding powerful institutions to account.
So Why Am I Telling You This?
This week, I published an investigation showing that Birmingham City Council commissioned research in 1990 documenting the sexual exploitation of girls in its care. The study was carried out by Dr. Jill Jesson of Aston University and completed in 1991.
According to Jesson, references linking the exploitation to the private hire trade were removed from the report by a steering group overseeing the research. All reference to ethnicity was removed, too. She was told her methodology was flawed and ordered to erase the connection entirely. The planned seminar to discuss the findings was cancelled. The full report was never properly published. Copies were ordered destroyed.
The Pakistani Rape Gang Cover-Up Did Not End There
In December 1995, Birmingham City Council’s Social Services Committee debated whether there should be a full inquiry into what had happened to the Jesson research. The motion was voted down.
Sir Michael Lyons had been Chief Executive of Birmingham City Council since 1994. He would remain the most senior official running that authority until 2001. He was in post when the council voted to bury the question of what had happened to a suppressed child rape report.
The Gang Rape of Little White Girls Did Not Stop
In 2010, West Midlands Police produced a confidential problem profile warning that hundreds of children in Birmingham were considered at risk of sexual exploitation. The document was never made public.
It took a Freedom of Information request by the Birmingham Mail in 2015 to force it into the open. Nearly two decades after Jesson’s research first identified the pattern, police had documented the same problem, compared it explicitly to Rotherham and chosen not to tell the public it existed.
The council buried the research in 1991. The police buried their own intelligence in 2010. Both sets of evidence were suppressed. Both were eventually forced out by journalists rather than by the institutions themselves.
That is not two separate failures. That is a pattern. Which means the questions are not historical. They are direct.
- How many girls were abused while Lyons was running the council?
- What did his administration do to address the warnings that already existed when he took the role?
- Why did Birmingham emerge from his tenure with the problem not only unresolved but apparently worsening?
- And what did he know about the Jesson report, the suppression of its findings, and the 1995 vote that closed the door on any inquiry?
Institutions do not make decisions on their own. People do. And if the national inquiry into grooming gangs is serious about understanding how warnings were handled in the 1990s, the people who ran those institutions at the time must be required to answer for what happened.
Sir Michael Lyons ran Birmingham City Council from 1994 to 2001. He was in post when the 1995 vote was cast. He went on to hold some of the most prominent public positions in British institutional life. His reputation rests on a career built around accountability, governance and the proper functioning of public institutions.
Lyons has never once been asked publicly what he knew about the Jesson report or the cover-up of the gang rape of little white girls in the city he ran.
The national inquiry has the power to compel testimony. It has the power to require answers under oath. Sir Michael Lyons should be called to give evidence.
I’m Raja Miah MBE. You won’t see me on the BBC or read my work in the legacy press. That’s not an accident.
For seven years, I led a campaign exposing how senior Labour politicians helped protect Pakistani rape gangs. The people of my town helped force the national inquiry.
This investigation into Birmingham is the next front in that same fight.
Everything I publish is free. No paywalls. Because the truth shouldn’t belong only to those who can afford it. But I’ll be honest with you. Tens of thousands of people read this work every week. A small and shrinking number support it financially. Without that support, this work stops.
The national inquiry we forced will almost certainly become a cover-up. The people who buried the evidence are already positioning themselves to manage what comes next. Exposing that, and making sure the victims are not betrayed again, is going to take years. Possibly another five.
Sir Michael Lyons has never been asked what he knew. The councillors who voted down the 1995 inquiry have never been named in public. The girls in those files have never had anyone demand answers on their behalf. That is what this work is for.
If you believe it matters, please support it. Even a small amount keeps this going when institutions, politicians and the legacy press are all working to make sure voices like mine disappear.
Subscribe to my Substack HERE. Or support with a one-off contribution:
The people we are naming have lawyers, platforms and power. All I have is the truth and the people who refuse to let it be buried.
Featured image adapted from ‘Furious grooming gangs survivor hits out at ‘bull****’ inquiry announcement’, Express, 31 March 2026
The Expose Urgently Needs Your Help…
Can you please help to keep the lights on with The Expose’s honest, reliable, powerful and truthful journalism?
Your Government & Big Tech organisations
try to silence & shut down The Expose.
So we need your help to ensure
we can continue to bring you the
facts the mainstream refuses to.
The government does not fund us
to publish lies and propaganda on their
behalf like the Mainstream Media.
Instead, we rely solely on your support. So
please support us in our efforts to bring
you honest, reliable, investigative journalism
today. It’s secure, quick and easy.
Please choose your preferred method below to show your support.
Categories: Breaking News, UK News
Hi Rhoda,
Keep up your good work.
My wife and myself were going round pubs in Rotherham over 25 years ago.
We were taking round relatives of the abused girls, who were giving speeches on what was happening, and that the Police and Councillors were not interested.
Only last year, through this Expose blog, I found out about the Labour councillors collecting postal votes off the Moslems.