Keir Starmer said Tory Kemi Badenoch never raised the issue of grooming gangs when she was a minister – and Chris Philp also failed to mention in when he was a Home Office Minister
Keir Starmer has slapped down the Tories for failing to take action on grooming gangs.
The Prime Minister said Kemi Badenoch never raised the issue of grooming gangs when she was Minister for Women – and Chris Philp also failed to mention in when he was a Home Office Minister. His comments came after Ms Badenoch and her team tried to claim credit for the announcement of a public inquiry into the scandal because they called for one earlier this year.
The Tory leader sent out an email to supporters saying “We won!” when it was announced over the weekend. But Baroness Louise Casey, who wrote the damning independent report into the scandal, said she was “disappointed” by the political mudslinging and said she wished the Tories would put aside party politics and back her report for the sake of victims.
Speaking to reporters at the G7 summit in Canada, Mr Starmer said people could “compare and contrast” his record as head of the Crime Prosecution Service (CPS), where he brought prosecutions of grooming cases.
READ MORE: Harrowing fight of grooming gangs victim who was accused of ‘running a brothel’ at 16
He said: “I’m now the Prime Minister who has passed into law mandatory reporting, who has taken forward the unique identifier for children, because I’ve always been really worried that children falling outside of school are not being picked up, and they are very vulnerable to exploitation, and obviously now announced this national inquiry.
“Kemi Badenoch, I think, if I remember rightly, was the minister for children and for women, and I think the record will show that she didn’t raise the question of grooming once when she was in power, not once. Not one word from the dispatch box on any of this.
“Chris Philp, I think, went to 300 plus meetings when he was in his position in the Home Office, and at not one of those meetings did he raise the question of grooming.”
He said: “I think you can all see what’s going on here. I started campaigning and working on this issue literally 15 years ago, so I stand on that record. I think the focus should be on the individual victims.”
Mr Starmer added: “But I mean, the question of Kemi Badenoch is, why on earth didn’t you, you were in power, you had all the tools at your disposal. I was calling even then for mandatory reporting. Why didn’t you do it? Why didn’t you say one word about it?”
The PM said he had solely been calling out politicians when he accused people demanding a public inquiry of jumping on a “far right bandwagon”.
It comes as the Conservatives have been accused of discovering a “newfound interest in the subject” after failing to take sufficient action on the issue during their 14 years in office. Lib Dem MP Josh Babarinde, a victim of child sexual abuse, hit out at “smug” Ms Badenoch and was “disgusted” by her use of party politics in such a sensitive debate.
He told the Commons yesterday: “I am really let down and disgusted that the leader of the Opposition began her remarks with a party political assault on her opponents like this. Victims and survivors deserve more than a smug ‘I told you so’, diatribe. Victims and survivors deserve action.”
Maggie Oliver, a former detective constable in Greater Manchester and a whistle blower on the Rochdale scandal, said it is “shameful” people are trying to politicise the grooming gangs scandal.
“I am sick of party political game-playing on such an important subject that destroys lives. The Conservatives have been equally negligent, as are Labour. This should not be a party political conversation. This should be about child safety,” she said.
“And for them to turn it into a political football is quite honestly horrific. It is shameful. That’s where we’ve gone wrong. All the parties should be joining together. They should be fighting this national scandal, which is what it has been.”
Ms Oliver said she had lost count of how many politicians she had met at the highest level to discuss the issue, with no action ever following. She added that all those who failed to act, from police leaders to Westminster leaders, are “criminally responsible”. “I want to see some of them in prison,” she said.
A Government source said the Tories “sleepwalked” through the scandal and did not take action after Alexis Jay’s inquiry into child sexual abuse. They told the Mirror: “The Tories failed to implement a single one of the recommendations in the Alexis Jay inquiry, neither did the leader of the opposition apologise for their failure to act on the many reports and reviews published during their 14 years of government. The Tory party simply sleepwalked through this appalling scandal – and still don’t have answers for victims and survivors.”
Speaking in the Commons, Ms Badenoch yesterday claimed it was left to the Conservatives to “force” action on grooming gangs “time and time again”.
But Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said Baroness Casey’s report “sets out a timeline of failure from 2009 to 2025”. She added: “Repeated reports and recommendations that were not acted on, on child protection, on police investigations, on ethnicity data, on data sharing, on support for victims.
“For 14 of those 16 years, her party was in government, including years when she was the minister for children and families, then the minister for equalities, covering race and ethnicity issues and violence against women and girls, and I did not hear her raise any of these issues until January of this year.”
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