Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and her team have been criticised for ‘unpleasant politics’ after appearing to claim credit for the grooming gangs inquiry announcement
The Tories have been slammed after shamelessly celebrating the announcement of a national inquiry into grooming gangs – despite doing “precisely nothing” on the issue when they were in power.
Kemi Badenoch and her team have been criticised for “unpleasant politics” after appearing to claim credit for the inquiry 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 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.”
READ MORE: Sky News host tears apart Top Tory’s ‘excuse’ for not calling grooming gangs inquiry
Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips, who before being an MP worked in women’s refuges, last night said she thought Ms Badenoch and shadow home secretary Chris Philp would not have been interested had tech billionaire Elon Musk not caught wind of the issue and mounted pressure on Keir Starmer about it on social media.
Baroness Louise Casey, the author of the bombshell grooming gangs report, hit out at the “politicisation” of the issue. She told BBC Newsnight she was “disappointed by it, to put it mildly” and wished the Tories would put aside party politics and back her report for the sake of victims.
Asked if she saw the issue being politicised in the Commons yesterday, Baroness Casey continued: “Yes, as I was leaving to actually go and do my own work on this. I just felt at that moment, really, dare I say it, that I felt the opposition (the Conservatives) could have just [said]: ‘Yes, we will all come together behind you.’
READ MORE: Grooming gang victims hope to finally get answers as bombshell report unearths failings
“Maybe there’s still time to do that. I think it’s just so important that they do. It almost doesn’t matter, right now, does it, what political party people are part of. We’ve identified there’s a problem. It’s been a problem there a long time and it’s about time we drew a line in the sand.”
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander this morning criticised the previous Tory government’s inaction after being challenged on the PM earlier this year accusing the Tories of jumping on a “bandwagon of the far-right” by suddenly calling for a national inquiry.
“I think comments were about the Conservative politicians who now have a newfound interest in this subject when they did precisely nothing when they were in government,” she told Times Radio. “They had 20 months following the publication of the Jay Report back in 2022, before the general election. And we know that the Jay Report followed the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, there were a huge number of recommendations there.
“We’re getting on and implementing those. And the people who are now playing pretty unpleasant politics around all of this, were the people that did nothing when they had an opportunity to do so.”
Speaking in the Commons, Ms Badenoch yesterday claimed it was left to the Conservatives to “force” action on grooming gangs “time and time again”. The Opposition leader said: “They accused those of us demanding justice for the victims of this scandal as and I quote ‘jumping on a far right bandwagon’, a claim the Prime Minister’s official spokesman restated this weekend, shameful. It has been left to Conservatives time and time again to force this issue.”
She added: “We went further than those recommendations. It was the Conservatives who established the grooming gangs taskforce, which supported police forces to make 807 arrests for group-based child sexual exploitation last year. So don’t tell me we did nothing.
READ MORE: Grooming gangs report: 9 things you need to know from major failings to taxi loopholeREAD MORE: Grooming gangs have ‘nowhere to hide’ Yvette Cooper vows as damning report published
“There are legitimate concerns about institutions investigating themselves, especially as some of the most egregious cases of institutional failure occurred in Labour-controlled authorities. They can moan as much as they like but the people out there believe that is why nothing has happened yet.”
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.”
Home office minister Ms Phillips, who before being an MP worked in women’s refuges, said people like Mr Starmer, a former director of public prosecution, had been working on the issue for years. Asked about the “bandwagon” comments, she told LBC: “The Prime Minister who I have to say, I remember decades ago, him being in meetings with people like me who ran rape crises for children who had been groomed, trying to make sure that the CPS was doing the right job in this.
“I think that what he was saying was that Kemi Badenoch and Chris Philp, the Shadow Home Secretary, have found themselves very newly interested in this issue. And lots of people have asked me today, ‘Oh, do you think this would be happening without Elon Musk?’ I don’t think they’d be interested without Elon Musk.
“However, there are many of us who have been ploughing this furrow and seeking to change this myself, the Home Secretary, the Prime Minister, what he was saying about the bandwagon, in that instance was, “Where have they been for all the years they were in government?”‘
After initially resisting pressure to implement a full probe, the Prime Minister over the weekend said he had read “every single word” of an independent report into child sexual exploitation by Baroness Casey and would accept her recommendation for a national investigation.
READ MORE: Join our Mirror politics WhatsApp group to get the latest updates from Westminster
