To the Commons, where Reform MP Lee Anderson has taken a pop at Labour over Britain’s grooming gang scandal. First blasting Home Office minister Jess Phillips for not backing a full national inquiry, Anderson went on to question whether she was ‘part of the cover up’. Then the Ashfield MP took to Twitter to slam the lefty lot for their ‘weak’ handling of the matter. ‘Labour MPs shouted “shame” at me today when I asked this question,’ he wrote scathingly. ‘Sorry, minister, but the shame is with you.’ Shots fired!
This afternoon Anderson described how ‘thousands of young, white British working class girls have been raped, tortured and abused by Pakistani grooming gangs’. Yet, the Reform politician argued, the Birmingham Yardley MP and her government are still not in favour of a full national inquiry into the scandal. ‘All I want to know is, Mr Speaker,’ the Ashfield politician continued, ‘is she part of the cover up?’
Jumping furiously to her feet, Phillips first told Anderson that his question ‘really doesn’t deserve a response’. Going on, however, the Labour minister raged:
I have spent my entire career helping… I wonder how many victims he has sat and held hands with in court of grooming gangs. How many he has gone round to their house in the morning to get them out of bed, to get them into a courtroom? There is absolutely no way that I would be part of any cover up.
But Anderson isn’t the only one frustrated by Labour’s decision not to hold a national inquiry into the issue. At the start of the month, Starmer’s government instead proposed a £5 million fund to support ‘victim-centred, locally-led inquiries’ – an announcement which led to widespread criticism. Tory frontbencher Katie Lam fumed that local reviews aren’t sufficient and accused the government of ‘watering them down even further’, while Sir Trevor Phillips, ex-chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, has also blasted the government’s approach to the scandal as ‘utterly shameful’. Ouch.
Will Labour reconsider calls for a national probe? Don’t hold your breath…
Watch the clip here:
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