The grooming gang inquiry is becoming more chaotic by the day as people continue to step away from the process. Now pressure is mounting on safeguarding minister Jess Phillips, who has faced calls to resign over the whole palaver. Four child sex abuse survivors have dropped out of the victims’ advisory panel while the two people publicly touted to chair to the inquiry have also stepped away. Oh dear…
The situation is heating up for Phillips – after the four survivors unanimously called for her to resign over the issue. Their position was reiterated by Tory leader Kemi Badenoch during Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, who fumed that Phillips ‘should be sacked’ given the abuse victims claimed she had ‘lied to them’. Badenoch went on:
The victims have said she should be sacked. We on this side of the House believe she should be sacked, because this is about Labour failure. Labour never wanted this inquiry – we demanded it. It has been Labour-run councils – Trafford, Bradford, Blackpool – that tried to suppress the truth. It is Labour ministers attacking the victims. We’re standing up for them.
Strong stuff! Fiona Goddard was among those who pulled out of the process: she raised concerns about transparency and said that the initial consideration of social worker Annie Hudson and ex-police officer Jim Gamble for the role of inquiry chair ‘would once against be letting services mark their own homework’. After the first two resignations, Phillips wrote to the home affairs committee to deny that there could be a cover-up and claimed it was ‘untrue’ that the government was looking to dilute the focus of the probe by telling the inquiry to take a regional approach or looking beyond ‘grooming gangs’. Goddard hit back with a letter of her own that says Phillips’s claims are ‘a lie’.
And the Prime Minister has waded in too, with Sir Keir Starmer denying there was a ‘cover-up’ and defending Phillips to MPs. He has now asked Baroness Casey to help salvage the inquiry and help find a chair that survivors would trust. At the moment, it is understood that Phillips is not planning to quit – but the pressure from politicians is going nowhere. Even those on her own side are getting fed up of Phillips’s bluster, with one Labour backbencher remarking to the Times: ‘I haven’t seen her deliver anything apart from loud noise.’ Ouch.
Will Phillips jump before she is pushed any further? Watch this space…
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