Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is set to make an announcement on “child sexual exploitation” this afternoon following a deluge of calls for a Public Inquiry into Britain’s grooming gangs scandal.
Cooper will be addressing the Commons at around 5.30pm today – just hours after Sir Keir Starmer spoke to reporters about the gangs at a press conference in Surrey.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper will address the Commons at around 5.30pm
PA
A Government spokesman said: “No child should ever suffer sexual abuse or exploitation and it is paramount we do more to protect vulnerable children – which is why we are working at pace across Government to drive forward real action to implement the recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, chaired by Professor Alexis Jay.
“The comprehensive independent inquiry ran for seven years and continues to work with survivors of these heinous crimes – and this government is committed to working closely with survivors and expert groups like Act on IICSA.”
The IICSA described child sexual abuse as an “epidemic” and found there were “extensive failures” in the way child sexual exploitation by criminal gangs was tackled – with police and authorities potentially downplaying the scale of abuse over concerns about negative publicity.
The scale of the scandal re-entered the public eye a few weeks ago when court transcripts showing the details of the crimes began circulating on Musk’s social media platform X.
MORE ON BRITAIN’S GROOMING GANGS SHAME:
Starmer has said the grooming gangs scandal ‘doesn’t need more research… it just needs action’
PA
Then, GB News revealed how Labour’s Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips had told authorities in Oldham to “take their own approach” rather than commit to a full-scale national inquiry.
The grooming gangs outcry has led to questions, claims and accusations being laid at the Prime Minister’s door – with his record as Director of Public Prosecutions from 2008 to 2013 coming under heavy fire.
Asked today by GB News’ Political Editor Christopher Hope whether he was “afraid” of whether a Public Inquiry “might expose his failings during his role as DPP”, Starmer pointed out how Chopper had been “quizzing him at the time” throughout his five-year stint in the role.
He said he had “changed the system” because he could “see some of the things that were going wrong” – and put down calls for an inquiry, saying the scandal “doesn’t need more research… it just needs action”.
Labour’s top brass have also been ramping up the rhetoric against Musk today – Wes Streeting, the first Minister to speak out on the X owner on Friday, said the tech tycoon should try a “social media detox”.
Streeting told the BBC: “I think he should probably have a new year’s resolution for a social media detox.
“We are spending far too much time worrying about what someone in America has got to say about something they know little about here in the UK.
“What I do think is shameful is that, whereas we would have seen universal outcry across the political spectrum on this sort of rhetoric and this sort of attack on a good colleague like Jess Phillips… instead we have seen a combination of silent indifference from the more decent Conservatives and, worse still, active complicity from other Conservatives.”
Asked whether the Government should leave X, Streeting replied: “We want to get our message across on our terms to the public where they are.
“So long as the Prime Minister, the leader of my party, is happy for us to continue posting on X, I will continue to do so – and the moment he takes a decision otherwise I would absolutely go along with that.”
