Tories accused of ‘shameful’ failure after Kemi Badenoch dismisses grooming gangs document
Labour accused the former Conservative government of having “shamefully failed to implement a single recommendation” from Alexis Jay’s Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse
Kemi Badenoch has suggested she is not interested in looking at the Tories’ failures to get justice for grooming gang survivors.
The Tory leader said she doesn’t want “to build a time machine and go back in time to see what extra we could have done better”.
But Labour accused the former Conservative government of having “shamefully failed to implement a single recommendation” from Alexis Jay’s Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA).
Ms Badenoch made the comments at a press conference today where she suggested the Tories were the leading party in wanting justice for survivors. She called the event as the Labour Government’s efforts to establish a national inquiry have stalled since Keir Starmer announced the probe in June.
In October, the final two candidates to chair the inquiry dropped out of the process amid a row over their connections to the police and social services.
During the presser, also attended by survivors of the scandal, Ms Badenoch urged the Government to adopt its draft terms of reference for the inquiry, which say the investigation should examine the ethnicity and religious background of grooming gangs and be judge-led. Ms Badenoch said mosques and state bodies should give evidence if that’s where the inquiry leads.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp also told the press conference that dual nationals found to have been involved in grooming gangs should have their British citizenship removed and be deported. The senior Conservative said: “Dual nationals should be stripped of their British citizenship, and they should be deported with no exceptions. We don’t want these people in our country.”
But the Tories’ faced questions over their own record in government. Former Tory Home Secretary Sajid Javid ordered an investigation into the characteristics and ethnicity of grooming gang members in 2018. In 2020, it concluded that members come from “diverse backgrounds” and said poor data collection meant it was difficult to “draw conclusions about the ethnicity of offenders”.
Asked if the former Tory government failed in improving data collection, Ms Badenoch said: “Despite a lot of work and a lot of effort, there is still more to be done. We are not in government anymore. Labour is in government, so we are asking them to do what we think needs to be done.
“Now we had an inquiry. It took years. That was the IICSA inquiry and that ended up having such a wide scope… It didn’t look into this issue specifically.”
She added: “Now we know what we know, what needs to be done here? A full National Inquiry looking at the failures of the state as well. That’s something that hasn’t really been covered.
“What did the councils do wrong? What did the police do wrong? Maybe, what did the government do wrong? That’s what we want to see. And all that’s been happening is kicking this into the long grass, lots of meetings, messing with survivors and they are fed up.
“So I’m not here to build a time machine and go back in time to see what extra we could have done better. We did what we did… What do survivors need now? That’s what we’re here to talk about.”
At the press conference, survivor Fiona Goddard said she quit the latest inquiry’s victims and survivors liaison panel in October after “not being listened to properly” and it “feeling more like a box ticking exercise”.
She added: “There were concerns over scope being expanded and the inquiry not staying true to the actual issue. The issue is grooming gangs survivors have been failed for decades now. To take the spotlight away from that issue is yet again failing survivors.”
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said the Government hopes to “update shortly” on the planned inquiry, including appointing a chair and drafting the terms of reference.
