Defiant Jess Phillips says Elon Musk is ‘wealthy man’ who ‘is aware of completely nothing’ about grooming gangs

Jess Phillips says she has worried for her safety in the days following vile online comments from Elon Musk.

And she said the erratic tech billionaire “knows absolutely nothing” about grooming gangs – accusing Mr Musk of trying to “silence women like me”.

Ms Phillips, the Safeguarding Minister said a “few days of madness” was “nothing compared to the decades sat in police stations with girls bleeding from a battering that they’ve taken from a grooming gang.

“So I’ll just put on my big girl pants and just suck it up.”

In recent days the world’s richest man made a string of attacks on the UK Government over its handling of the grooming gangs scandal.

Mr Musk in particular targeted Ms Phillips, who he said “deserves to be in prison” for denying requests for the Home Office to lead a public inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham.

Ms Phillips told ITV News last night the intervention had “turned her world upside down.”

“The thing that annoys me most about it is it takes up so much bandwidth of my time from a man who knows absolutely nothing about the subject he’s talking about.”

She added: “I mean, I don’t know what Elon Musk knows about it, but I don’t know if it happens on Mars.”

She also told the BBC: “I’m no stranger to people who don’t know what they’re talking about trying to silence women like me.”

Ms Phillips told ITV her initial instinct was to approve Oldham Council’s request to hold a Home Office Inquiry into abuse that happened in the town.

But she said she wanted to secure a similar process for Oldham as had been seen previously in Telford’s locally led inquiry, which was “the only one that has ever done anything to actually change the council, the local police, the local CPS.”

“A Home Office led inquiry, that is not what I have seen work,” she said. “I have seen the alternative work, and so I will base my decisions on evidence, not on a very rich man in America.”

Asked if she worried about her safety, she said: “Of course I worry about my safety. Of course, and you have to, anyone who has worked in the fields of violence against women and girls.

“Risk is dynamic and I have to take account of the risks in my life and this is one of them currently.”