Despite having followed Prime Minister Starmer’s orders to vote down a proposal to launch an inquiry just last week, Rotherham MP Sarah Champion and Rochdale MP Paul Waugh made u-turns on Monday, albeit with some caveats.
Champion, a former Labour frontbencher who was forced out for highlighting the issue of groups of mostly Pakistani men raping and grooming young girls, said per the BBC: “Having worked widely with victims and survivors, and front-line professionals, I have long believed that we need to fully understand the nature of this crime and the failures in the response of public bodies if we are to truly protect children.
“It is clear that nothing less than a national inquiry into the failings of those in authority to both prevent, and be accountable for their failings, in relation to grooming gangs will restore the faith in our safeguarding systems.”
However, the Rotherham MP slightly caveated her position from others, advocating that the investigations should be “locally led”, potentially opening the door to local officials continuing to cover up their failures in protecting young white girls from rape gangs, as is alleged to have happened in the past.
According to a previous report from Professor Alexis Jay, at least 1,400 girls in Rotherham were trafficked and raped by groups of mostly Pakistani men between 1997 and 2013. Other reports have found that police and other officials ignored their plight out of concern of appearing racist or stoking ethnic divisions.
Champion was joined Monday by Rochdale MP Paul Waugh, who, despite also voting down the idea just last week, said that he is “not against” a national inquiry with “some key caveats”.
Waugh argued that any inquiry must be “supported by victims” and that it “not cut across live police investigations”.
Nevertheless, the addition of MPs from grooming gang hotspots to join the ranks of those calling for an inquiry will put increased pressure on Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Starmer has attempted to argue that a fresh national inquiry would take seven years (the length of time taken for the Jay report) and that the government should focus on implementing previous recommendations rather than investigating failings. He has also tried to dismiss demands for an inquiry as being pushed by the “far-right”.
This assertion was shot down over the weekend by another Labour MP, Liverpool Walton’s Dan Carden, who said that it was “not an obsession of the far-right” that motivated him but rather a “disgust and outrage at these heinous crimes, their cover-up and the lack of action”.
Carden added that the country must “question and challenge the orthodoxy of progressive liberal multiculturalism that led to authorities failing to act.”
The country as a whole also appears to be against Starmer on the issue, with a survey finding last week that over three out of four Britons want a national inquiry into the grooming gangs and the failures of local officials.
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