Labour ‘dropped grooming gangs inquiries to avoid offending Pakistanis'
Labour dropped its plans for five local grooming gang inquiries for fear of offending its Pakistani voters, Sir Trevor Phillips has claimed.
Sir Trevor, the former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), said Labour's response to the grooming gangs scandal was 'utterly shameful' because it was 'so obviously political' to avoid offending a particular demographic of voters.
The broadcaster, who previously stood be a Labour candidate for London mayor, said the move risked providing an 'open goal' to Right-wing critics of the party's policies on immigration.
His comments came after the Government dropped a commitment to provide £5 million to support up to five initial inquiries modelled on the previous judge-led one into grooming gangs in Telford.
Jess Phillips, a Home Office minister, announced that 'following feedback' the Government would adopt a 'flexible approach' where the money would be available for local councils to use as they wished to support grooming gang work.
She said that this could mean full independent local inquiries, but could also mean 'more bespoke work, including local victims' panels or locally led audits of the handling of historical cases'.
The Conservatives accused Labour of watering down their response to the grooming gangs inquiry in an announcement just 45 minutes before Parliament broke for recess.
Home Office sources said it was 'patently false' to claim they had watered down its commitment and insisted that the change did not necessarily mean that five inquiries would not go ahead but ministers had decided to not be prescriptive following the local consultation.
Speaking on Times Radio, Sir Trevor said: 'What the government is doing on [grooming gangs] is utterly, utterly shameful. Utterly shameful. And it is so obviously political. People in government who are responsible for this, who are in other ways completely decent people, should really be ashamed of themselves.
'Because it's so obvious that they're not doing this because of the demographic of the people involved, as Katie Lam, the Tory MP, said yesterday, largely Pakistani Muslim in background, and also in Labour-held seats and councils who would be offended by it.
'That's clearly the reason that they're not pursuing this. And it is utterly shameful, given what has been done to these children by these men. I cannot tell you how cross I am about it.
'I think part of the problem is that the centre-Left has put all sorts of barriers around what it can talk about, what it may speak out about.
'In the same way as we have this problem here, in the United States, the Democrats have had almost nothing to say about, for example, immigration, had nothing very much to say about some of the barriers on freedom of speech on campuses and so on, because they're embarrassed by it.
'And it has presented an absolute open goal to people like Trump and JD Vance [the US vice-president]. That's the problem.'
Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, rejected claims the Government had watered down plans for inquiries into grooming gangs, after it was confirmed councils will be able to choose how to use a £5 million national fund.
'We haven't [watered them down]. What we're doing is working with local areas to make sure that they have the tools that they need to be able to tackle this problem. If they need the tools to do proper inquiries, we'll make sure that they are available,' she said.
'We know that the most important thing is that local services have proper systems in place to understand what is happening in their areas and to be able to act very very quickly to recognise the warning signs and to move fast'.
On Tuesday, Ms Phillips said the Home Office was developing a new best-practice framework to support 'local authorities that want to undertake victim-centred local inquiries or related work'.
A Home Office source said: 'The framework for local areas to be identified for inquiries will be set out shortly and will be informed by the Baroness Casey audit, which is looking at the scale, ethnicity and locations of grooming gangs exploitation across the country.
'Arrests for child sexual exploitation and grooming have increased in the last nine months and following our action with police forces, cases where no further action was previously taken are now being looked at again. This Government will leave no stone unturned for victims of child sexual abuse.'
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