Kemi Badenoch has blamed “peasants” from “sub-communities” within foreign countries for the grooming gangs scandal.
Repeating calls for a national inquiry into the scandal, the Conservative Party leader said hearing victims’ accounts was “quite shocking” and insisted cultural issues surrounding the problem need to be examined.
Speaking to GB News, she said: “One is on the perpetrators’ side: where do these abusers come from? There’s a lot of misinformation, there’s a lot of generalisation and many innocent people will end up being grouped in with them.”
“But there is a systematic pattern of behaviour, not even just from one country, but from sub-communities within those countries.
“People with a particular background, work background. People with a very poor background, a sort of peasant background, very, very rural, almost cut off from even the home origin countries that they might have been in.
“They’re not necessarily first generation. The jobs that they were doing, taxi drivers, jobs which allowed them to exhibit this predatory behaviour. That is just one side.”
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The government has so far refused calls for a national review, insisting it is focused on implementing recommendations from professor Alexis Jay’s 2022 report.
Speaking in the House of Commons on Monday afternoon, safeguarding minister Jess Phillips said the implementation of recommendations made by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) will be completed “as quickly as can possibly be done”.
Phillips told MPs: “We will work absolutely at pace with the stakeholders, including the victims and also [former inquiry chair] professor Alexis Jay, to make sure that what was intended by those recommendations can happen.
“I will do it as quickly as can possibly be done, but I will not do what has previously been done by the previous government and just say ‘yeah sure’ and leave it to chance.”
Badenoch’s comments come as the Labour MP for Rotherham has joined calls for a national inquiry into grooming gangs.
Sarah Champion, a select committee chair and former frontbencher, said child sexual abuse was “endemic” in Britain and “needs to be recognised as a national priority”.
Champion is the latest Labour politician to call for a national inquiry into child sexual exploitation after Dan Carden, the Labour MP for Liverpool Walton.
On Monday, Paul Waugh, the Labour MP for Rochdale, also backed a further inquiry on the condition it had the support of victims and survivors.
Waugh told BBC Politics North West: “I’m not against a national enquiry but it has got to have some key caveats.
“First, is it supported by victims because they are the people who have told their stories and it took a lot of bravery to tell those stories?”
“They fought for justice for many years, are they going to have to re-experience their trauma every time they explain this?
“They have done this time and time again.”
Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, has said he would not “stand against” a further review.
Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here.
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Source: Politics
