Labour’s Jess Phillips—Britain’s grotesquely misnamed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls—revealed in a TV interview that no decision had been made on appointing a chair of the independent inquiry into the so-called grooming gangs scandal.
More than a month on from Keir Starmer’s U-turn that led to the government accepting the need for a national inquiry with statutory powers to compel witnesses, Phillips conceded both the current vague state of the investigation and—bizarrely, given her official brief—commenting on it is “not something I am able to do now.” She also stated that the inquiry was just one of 12 recommendations from the Casey Review, and not the most important.
Phillips’ stumbling interview on Thursday, July 17th, made it look like any announcement to Parliament on the national investigation into gangs of predominantly Pakistani-heritage paedophile rapists will now be delayed until after the summer parliamentary recess.
It’s not the first time Labour has delayed progress towards justice for the thousands of victims of this heinous crime.
