Britain’s national ‘grooming’ scandal took another turn for the worse when it was revealed that minister Jess Phillips declined to meet with crisis-hit municipal chiefs presiding over a child sex abuse scandal in their town.
As Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, Phillips was invited to meet with local council bosses in Oldham, Greater Manchester to discuss how for decades mostly Pakistani-heritage men organised the rape of thousands of predominantly white girls. In response—”due to the demands on our time”—neither Phillips nor, she claimed, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper was able to attend a meeting. Instead, she suggested to the executive that
engagement with other areas that have commissioned successful local inquiries would be more helpful for you at this stage.
Journalist Charlie Peters, who has led much of the media investigation into this long-term national crime wave, has now obtained a copy of the letter setting out Phillips’ indifference, published late on Thursday, April 24th. Phillips’ evasion is the latest example of Westminster’s willingness to avoid the subject.
Support for a national inquiry continues to grow, not least because one would have the power to compel witness testimony, increasing the chance of holding people to account—both the rapists and the public authorities accused of colluding in a cover-up.
At the heart of the problem is the way that the groomers—so-called because they pose as the ‘boyfriends’ of vulnerable children before subjecting them to group sexual abuse—have evaded justice, lest arrests and prosecutions damage multiculturalism and ‘community relations’ in Britain. While London-based judicial inquiries into historic injustices seem ten-a-penny at the moment, earlier this year Prime Minister Keir Starmer dismissed calls for a national investigation into group-based sexual violence as ‘far right’.
It took Cooper’s office two months to reply to Oldham’s chief executive. Eventually, a meeting did place, and the town was promised a slice of national discretionary funds with which to finance its own local investigation.
