The United Kingdom’s Labour Party blocked a Conservative Party amendment that would have forced a nationwide inquiry into the decades-long epidemic of migrant grooming gangs.
The Conservatives proposed an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that would compel the government to launch a national investigation into the grooming gangs that have terrorized the nation for decades, according the House of Commons records. The amendment was voted down by 364 to 111, with Labour and Conservatives voting down party lines.
“Bang on from Kemi Badenoch – Starmer’s argument against an inquiry is that government can’t do two things at once – it can’t implement previous actions and have an inquiry at the same time – that’s just obviously nonsense,” Niel O’Brien, Conservative party MP, said on X.
The vote comes days after Jess Phillips, Labour Party member and minister for the Home Office for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, blocked an inquiry by the town of Oldham into Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s conduct while overseeing the prosecution of a migrant grooming gang’s sexual abuse of children in the town from 2011 to 2014. The situation came to international attention when billionaire and Donald Trump confidant Elon Musk expressed his discontent with Phillips on X.
BREAKING: Keir Starmer will order his MPs to block a national inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal.
He may want to sweep it under the rug, but we think the victims deserve justice.
Agree? Sign the petition: https://t.co/W9aNhEgZI2 pic.twitter.com/M0RIM6YrO7
— Conservatives (@Conservatives) January 8, 2025
In 2014, the town of Rotherham found that at least 1,400 girls were sexually exploited by mostly Pakistani migrants between 1997 and 2013. The Mirror in 2018 revealed that “up to” 1,000 underage girls were raped and abused in the town of Telford, starting in the 1980s. So far, there has only been one national inquiry from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority in 2022 on the issue, which gave 20 recommendations that haven’t been fully implemented, according to Channel 4 News.
The UK’s immigration policies remain one of voters’ top concerns, according to YouGov polling from Jan. 6. As of 2022, 14% of the UK’s population was foreign-born. The Labour Party has had a historic polling collapse, according to Sky News polling released Dec. 22., with the party’s polling dipping below 27% despite winning one of the largest majorities in parliament history just five months prior.
Asylum seekers made up 4% of the foreign-born population in the UK in 2022, and a majority were from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, India and Bangladesh, according to Migration Observatory.
When asked to comment, Starmer’s office deferred the Daily Caller News Foundation to Secretary of State for Education Bridget Phillipson’s statements on a BBC Breakfast interview Wednesday morning.
The Conservative Party did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment
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