Starmer claims new inquiry will delay action on grooming gangs until 2031
Badenoch says this is not about Starmer. It is about the victims. “Be a leader, not a lawyer.”
She says the Labour party has adopted the APPG definition of Islamophobia. That says talking about grooming gangs can be Islamophobic. So will Labour consider it support for this?
Starmer says he will call out anything stopping people coming forward.
A new inquiry will take time. All the institutions will have to give evidence. It will delay progress until 2031, he says. He says people know what the problem is.
Key events
Asked about Tulip Siddiq, Starmer says the independent adviser into ministerial interests is establishing the facts. He will not give a running commentary, he says.
Josh Newbury (Lab) asks if the PM will meet retired miners to discuss how their pension payments can be improved.
Starmer says he understands why retired miners are unhappy about the way the fund is being run and distributed. He says the government is looking at this.
Josh Fenton-Glyn (Lab) asks if the government will stop courts decided that abusers who are parents should continue to have access to their children.
Starmer says this is being reviewed.
Andrew George (Lib Dem) asks if the PM will meet Cornish MPs to discuss the housing problem in the county.
Starmer says the excessive number of short-term lets and second homes in places like Cornwall creates a problem. He says some measures have been introduced to help with this, but he says he will arrange for a ministerial meeting with Cornish MPs.
Meg Hillier (Lab) asks if the PM agrees on the need for clear targets for social housing units.
Starmer says the government will deliver 1.5m new homes. And money has been set aside for affordable homes. And right to buy is being reformed, to make the scheme fairer, he says.
Mark Seward (Lab) says this year will mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. He asks what the government is doing on Holocaust education.
Starmer says the government has recently allocated more money for combating antisemitism, and is funding a Holocaust memorial.
Marie Goldman (Lib Dem) asks about a constituent who is a pharmacist whose costs are not fully covered by the NHS. She refers to the price he has to pay for drugs.
Starmer says pharmacists play a vital role. He says he will consider the details of this case if Goldman passes them on.
Stephen Flynn, the SNP leader at Westminster, starts by commending Starmer for his responses to Badenoch. Turning to the winter fuel payments cuts, he asks if Starmer understands why people are so opposed to that.
Starmer says the SNP government has the power and money it needs to do what it wants in Scotland.
Ed Davey, the leader of the Lib Dems, quotes what Andrew Dilnot said at the health committee this morning and he urges Starmer to speed up the care inquiry.
Starmer says he hopes the Lib Dems will contribute to finding a cross-party approach to this.
Davey turns to Elon Musk, and asks if the government will act to reform party funding rules.
Starmer says all MPs enjoyed seeing Nigel Farage back Musk on Sunday, only for Musk to say he should be replaced as Reform UK leader. He says the government is looking at the rules on party donations.
Starmer accuses Badenoch of ‘bandwagon-jumping’ and ‘non-leadership’ over grooming gangs
Badenoch says the government can do two things at the same time. She says, by not having an inquiry, the PM is enabling people who want to smear British Muslims. This is one of the worst scandals in British history. She says Starmer is going to tell his MPs to vote against an inquiry into rape cases in their constituencies. She lists some of the towns where abuse took place.
Starmer says Badenoch did not say anything about this in eight years as an MP. But she is doing it now, after spending a lot of time on social media over Christmas. He says the Tories cannot kill the government’s bill and protect children at the same time. The government will deal with a problem highlighted by the Sara Sharif murder, he says. And he urges Tory MPs to ignore the “shortsighted, misguided bandwagon-jumping approach of the non-leadership of the leader of the opposition”.
Starmer claims new inquiry will delay action on grooming gangs until 2031
Badenoch says this is not about Starmer. It is about the victims. “Be a leader, not a lawyer.”
She says the Labour party has adopted the APPG definition of Islamophobia. That says talking about grooming gangs can be Islamophobic. So will Labour consider it support for this?
Starmer says he will call out anything stopping people coming forward.
A new inquiry will take time. All the institutions will have to give evidence. It will delay progress until 2031, he says. He says people know what the problem is.
Badenoch says:
It is very possible to have shorter inquiries, especially if they are covering areas that have not been looked at yet.
He says an inquiry should see if there were racial reasons why people were not being prosecuted.
Starmer says, as DPP, he authorised a mass prosecution in one of these cases. But he also demanded an explanation as to why offenders had not been prosecuted in the past.
Badenoch says grooming gangs were a Home Office matter.
She says, if Starmer refuses a new inquiry, people will think there is a cover-up.
Starmer says:
We have to focus on the victims and survivors, and it isn’t helping this sort of lies and misinformation and slinging of mud doesn’t help them.
The last inquiry took seven years. A new one would run until 2031, he says.
And he repeats the point about not understanding why the Tories want to block a safeguarding bill tonight.
Starmer says, during 8 years as MP, including as children’s minister, Badenoch never raised grooming gangs in Commons
Badenoch says Starmer was wrong to say the Tories did not act on the findings of the child abuse inquiry. The party accepted 18 of the 20 recommendations. And the grooming gangs taskforce led to many arrests. But “no one has joined the dots”, she says. She claims it is possible to act and hold an inquiry at the same time.
Starmer says the Tories did not act on the inquiry’s recommendations. Mandatory reporting was not introduced. Starmer says he called for this 11 years ago.
Badenoch was children’s minister, and women and equalities minister. He says he cannot recall her ever raising this issue in the Commons. He will withdraw if he is wrong. But he thinks she did not raise it in eight years as an MP.
Kemi Badenoch asks if Starmer is confident that we know the full extent of rape gang activity.
Starmer says what is needed now is action. We know that “warped ideas, myths and stereotypes” were at the heart of the problem.
But what cannot be tolerated is voting down a bill that will protect children. It will protect children who are out of school from being at risk of abusers, he says.
Starmer says ‘reasonable people’ can take different views on case for new inquiry – but he says it would delay action
Neil Coyle (Lab) offers his condolences to Starmer for the loss of his brother over Christmas. And he asks about the children’s wellbeing and schools bill.
Starmer says there have been a number of inquiries already into child abuse. He says “reasonable people” can take different views on the case for another. He says he met survivors this morning. They were worried about a new inquiry delaying action.
But he says the Tories should withdraw their wrecking amendment.
Keir Starmer starts by wishing all MPs a happy new year.
And he says MPs’ thoughts are with those affected by the recent flooding.
The elective reform plan has been published, he says, to deal with the waiting list backlog left by the Tories.
Starmer faces Badenoch at PMQs
PMQs is starting soon.
Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.
Andrew Norfolk was one of the journalists who did most to expose the problem with grooming gangs more than a decade ago, when he was working on the story as the Times’ chief investigative reporter.
Now retired, in an interview with his old paper he has defended Keir Starmer’s record on this issue when he was director of public prosuctions. Norfolk told the paper:
I want to put the record straight on this. It was Starmer who changed the rules to make more prosecutions possible. That happened and there was a huge increase in convictions …
There is now much greater awareness of what was happening, and where it is identified it must be tackled. Priorities, budgets, and training have all changed massively.
Norfolk also said he was amazed that Elon Musk had been able to able to turn this into a new story when so much has been written about it before.
It just seems that Elon Musk clicks his fingers, shoots his mouth off and the whole British establishment responds. I find it surprising that man wields that much power.
But Norfolk also said he thought more research was needed into why Muslim men played such a prominent role in grooming. In her write-up of the interview, Fiona Hamilton said:
However, Norfolk strongly believes that independent research of a range of issues is essential to understanding the phenomenon. Such issues included Islamic jurisprudence and how it can impact on the treatment of girls and women, and ingrained factors in some communities such as arranged and cousin marriages and how they impact on relationships.
“Why one very small sub-section of one minority ethnic community was so overwhelmingly, disproportionately responsible for these crimes — that is work that would be vital in bringing about understanding that could enable changes to take place. How do you address it and stamp it out if you don’t understand why it is happening in the first place?”
