Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has called for a full national public inquiry into the UK’s “rape gangs scandal”.
It comes after Home Office minister Jess Phillips rejected Oldham Council’s request for a government-led inquiry into historical child sexual exploitation – saying the council should lead it instead.
Her decision, taken in October, was reported by GB News on Wednesday and then picked up by Elon Musk on his social media platform X, and several senior Tories.
Shadow Home Office minister Chris Philp told the BBC the time had come for a national inquiry, with powers to “compel witnesses to come forward”, to get “to the truth”.
The Home Office has been approached for comment.
A Labour spokesperson said: “The Home Office supports police investigations and independent inquiries to get truth and justice for victims.”
They said Labour had supported the 2022 national inquiry into child sexual abuse under Professor Alexis Jay, adding the government was “working at pace” to implement its recommendations.
Posting on X, Badenoch said: “Trials have taken place all over the country in recent years but no one in authority has joined the dots. 2025 must be the year that the victims start to get justice.”
There have been numerous investigations into the systematic rape of young women by organised gangs, including in Rotherham, Cornwall, Derbyshire, Rochdale and Bristol.
The sexual abuse of young girls by grooming gangs has fuelled a number of far-right campaigns which have focused on cases of large-scale abuse carried out mainly by men of Pakistani descent.
An inquiry into abuse in Rotherham found 1,400 children had been sexually abused over a 16-year period, predominantly by British Pakistani men.
An investigation in Telford found that up to 1,000 girls had been abused over 40 years – and that some cases had not been investigated because of “nervousness about race”.
In Oldham, an inquiry was set up after rumours spread online that children were being groomed in council homes, shisha bars and by taxi drivers.
The report found there was no evidence of “widespread” child sex abuse in those settings, or of a cover-up by the council, but the review did point out other serious failings among safeguarding services in the area.
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse (IICSA), which published its final report in 2022, knitted several of these inquiries together alongside its own investigations.
Professor Alexis Jay, who led the inquiry, said in November she felt “frustrated” that none of its 20 recommendations to tackle abuse had been implemented more than two years later.
She said: “It’s a difficult subject matter, but it is essential that there’s some public understanding of it.
“But we can only do what we can to press the government to look at the delivery of all of this.
“It doesn’t need more consultation, it does not need more research or discussion, it just needs to be done.”
Philp told Radio 4’s World at One programme he supported Oldham Council’s call for a government-led inquiry, despite the previous Conservative government rejecting a similar request from an Oldham councillor in 2022.
But, he added, “rape gangs” were “a bigger question than just Oldham”.
Asked why the Tory government had not conducted a national public inquiry into such gangs, Philp pointed to IICSA but added “I don’t think it was, frankly, as comprehensive on this topic as it should have been”.
Philp said: “We need a proper national inquiry to look at all of these issues across all of the towns affected. And I’m afraid to say there are something like 15 to 25 different towns involved, covering thousands and thousands of victims.”
Questions about the conduct of local authorities, the police and social care needed answering on a national scale, he argued. Philp also did not rule out the inquiry looking at the role of Sir Keir Starmer, who was director of public prosecutions from 2008 to 2013.
He said an inquiry should examine why perpetrators in “grooming gangs and rape gangs” appeared to be “overwhelmingly of South Asian background”.
In a post on X, shadow safeguarding minister Alicia Kearns urged Phillips to release “the ethnicity data” the Conservatives had begun collecting, about people arrested for and charged over child sexual exploitation and grooming.
Responding to Badenoch, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said: “Talk is cheap. The Conservatives had 14 years in government to launch an inquiry.
“The establishment has failed the victims of grooming gangs on every level.”
Oldham inquiry
In 2022, an independent inquiry by Greater Manchester Combined Authority found that vulnerable children were left exposed to sexual exploitation in Oldham because of “serious failings” by the police and council.
But the report drew criticism for its limited scope, focusing on cases between 2011 and 2014.
In July, Oldham Council, which is led by a Labour minority administration, asked the Home Office to lead a fuller inquiry into historical abuse in the area.
Phillips rejected the request, pointing to council-run inquiries in Rotherham and Telford, which she argued had greater legitimacy because they were locally commissioned and delivered.
In a letter to the council, the safeguarding minister said she recognised the “strength of feeling” but believed it was “for Oldham Council alone to decide to commission an inquiry into child sexual exploitation locally, rather than for the Government to intervene”.
Conservative Oldham councillor Lewis Quigg said the decision was “just not good enough”.
An Oldham Council spokesman said: “Survivors sit at the heart of our work to end child sexual exploitation.
“Whatever happens in terms of future inquiries, we have promised them that their wishes will be paramount, and we will not renege on that pledge.”
On X, Musk accused Sir Keir of failing to properly prosecute “rape gangs” while he was director of public prosecutions.
But the tech billionaire was himself accused of “rewriting history” by Nazir Afzal, who Sir Keir appointed as special prosecutor for child abuse and sexual exploitation, and oversaw numerous convictions against other grooming gangs.
Mr Azfal said: “Under Starmer’s leadership we finally tackled these abuses, which had previously been handled poorly.”
Musk – who has been picked by US President-elect Donald Trump to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency – also criticised Phillips, stating she “deserves to be in prison” for her response to Oldham Council.
