Elon Musk’s attack on the government’s handling of grooming gangs is “misjudged and certainly misinformed”, Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said.
Tech multi-billionaire Musk has posted a series of messages on his social media site X, accusing Sir Keir Starmer of failing to prosecute gangs that systematically groomed and raped young girls, and calling for safeguarding minister Jess Phillips to be jailed.
Asked about his comments, Streeting said “this government takes the issue of child sexual exploitation incredibly seriously”.
He invited Musk to “roll up his sleeves and work with us” against rape gangs.
The Tories have also criticised Musk for “sharing things that are factually inaccurate”.
While visiting a care home in Carlisle on Friday, Streeting said Labour was getting “on with the job” of implementing the recommendations of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse led by Professor Alexis Jay “in full”.
He told reporters: “Some of the criticisms Elon Musk has made I think are misjudged and certainly misinformed.
“But we’re willing to work with Elon Musk who I think has got a big role to play with his social media platform to help us and other countries tackle these serious issues.
“If he wants to work with us and roll his sleeves up, we’d welcome that.”
Musk, a key adviser to US President-elect Donald Trump, has accused Sir Keir of failing to properly prosecute rape gangs while director of public prosecutions (DPP), and has repeatedly retweeted Reform UK and Conservative MPs calling for a national inquiry.
He also suggested safeguarding minister Jess Phillips “deserves to be in prison” after she rejected a request for the Home Office to order a public inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham. She said the council should commission a local inquiry instead, as happened in Rotherham and Telford.
The decision was criticised by several senior Tories, despite the previous Conservative government turning down a similar request in 2022.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has called for a full national public inquiry into what she called the UK’s “rape gangs scandal”.
But the party has also criticised Musk for “sharing things that are factually inaccurate” and distanced itself from his call for Phillips to be jailed.
Alicia Kearns – who shadows Phillips as the Conservative spokesperson on safeguarding – told BBC Radio 5 Live Musk had “fallen prone” to sharing things on his X platform “without critically assessing them”.
She accused Musk of “drawing away attention from the survivors and from the victims” of rape gangs, and “lionising people like [far-right activist] Tommy Robinson – which is frankly dangerous”.
Meanwhile, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage praised Musk as “an absolute hero figure” and “very helpful to our cause” on Friday. The two men met at Trump’s Florida retreat last month.
He told the BBC that Musk had not donated to his party, but that “he’s fully in support of us, he wants us to win the next election”. He said that Musk “has said he’s minded to give us some money if there’s a legal way to do it”.
Police figures from 2023 reveal that group-based child sexual abuse accounted for 3.7% of all sexual offences against children reported to police.
According to the data, 26% of group-based child sexual abuse happened within families, compared with 17% involving groups including grooming gangs.
Schools, clubs and religious institutions accounted for 9%.
There have been numerous investigations into the systematic rape of girls and young women by organised gangs, including in Rotherham, Cornwall, Derbyshire and Bristol.
Inquiries into Greater Manchester Police’s (GMP) handling of historical child sex abuse cases in Manchester, Oldham and Rochdale have also been carried out.
Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham said tackling grooming gangs was “not something to be politicised”.
“We’ve done this when others were looking in a different direction,” Burnham added.
“This is something to be faced up to fully and unflinchingly in my view.”
Earlier on Friday, health minister Andrew Gwynne suggested Musk “ought to focus” on US politics, where he is set to act as an unelected adviser to the Trump administration on cutting federal spending.
Speaking to LBC Radio, Gwynne added that child grooming was a “very serious issue”, pointing to previous investigations which had taken place into sexual abuse scandals.
“There comes a point where we don’t need more inquiries, and had Elon Musk really paid attention to what’s been going on in this country, he might have recognised that there have already been inquiries,” he said.
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse (IICSA), which published its final report in 2022, described the sexual abuse of children as an “epidemic that leaves tens of thousands of victims in its poisonous wake”.
It knitted several previous inquiries together alongside its own investigations.
Professor Jay said in November she felt “frustrated” that none of her report’s 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.”
