London, United Kingdom:
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Tuesday his government was “acting” to prevent further sexual exploitation of children by grooming gangs, after days of incendiary attacks on the issue by Elon Musk.
Starmer penned an editorial in The Sun tabloid to defend his own record dealing with sex offences against children in English towns and cities dating back decades, and argue that “far-right voices have tried to rewrite history”.
He also reiterated his opposition to holding a new public inquiry into the grooming scandal, which has hit the headlines again over the last week in large part due to Musk. It comes as European leaders have expressed growing frustration with the US tech billionaire, a key Donald Trump ally, amid his increasingly strident interventions into their domestic politics.
Set for a role in President-elect Trump’s administration, Musk has used his X platform to launch a barrage of posts assailing Starmer and other figures from his centre-left Labour party over the grooming gangs.
He has accused Starmer – previously head of the country’s prosecution service — and other Labour politicians of complicity in the scandal, which first emerged more than a decade ago.Â
It involved the long-term, widespread sexual abuse of primarily white British girls by men of mostly South Asian origin in various northern English towns.
Official reports into how police, prosecutors and social workers failed to halt the rapes and other abuse found that in some cases officials wanted to avoid appearing racist.
None of the probes into the scandal singled Starmer out for blame or found that he tried to block prosecutions due to concerns over alleged Islamophobia.
‘Uncover the truth’
The issue has long been seized upon by far-right UK figures, including notorious agitator Tommy Robinson.
Musk has praised the one-time football hooligan and said Robinson should be released from an 18-month jail term he received for repeated contempt of court offences. The X owner and some opposition UK politicians are now demanding a new inquiry into the grooming gangs, despite a broader years-long national probe into child sexual exploitation concluding in 2022.
They and other critics, including whistleblowers, have argued child sexual exploitation by grooming gangs remains ongoing.Â
In his op-ed, Starmer noted his government would implement various reforms recommended by the national inquiry, led by safeguarding specialist Alexis Jay.
“We know what is needed — action, not further delay,” he said.
Interior minister Yvette Cooper told parliament on Monday that the new curbs will include prosecuting professionals who work with children if they fail to report claims of sexual abuse, under a mandatory reporting rule.
Cooper said the government would also make grooming an aggravating factor in child sex offenders’ sentencings and create a new police performance framework “so these crimes are taken far more seriously”.
In a BBC interview on Tuesday, Jay urged ministers to press ahead with implementing her reforms rather than holding a new inquiry. Others disagree.
The Times newspaper, which first uncovered the extent of the grooming gangs with a series of stories starting in 2011, said a new probe “can fully uncover the truth”.
“A new national inquiry is needed to explore where and how these gangs operated. It must not skirt around sensitive subjects, including ethnicity,” it argued in an editorial.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)