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Greater Manchester’s mayor Andy Burnham has said he would support a “limited” inquiry into the UK’s grooming gangs scandal, after the Labour government voted down holding a new probe.
Burnham on Thursday said a fresh investigation would allow “people to give evidence who then may have charges to answer and be held to account”.
“I will add my voice to this and say I do think there is the case for a limited national inquiry that draws on a review like the one that I commissioned and the one we’ve seen in Rotherham, and the one we’ve seen in Telford,” he told BBC Radio Manchester.
Burnham’s comments come after the government voted down the Conservative’s call for a new national investigation on Wednesday. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer ordered Labour MPs to block the vote in order to prevent the children’s wellbeing and schools bill falling through.
While the mayor spoke of his frustration with the MPs’ decision, Burnham rejected claims that the government had looked away from the issue and that it was “right to reject that form of opportunism”.
He added that he had written to previous home secretaries in regards to reviews he commissioned across the North but they had shown “no interest”.
Burnham acknowledged there was a difference between a local level and a statutory public inquiry after some Rochdale police officers refused to take part in the independent review into child sexual abuse he commissioned in Manchester, Rochdale and Oldham in 2017.
The review into historic grooming cases involving sexual exploitation of girls by gangs of mainly British-Pakistani men found that authorities had failed to protect children from perpetrators in their respective areas.
“There will always be limitations with what you can do with a local review. The review team could not compel someone to speak to them. That is something I couldn’t do at my level,” he said.
The call for a new inquiry came after technology billionaire Elon Musk demanded an investigation on his social media platform X as he launched strong attacks on Starmer and his safeguarding minister Jess Phillips.
Labour has rejected calls for a new inquiry, saying it will enact the reforms set out by the Jay Review, a seven-year independent inquiry into child sex abuse.
