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The Conservatives could have “done more” to crack down on sex abuse gangs while in government, the UK’s shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick has conceded.
Britain has been convulsed in recent days by a dispute over the handling of historic grooming gang cases after tech billionaire Elon Musk called for a new national inquiry — an idea endorsed by the Conservatives.
But Professor Alexis Jay, the former chair of a seven-year national inquiry into child sexual abuse in England and Wales, which reported in 2022, on Tuesday criticised the “politicisation” of the issue and warned that a fresh probe could delay the implementation of her recommendations.
Jenrick defended the previous Conservative administration’s record, but he told the BBC’s Today programme: “Could we have done more, should we do more now? Yes, absolutely — we have to root this out.”
His comments follow UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer accusing Conservative politicians of “amplifying what the far right is saying” on child sexual exploitation, after failing to act “for 14 long years”.
Jenrick insisted his party’s new call for a national inquiry into rape gangs — which it did not launch itself while in government — had “absolutely nothing to do with Elon Musk” having recently issued the same demand.
Jenrick argued that Jay’s review into the wider issue of child sexual exploitation only looked at the rape gang scandal in six towns, whereas grooming gangs may have operated in up to 50 towns.
He also defended his party’s criticism of the current Labour government’s decision not to launch a local inquiry into the scandal in Oldham, a town in Greater Manchester.
Challenged over the refusal of the last Tory government — in which he was a minister — to launch an inquiry into rape gangs in Oldham, he said the previous request came from a “small number of councillors”, while the recent request rejected by Labour ministers was from the council itself.
The Home Office has recommended the council launch a local inquiry, pointing to precedents in towns such as Telford, instead of a central government review.
Jenrick, who competed for the Tory party leadership last summer, stood by his controversial comments last week that mass migration of people to the UK from “alien cultures” with “medieval attitudes towards women” had contributed to the scandal.
He said he would not “disguise” or “sanitise” his language to avoid causing offence, pointing to evidence that fear of being labelled racist had contributed to authorities failing to take action against gangs that mainly involved men of Pakistani heritage.
“I’m not going to tiptoe around this issue — that’s what got us into this mess in the first place,” Jenrick said.
He sought to dismiss as “complete nonsense” concerns raised by Samuel Kasumu, a former Tory adviser on race issues, that such remarks could incite hatred.
On Tuesday, Jay criticised people for having “waded into the argument” over the issue “in a very uninformed way”.
Jay has previously criticised the former Conservative government for failing to implement the main 20 recommendations in her 2022 report, which warned of “endemic” abuse across society.
She said that starting a new inquiry could hinder the implementation of the recommendations from her report. “It would certainly cause delays,” she told the Today programme.
“The time has passed for more inquiries. We’ve had enough of inquiries, consultations and discussions, especially for those victims and survivors . . . they clearly want action and we have set out what action is required and people should just get on with it locally and nationally.”
Jay refused to be drawn specifically on whether or not she was criticising Musk, the richest man in the world.
But she said: “I’ve certainly been very unhappy about the politicisation of child sexual exploitation and child sexual abuse in the way that many people, sometimes in a very uninformed way, have waded into the argument.”
