Commons leader Lucy Powell:
“So I can be absolutely clear with the House today especially to the victims and survivors of child sexual abuse and grooming gangs that I am very sorry for those remarks – as I made clear over the weekend I and every member of this government want your truth to be heard wherever that truth leads. Your truly appalling experiences need to be acted on for those responsible to be accountable and face the full force of the law and for justice to be served. I would never want Mr Speaker to leave the impression that these very serious profound and far-reaching issues which I have campaigned on for many years should be shied away from and not aired – far from it. No stone will be left unturned and what the victims want first and foremost is for action to be taken and for the many many recommendations from the previous inquiries to be implemented in full including mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse something I have called for for nearly a decade.”
Powell then ironically attacked the Tories:
“Shockingly these recommendations remained sitting on the shelf until we came into government last year. Baroness Louise Casey, who conducted the no hold bars inquiry into Rotherham, is carrying out an audit on the scale nature and characteristics of grooming gangs she will be reporting soon and this will include the questions of ethnicity as well. Every police force in England Wales has been asked to look again at historic grooming gangs cases and they will be reopened where it is appropriate to get perpetrators behind bars, so I hope the House is left in no doubt Mr Speaker of my commitment to these issues and my apology to those victims for any distress I have caused.”
Will that be enough?
Red Wall Labour backbencher Jonathan Brash told GB News that Starmer should resign:
“I’m completely fed up about it, and I think it’s got to the point now where I genuinely think that, as far as the Prime Minister is concerned, it’s not a case of if, it’s when.”