Labour voted down a “wrecking amendment” tabled by the Conservatives to their Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill on Wednesday evening after a debate which saw Reform demand the suspension of visas for Pakistanis over historic grooming gang convictions.
The final vote tally was 111 ayes to 364 noes.
Badenoch “stooped to a new low” after launching a campaign website demanding an inquiry into grooming gangs which raised funds for her party, according to Labour, who said she was “playing politics with the safety of vulnerable children”.
At a tense Prime Minister’s Questions earlier in the day, Starmer argued against another investigation into the topic saying that the Tories were seeking to politicise the issue and offering easy answers.
Badenoch (below) said a new inquiry could look at whether there was a “racial and cultural motivation to some of these crimes”, and quoted the former Labour home secretary Jack Straw who said Asian grooming gangs had seen white girls, often in the care system, as “easy meat”.
Reform UK Rupert Lowe made the racial element of the matter even more explicit by demanding the Government suspend visas for Pakistanis, adding: “The mass rape by young white working-class girls by gangs of Pakistani rapists is a rotting stain on our nation.”
Warning that a new inquiry could take until 2031 to release its findings, Starmer said: “It’s very hard for victims and survivors to come forward and explain what’s happened to them. They do not want to be rushed through this process, which is why the last one took seven years. It’s not sensible to suggest that this can be done in a hurry, on the cheap and comprehensively.”
The previous inquiry, led by Professor Alexis Jay, concluded in 2022 and none of its recommendations were implemented by the Conservatives.
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Calling on Tory MPs to defy Badenoch, Starmer added: “I urge them to think twice about following this short-sighted, misguided, bandwagon-jumping approach of the non-leadership of the leader of the opposition.”
He also challenged the Tory leader to prove she had raised the matter in Parliament when she was in government. She argued she had been unable to do so because she had never served in the Home Office.
Both the Tories and Reform UK have sought to capitalise on the renewed interest in the scandal of grooming gangs after Elon Musk (below) began posting about it obsessively over Christmas on his social media platform Twitter/X.
Starmer said that victims had been “let down” by people who turned a blind eye to claims about Asian grooming gangs because of their “warped ideas about community relations and the protection of institutions”.
He also said those in positions of power in the places where girls had been raped and groomed also dismissed complaints because of “stereotypes about victims”.
Badenoch called on Labour to ditch its definition of Islamophobia, taken from a report which includes a reference to “grooming gangs” being an example of the prejudice, which she said was “exactly why people are scared to tell the truth”.
The all-party parliamentary group which drew up the report hit back at Badenoch’s comments, saying the definition “speaks about the collective smear and trope being used against all British Muslims”.
Zara Mohammed, the secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, accused the Tories and Reform of the “cynical exploitation of child protection issues to demonise British Muslims”.
She added: “Mrs Badenoch’s comments represent a new low in the Conservative Party’s persistent refusal to tackle anti-Muslim prejudice within its ranks.”