Jess Phillips has ‘full backing’ of PM over grooming gangs inquiry, says minister | Jess Phillips
A minister has said the government has “full confidence” in Jess Phillips after four abuse survivors called for her resignation as a condition of their involvement in the national grooming gangs inquiry.
The crisis rocking the investigation deepened Wednesday, when four survivors accused Phillips of “treason” and said he was “unfit to oversee a process that requires survivors to trust the government.”
But on Thursday a government minister insisted Phillips would “remain in office” as safeguarding minister and said she was a “lifelong advocate and defender of abused young girls”.
Children’s Minister Josh MacAlister said Phillips “has the full support of the prime minister and the home secretary”.
“He has already demonstrated that he is communicating with survivors appropriately,” he told Sky News.
Ministers are scrambling to take on the inquiry and find a new chairman to lead it after both of their nominated candidates – former social worker Annie Hudson and former police officer Jim Gamble – withdrew this week.
Phillips has come under criticism from survivors over allegations that the government sought to broaden the scope of the investigation from politically motivated gang grooming to other forms of child abuse.
Gamble, who withdrew from the process by accusing political “scoring” of creating a “highly charged and toxic environment”, told BBC Breakfast on Thursday that he still had faith in Phillips: “I don’t think he’s got it all right, but none of us have.”
Former Labor home secretary David Blunkett told BBC Radio 4’s Today program that it was important to listen to victims but “four out of 30 victims on the advisory panel calling for someone to resign should not automatically result in resignation”.
“Jess Phillips has been one of the most passionate and powerful advocates against the abuse of women and girls in any government I have known since Ann Cryer in the 2000s.” Cryer raised the alarm in 2003 about allegations of grooming gangs operating in the Keighley constituency.
In response to allegations that the government was trying to manipulate the process, Gamble said he was told that as president he could set his terms of reference.
“I never got the impression that they wanted to shy away from the focus necessary to understand why race, ethnicity, and culture are part of the problem with certain gangs, and I didn’t see anything that would stop me from addressing that issue,” he said.
Survivors accused the government of excluding them and trying to expand the investigation to other types of sexual abuse. They suspect ministers are trying to divert attention from Labour-led councils and are avoiding questions about the ethnicity of the perpetrators, many of whom are of Pakistani origin.
Phillips said earlier this week it was “not right” for the government to try to water down the focus of the investigation and insisted the scope of the inquiry would be “laser focused”. The four survivors criticized Phillips for dismissing their accounts in a letter to Home Affairs Minister Shabana Mahmood.
“To be publicly denied and dismissed by a government minister when you’re a survivor telling the truth takes you back to that feeling of not being believed. It’s a betrayal that destroys what little trust you have left,” they said.
MacAlister told Sky News on Thursday that the scope of the investigation would “absolutely focus on grooming gangs”.
Keir Starmer appointed civil service troubleshooter Louise Casey to “support the inquiry work” in a bid to get the process back on track. The Prime Minister told the House of Commons on Wednesday that the inquiry “has not been watered down and will never be watered down” and its scope “will not change”.
