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The amendment to Labour’s flagship Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill received 111 Ayes and 364 Noes
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A Conservative Party amendment calling for a national inquiry on grooming gangs has been rejected in the Commons.
The amendment to Labour’s flagship Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill received 111 Ayes and 364 Noes, majority 253.
Mrs Badenoch’s amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill called for ministers “to develop new legislative proposals for children’s wellbeing including establishing a national statutory inquiry into historical child sexual exploitation, focused on grooming gangs”.
Prime minister Keir Starmer hit out at the Tory leader earlier on Wednesday over “lies and misinformation and slinging of mud” which did not help victims of child sexual abuse.
Sir Keir’s official spokesman faced questions about the possibility of a national inquiry after safeguarding minister Jess Phillips told Sky News “nothing is off the table” in dealing with the scandal.
The spokesman said the PM and his minister were of the same view, and insisted the Government’s response is “rooted in what victims want”.
He added: “But as the Prime Minister said on Monday we will always remain open-minded. We will always listen to local authorities who want to take forward inquiries, or indeed further allegations that need to be followed up.”
Sir Keir Starmer’s backing for reform of social care will be “absolutely critical” if much-needed change is to be made, a key figure has said.
Sir Andrew Dilnot described it as “blindingly… bleedin’ obvious” that something should be done in an area which remains “pretty invisible”.
The economist, who was the architect of plans for a care costs cap more than a decade ago, welcomed the fact that a newly announced commission would be “another chance to try to raise this set of issues up the agenda”.
But he insisted it should not take three years to produce a final report and recommendations, suggesting it is “perfectly feasible” for the Government to set out by the end of this year what it is going to do.
The economist said three years is an ‘inappropriate length of time’ for a final report from the new commission into social care.
Former Tory schools minister Jonathan Gullis – who lost his seat in July’s election – has backed Robert Jenrick over his controversial remarks about grooming gangs and immigration.
Mr Gullis said on X: “It’s completely accurate for [Mr Jenrick] to say some immigrants (legally and illegally) coming to the UK have medieval attitudes to women. Any Conservative MPs anonymously moaning about Robert speaking out about grooming gangs need to give their heads a wobble.”
Kemi Badenoch was urged on Tuesday to sack Mr Jenrick after he suggested the Tories could cap immigration from “alien cultures with medieval attitudes towards women”:
Robert Jenrick stood by his claim that Britain has failed at integrating immigrants from some countries, pointing to the grooming gangs scandal as apparent evidence
The British state has become a “self-serving, greedy master of the people”, a Reform UK MP said on Wednesday as he called for quantitative easing to be prohibited.
Rupert Lowe argued that MPs should be given the right to block the introduction of new money into the supply by the Bank of England, under his Quantitative Easing (Prohibition) Bill.
As he walked to present the Bill in the Commons, Mr Lowe was jokingly dubbed “future leader” by another MP in the chamber who could be heard shouting out. It came after US billionaire Elon Musk appeared to endorse Mr Lowe as a replacement for Reform UK leader Nigel Farage.
The Great Yarmouth MP was also heckled on Wednesday by Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle, who said “absolute shambles” after Mr Lowe stumbled through the list of MPs supporting the Bill before having to repeat the names.
Journalist and author Rowan Pelling writes:
It’s a bit astonishing to wake up and find that – hallelujah! – the sexual abuse of young women is the number one story in the UK. And that the government has finally acted to make the reporting of child sex abuse mandatory. God knows, enough campaigners, like inquiry head Professor Alexis Jay, veteran journalist Julie Bindel, and Lucy Duckworth from the Survivors’ Trust, have strived for years to propel their life’s work to the top of the political agenda.
It’s just a shame that so many zealous new converts to the cause (yes, Elon Musk and his X-bro army) appear to believe that the rape perpetrated by men of Pakistani origin was a unique evil unparalleled in the annals of history.
No one denies that what happened in Rotherham, Rochdale and Telford is a huge, gutwrenching scandal; that some officials hesitated to investigate in the name of “race relations” and that much of the police force who are paid to protect us dismissed the abuse of white working-class girls – often in and out of care – who they regarded as unreliable witnesses.
In fact, there’s now a race to proclaim these oft-reported tidings loudest, by many who didn’t seem to give a monkey’s as recently as last week. But if you’ve ever looked into the sheer scale of sexual abuse against innocent young people in this country and the scandals that were covered up within living memory (not just Jimmy Savile), then you’ll be left reeling.
As Musk and others clamour for an inquiry over grooming gangs in the north of England, where is the call for a closer look at what is going on elsewhere from the Church of England to our top private schools, asks Rowan Pelling, who says institutional cover-ups are rife across all levels of society
During the debate on the government’s Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, Tory former education secretary Damian Hinds warned the legislation will make it “as if Tony Blair had never been prime minister”.
He told the Commons: “I’m sure Labour MPs today will cheer what they will see as the final demise of the Gove/Gibb reforms, but what we have before us today reverses far further back than that.
“If this Bill passes anything close to its current form, it will be as if Lord Adonis was never the schools minister, as if Lord Blunkett had never sat in the secretary of state’s chair, it will be as if Tony Blair had never been prime minister and had never made central to his pledge and contract to the British people in 1997 those famous three words, ‘education, education, education’.”
Sir Oliver Robbins’s appointment is being seen as a signal of intent on Starmer’s plans to reset relations with the EU
Conservative former minister Sir David Davis has called for a retrial of child serial killer Lucy Letby.
During an adjournment debate in the Commons he told MPs: “There is case in justice, in my view, for a retrial. But there is a problem: one of the problems we face is that much of the evidence was available at the time.
“What I have described is an expert analysis of the case notes, which were there at the time, but it was simply not presented to the jury. This means the Court of Appeal can dismiss it, basically saying the defence should have presented it at the initial trial.
“It is in essence saying, ‘if your defence team weren’t good enough to present this evidence, hard luck, you stay banged-up for life’.
“Now that may be judicially convenient, but it’s not justice.”
Sir David said earlier in the debate: “There was no hard evidence against Letby, nobody saw her do anything untoward. The doctor’s gut feeling was based on a coincidence she was on shift for a number of deaths, and this is important, although far from all of them, far from all of them.
“It was built on a poor understanding of probabilities, which could translate later into an influential but spectacularly flawed piece of evidence.”
Letby, from Hereford, is serving 15 whole-life orders after she was convicted at Manchester Crown Court of murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven others, with two attempts on one of her victims, between June 2015 and June 2016 at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
Nigel Farage has confirmed that Reform UK will “absolutely” work to set up its own inquiry into grooming gangs.
He told GB News: “Oh, absolutely yes. If the Government does not give in, we don’t get a proper inquiry into this, and goodness knows, we do need one, then we will raise the money and we will appoint or find some sort of independent retired judges to run the thing.
“Yeah, no, no, we’re not going to back off from this. The country deserves to know the truth about, firstly, the extent of what happened, and secondly, the extent of the cover up, and who was involved in that cover up.”
The division list showed no Labour MPs voted in favour of the Conservative amendment.
The 111 MPs who supported the amendment included 101 Conservatives, five Reform UK, two DUP, the TUV’s Jim Allister, UUP’s MP Robin Swann and Independent Alex Easton.
The Tories accused Labour MPs of having “turned a blind eye to justice for the victims” of grooming gangs after a Conservative bid to launch another national inquiry was rejected in a Commons vote.
The Opposition amendment, if approved, would have prevented the Government’s Bill aimed at protecting children from making progress.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said: “It is disgusting that Keir Starmer has used his supermajority in Parliament to block a national inquiry into the rape gangs scandal.
“Labour MPs have put their party ahead of getting to the truth and turned a blind eye to justice for the victims. Labour MPs will have to explain to the British people why they are against learning the truth behind the torture and rape of countless vulnerable girls.
“We will not let them forget this act of cowardice.”
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