Jess Phillips has accused senior Conservative politicians of only recently taking an interest in the grooming gangs scandal due to the influence of tech billionaire Elon Musk.
Speaking after the government announced a national inquiry into grooming gangs, Phillips, who serves as safeguarding minister, claimed that Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and shadow home secretary Chris Philp would not be engaged with the issue had it not been for Musk’s focus on it earlier this year.
Musk began posting about the grooming gangs scandal in January on X, the social media platform he owns. After Phillips initially pushed a request to hold a public inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham, Musk labelled the minister a “rape genocide apologist” and said she should be jailed.
In an interview with LBC Radio on Monday, Phillips said that Musk’s influence was a major reason why “Kemi Badenoch and Chris Philp… have found themselves very newly interested in this issue.”
She said: “Lots of people have asked me today, ‘Do you think this would be happening without Elon Musk?’ I don’t think they’d be interested without Elon Musk.”
The comments came in response to a question about whether an apology was owed to those who had raised the issue previously and were accused of “pandering to the far right.”
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In response to Musk’s extended criticism in January, Keir Starmer delivered a statement insisting he would not tolerate a “discussion and debate based on lies.”
He added: “What I won’t tolerate is politicians jumping on the bandwagon simply to get attention, when those politicians sat in government for fourteen long years, tweeting, talking, but not doing anything about it now so desperate for attention that they’re amplifying what the far right is saying.”
The Conservative politicians have referenced this position regularly in recent days as evidence the prime minister accused those calling for a national inquiry into grooming gangs of boarding a “far right bandwagon”.
Phillips defended the prime minister’s comments on Monday, telling LBC: “For many of us who have been ploughing this furrow and seeking to change this: myself, the home secretary [Yvette Cooper], the prime minister, what he was saying about the bandwagon in that instance was, ‘Where have they been for all the years they were in government?’”
She went on to deny that Musk is responsible for the government’s renewed focus on the issue.
Phillips said: “I think that the victims are the people who should be given the credit for the campaigning that they have done, both in local inquiries, in all of those reports that have been written.
“I met a victim from Bradford just a week ago and was speaking to her again today. And honestly, this woman, and many others I’ve met before, changed the course of my thinking on a daily basis.
“And it is them who deserve this credit and anybody else trying to claim that, well, you know, it’s arrogance.”
Asked what we should learn from this scandal, Phillips said: “Believe women when they tell you what is happening to them”.
She added: “This government will take more action than anyone has ever done before.”
Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here.
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