U.K. Conservative Leader Badenoch Slams PM Starmer for Refusing a National Inquiry into the Grooming Gangs Scandal: ‘It Is Not About You, It Is About the Victims’

EXCERPT:

BEDANOCH: "Mr. Speaker, the prime minister is being very specific because I have raised this issue. I raised it in speeches. I’ve raced it publicly. He knows -- he knows that as a minister — he knows that as a minister, I would not have been speaking on this specific issue. I was not a home office minister, but — but, Mr. Speaker, I will remind him about other victims who came to me, who I did help, the victims of the Tavistock scandal who came to me as a minister. I didn’t send them away like his safeguarding minister. I made sure, as his Labour Party were calling me transphobic, that we launched the Cass review, which even his health secretary has accepted. So, we do right by victims, Mr. Speaker. The reason why a national inquiry is important is because this issue is systemic, it has been involving local and national officials, the police, prosecutors and politicians. He talks about some of the local inquiries, but these interlinked issues cannot be covered by local inquiries alone. In fact, the leaders of the Manchester inquiry resigned because they couldn’t get evidence, they couldn’t summon witnesses, and not a single person in a position of authority has been held to account. The prime minister called for nine inquiries in the last parliament. Does he not see that by resisting this one, people will start to worry about a cover-up?"