Musk
'misinformed' on grooming gangs, says Streeting
14 hours ago
Sam Francis
Political
reporter
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czxdzng92lno
Elon Musk's
attack on the government's handling of grooming gangs is "misjudged and
certainly misinformed", Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said.
Tech
multi-billionaire Musk has posted a series of messages on his social media site
X, accusing Sir Keir Starmer of failing to prosecute gangs that systematically
groomed and raped young girls, and calling for safeguarding minister Jess
Phillips to be jailed.
Asked about
his comments, Streeting said "this government takes the issue of child
sexual exploitation incredibly seriously".
He invited
Musk to "roll up his sleeves and work with us" against rape gangs.
The Tories
have also criticised Musk for "sharing things that are factually
inaccurate".
While
visiting a care home in Carlisle on Friday, Streeting said Labour was getting
"on with the job" of implementing the recommendations of the
independent inquiry into child sexual abuse led by Professor Alexis Jay
"in full".
He told
reporters: "Some of the criticisms Elon Musk has made I think are
misjudged and certainly misinformed.
"But
we're willing to work with Elon Musk who I think has got a big role to play
with his social media platform to help us and other countries tackle these
serious issues.
"If he
wants to work with us and roll his sleeves up, we'd welcome that."
Musk, a key
adviser to US President-elect Donald Trump, has accused Sir Keir of failing to
properly prosecute rape gangs while director of public prosecutions (DPP), and
has repeatedly retweeted Reform UK and Conservative MPs calling for a national
inquiry.
He also
suggested safeguarding minister Jess Phillips "deserves to be in
prison" after she rejected a request for the Home Office to order a public
inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham. She said the council should
commission a local inquiry instead, as happened in Rotherham and Telford.
The decision
was criticised by several senior Tories, despite the previous Conservative
government turning down a similar request in 2022.
Tory leader
Kemi Badenoch has called for a full national public inquiry into what she
called the UK's "rape gangs scandal".
But the
party has also criticised Musk for "sharing things that are factually
inaccurate" and distanced itself from his call for Phillips to be jailed.
Alicia
Kearns – who shadows Phillips as the Conservative spokesperson on safeguarding
– told BBC Radio 5 Live Musk had "fallen prone" to sharing things on
his X platform "without critically assessing them".
She accused
Musk of "drawing away attention from the survivors and from the
victims" of rape gangs, and "lionising people like [far-right
activist] Tommy Robinson - which is frankly dangerous".
Meanwhile,
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage praised Musk as "an absolute hero
figure" and "very helpful to our cause" on Friday. The two men
met at Trump's Florida retreat last month.
He told the
BBC that Musk had not donated to his party, but that "he's fully in
support of us, he wants us to win the next election". He said that Musk
"has said he's minded to give us some money if there's a legal way to do
it".
Police
figures from 2023 reveal that group-based child sexual abuse accounted for 3.7%
of all sexual offences against children reported to police.
According to
the data, 26% of group-based child sexual abuse happened within families,
compared with 17% involving groups including grooming gangs.
Schools,
clubs and religious institutions accounted for 9%.
There have
been numerous investigations into the systematic rape of girls and young women
by organised gangs, including in Rotherham, Cornwall, Derbyshire and Bristol.
Inquiries
into Greater Manchester Police's (GMP) handling of historical child sex abuse
cases in Manchester, Oldham and Rochdale have also been carried out.
Mayor of
Greater Manchester Andy Burnham said tackling grooming gangs was "not
something to be politicised".
"We've
done this when others were looking in a different direction," Burnham
added.
"This
is something to be faced up to fully and unflinchingly in my view."
Earlier on
Friday, health minister Andrew Gwynne suggested Musk "ought to focus"
on US politics, where he is set to act as an unelected adviser to the Trump
administration on cutting federal spending.
Speaking to
LBC Radio, Gwynne added that child grooming was a "very serious
issue", pointing to previous investigations which had taken place into
sexual abuse scandals.
"There
comes a point where we don't need more inquiries, and had Elon Musk really paid
attention to what's been going on in this country, he might have recognised
that there have already been inquiries," he said.
It knitted
several previous inquiries together alongside its own investigations.
Professor
Jay said in November she felt "frustrated" that none of her report's
20 recommendations to tackle abuse had been implemented more than two years
later.
She said:
"It's a difficult subject matter, but it is essential that there's some
public understanding of it.
"But we
can only do what we can to press the government to look at the delivery of all
of this.
"It
doesn't need more consultation, it does not need more research or discussion,
it just needs to be done."
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