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Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has said he supports a “limited” inquiry into Britain’s grooming gang scandal after the Labor government rejected a new inquiry.
Burnham said Thursday that the new investigation “could lead to people coming forward with evidence and that person answering and being held accountable.”
“Adding my voice to this may require a limited national inquiry based on research similar to what I commissioned and what I saw in Rotherham and what we have seen. I would like to say that I think ‘at Telford,’ he told BBC Radio Manchester.
Mr Burnham’s comments came after the government rejected the Conservative Party’s request for a new national inquiry on Wednesday. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has ordered Labor MPs to block a vote to prevent passage of the Child Welfare and Schools Bill.
The mayor voiced his dissatisfaction with councillors’ decisions, but Mr Burnham rejected claims the government was turning a blind eye to the issue and was “right to reject that form of opportunism”.
He added that he had written to previous interior ministers about the review he had commissioned across North Korea, but they had “showed no interest”.
Mr Burnham has been involved in local and statutory public inquiries after some Rochdale police officers refused to take part in an independent inquiry into child sexual abuse that he commissioned in Manchester, Rochdale and Oldham in 2017. It was acknowledged that there is a difference between.
An investigation into a historic grooming case involving the sexual exploitation of young girls by gangs of mainly British-Pakistani men has found that authorities have failed to protect children from their perpetrators in their respective communities.
“There are always limits to what you can do in a local review. The review team couldn’t force anyone to talk. That’s something I couldn’t do at my level,” he said.
The call for a new inquiry comes after tech billionaire Elon Musk launched a blistering attack on Starmer and his security secretary Jess Phillips, calling for an investigation into his social media platform X. I woke up in response to your request.
Labor rejected calls for a new inquiry, saying it would enact reforms set out by the Jay Review, a seven-year independent inquiry into child sexual abuse.
