Editorial: ​Public inquiry is needed into grooming gangs scandal and the sexual exploitation of children

The ​grooming gangs in Oldham was a massive scandal. The offences of sexual exploitation, also in Telford, Rotherham and Greater Manchester and other places, were made all the worse by the utter failure of the authorities to get to grips with it due to fear of being labelled Islamophobic.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse, which published its final report in 2022, described the sexual abuse of children as an “epidemic that leaves tens of thousands of victims in its poisonous wake”.

Led by Professor Alexis Jay, the inquiry looked into abuse by organised groups following multiple convictions of sexual offences against children across the UK between 2010-2014, including in Rotherham, Cornwall, Derbyshire, Rochdale and Bristol.

It is one of a number of issues in which the brilliant, albeit eccentric, American inventor and entrepreneur Elon Musk has been right to highlight in the UK, which all point to weak leadership.

Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative Party leader, has called for a national inquiry into the UK’s “rape gangs scandal”, in a post on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. She is right to say that a public inquiry into organised grooming gangs is “long overdue”, although it is only fair to note that the Conservatives were in power. Yet the safeguarding minister Jess Phillips has said that while she recognises the “strength of feeling” for a Home Office-led inquiry, the government will not “intervene”, in a letter to Oldham Council.

Mr Musk tips into the sort of nonsense in which the president elect he adores, Donald Trump, engages when he says that Ms Phillips “deserves to be in prison”, but the Reform UK MP for Great Yarmouth Rupert Lowe is right to demand that a full nationality breakdown of those convicted for such offences, along with the location of their crimes, is published.