The Conservatives will push for an amendment to the crime bill in order to have a second vote on a national public inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal, GB News can reveal.
In a series of amendments that will be tabled tomorrow, the Tories will also call for the mandatory regular release of ethnicity data of rape gang perpetrators.
The party’s amendment would force the Home Secretary to make an annual statement on the ethnicity of convicted members of grooming gangs.
A Tory source said this measure would be introduced to stop future cover ups.
Badenoch has called for mandatory regular release of ethnicity data of rape gang perpetrators
GB News
Kemi Badenoch told GB News that the party would call for an amendment that would stop perpetrators using human rights legislation — such as by claiming a right to family life — to block their deportations.
The call for another vote on a national public inquiry into the grooming abuse gangs scandal comes after a similar parliamentary vote was rejected by the vast majority of Labour MPs in January.
After the vote, the Government committed to five new local inquiries, including one in Oldham, and a rapid review of information already held by the Home Office, to be conducted by Baroness Louise Casey.
But the Tories are demanding a statutory inquiry that will have the power to compel witnesses - including the police - under oath. The local inquiries being proposed by the Government will not have statutory powers.
Speaking to GB News about her meeting with Oldham survivors and campaigners, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said they feel a "sense of betrayal" by the Labour Government in not holding a national inquiry into grooming gangs.
Badenoch said: "They talked about their sense of betrayal, that the people who should have looked after them and their children did not. But they also talked about wanting justice served, and that's the thing that brings us all together right now.
"That we know there has been a lot of investigation, but it has not been anywhere near the scale required in order to get to the root of what's been happening across our country."
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The Tory leader sat down with GB News reporter Charlie Peters in an exclusive interview
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Detailing her party's amendments to the crime bill, Badenoch told GB News that the Tories will "not let calls for a national inquiry go", and hopes to secure "full justice" for the grooming gang victims.
Badenoch told GB News National Reporter Charlie Peters: "We have not let this issue of a national inquiry go. We are still pushing for Labour to start a national inquiry, and today we're going to be putting some amendments down in the crime bill so that we can have another vote, which they can't obscure, so that MPs and Parliament can vote on ensuring that we get full justice for all of those victims of the rape gang scandal."
Kemi Badenoch told GB News that Labour MPs used the “excuse” of protecting “breakfast clubs” as a reason to not vote for the inquiry in January after it was termed a ‘wrecking amendment’ to the education bill.
Asked by Charlie if she is concerned that the Tories will get the "same result" as their last attempt at an amendment, Badenoch stood firm on her efforts, saying: "The last time we put our amendments in the schools bill, and the Prime Minister told his MPs that if they didn't help him out, that the schools bill would fall. So a lot of them use that as an excuse, saying they were doing it so that they could have breakfast clubs or something else.
"Now we're putting it in the crime bill, and we're putting it as an amendment that doesn't take the whole bill out. It's something very specific on this, and the amendments go beyond having a national inquiry.
"We're going to have an amendment on publishing ethnicity data, we're going to have another amendment to stop people using the fact that they have children or a family as an excuse to not be deported or to not go to prison. We want more than one amendment so that we can get the full scale of public accountability and justice for the victims."
Using the model of the Telford inquiry, which was chaired by barrister Tom Crowther KC, the government will also generate a framework for future inquiries.
Badenoch told GB News that there is a sense of 'betrayal' among grooming gang victims
GB News
In the third Tory amendment that GB News can exclusively reveal, the opposition will also hope to make participating in a grooming gang an aggravating factor in sentencing.
This would lead to stronger sentences for convicted offenders.
Badenoch made the announcement after meeting with survivors and campaigners from Oldham who updated her on the situation in the greater Manchester town.
Lucia Rea, an Oldham survivor advocate, told GB News after the meeting with the Tories that it was a “one-time opportunity” to get a “national and statutory” inquiry.
She added: “We need to show the world how we handle child sexual exploitation in this country.”
Asked how it felt to finally have attention on the abuse gangs scandal, she said it was “helpful” to have the spotlight on the issue and that it “needs sorting out”.
She added: “Someone needs to lead from the front now, let’s just hope that Labour ministers can vote the right way when this vote comes along.”
A Labour Party Spokesperson, responding to the Conservatives’ planned amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill, said: “Kemi Badenoch spent almost two years in the run up to the election as the Minister for Women and Equalities, and Chris Philp spent the same period as the Minister for Policing and Crime.
“Not once in that time did either of them mention the issue of grooming gangs in any of their speeches in the House of Commons.
"Not once did they hold a meeting with any external individual or organisation to discuss the issue of grooming gangs: not one victim; not one expert on sexual abuse; not one local authority; not one local police force.
“And worst of all, not once did they lift a finger to implement any of the recommendations of Alexis Jay's seven-year national inquiry into child sexual abuse.
"No wonder they are pretending that inquiry never happened, when they ignored it so completely after its publication.
“What we are seeing from Kemi Badenoch and Chris Philp today is an utterly disgraceful, dishonest and hypocritical attempt to make political capital out of an issue they could not have cared less about when they were actually in government, with the chance to help the victims of this abuse. They have no shame.”