A Reform mayor has hit out at Labour for their repeated refusals to launch a Home Office-led inquiry into the Oldham grooming gang scandal.
As he reflected on Derby’s own history of child abuse, Alan Graves, the city's mayor, believed a "proper Government inquiry" was required to halt the degradation of society.
Speaking to GB News, he said: “Although some of the people went to prison, I don’t think it’s enough. I think it’s an endemic thing, particularly within city centres.
“We need to stop it because our whole society - our structure of society - is being broken down by people like that. I think we should have a proper inquiry, a proper Government inquiry that wheedles them out.
“We’re letting our British children down,” Graves told GB News
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“We’re letting our British children down,” he added.
Following a police investigation in Derbyshire, a gang of men were convicted of systematically abusing and sexually abusing young girls, plying their victims with alcohol or drugs before they assaulted them in cars, houses or hotels in the Midlands.
Both ringleaders Mohammed Liaqat, 28, and Abid Saddique, 27, were handed a jail sentence of at least 11 years and eight years respectively in 2011.
After their convictions, the police force said the victims came from varied backgrounds, encouraging all parents to understand the risks of sexual exploitation.
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A subsequent report after the criminals' convictions claimed that agencies had "missed opportunities" to help the teenagers.
The Derbyshire case followed similar scandals which took place in the cities of Rotherham and Oldham.
Speaking to crowds of his supporters yesterday in Leicester, Nigel Farage condemned the historic lack of action from the Labour and the Conservative Governments over such scandals.
"It didn’t just happen in one place, it wasn’t just Oldham. It happened in towns and cities all over the United Kingdom on an industrial scale," he said.
'It didn’t just happen in one place, it wasn’t just Oldham. It happened in towns and cities all over the United Kingdom on an industrial scale,' he said
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"Keir Starmer, it would appear, in the big job of Director of Public Prosecutions in 2008, chose not to prosecute a grooming mass rape case. The Conservative Government did all they could for there not to be a public inquiry.
"Jess Phillips this week decides there is no need for a public inquiry. The police have failed in all of these towns and cities; they dare not say anything for fear of being called racists."
"Our moral courage is destroying the very values upon which this once great country was built," he declared.
Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips has repeatedly rejected requests for the Home Office to conduct a formal inquiry into Oldham’s historic child abuse.
In a letter to the council, she said that she believed that "it is for Oldham Council alone to decide to commission an inquiry into child sexual exploitation locally, rather than for the Government to intervene".
