Yvette Cooper announces additional £10m funding package to tackle grooming gangs as Labour backs down amid outrage

The Home Office unveiled plans to provide £10million in funding to tackle grooming gangs and better support victims and survivors to pursue justice, urge Chief Constables in England and Wales to look into historic grooming gangs cases, widen the remit of the independent Child Sexual Abuse Review Panel to ensure more victims can request a review of their cases, and "immediately" improving ethnicity data collection through working with the Child Sexual Exploitation Taskforce.

Revamped plans will also look to roll out a three-month "rapid audit" led by Baroness Louise Casey, independent of the Home Office, release a clear timetable for taking forward the recommendations in the final IICSA report by April 20 and additional national support for local inquiries, including funding to support local areas to develop Telford-style inquiries, supported by Tom Crowther KC.

Oldham Council and four more pilot areas will test and develop that new approach, the Home Office says.

The pledges follow a bitter weeks-long row over Britain's rape gangs - spearheaded by GB News' reveal that Labour's Jess Phillips repeatedly rejected requests for a Public Inquiry by Oldham Council.

Three of Labour's own MPs had turned on the party to call for Government-backed locally-led probes, alongside party grandees Andy Burnham and Baroness Harman.

Labour's line was that the Government should move to implement the recommendations of Professor Alexis Jay's Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) before launching a separate probe - but after skyrocketing public pressure, this is set to change.

Sarah Champion, one of the three rebel Labour MPs, said: "Wow! Looks like the Government is accepting my five-point plan to prevent child abuse and expose cover-ups over grooming gangs!"

Champion had urged the Home Office to "mandate local inquiries around the country to hold authorities to account - which then report back to the Government".

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The Rotherham MP said that inquiries were necessary so witnesses could be summoned to give evidence to "satisfy the public concern of cover-ups".

She also pointed to Telford's grooming gangs inquiry as an effective model, which was "nationally-resourced" and "victim-centred".

The news comes as fresh polling, exclusively shared with GB News by Friderichs Advisory and JL Partners, revealed that nearly half of Britons - 46 per cent - say the rape gangs scandal was caused by a cover-up, with only 14 per cent disagreeing.

Every group in the population, including 'Bame' voters and Labour voters, think the scandal was more likely to have been caused by a cover-up than not, the data shows.

Of the people who see it as a cover-up, 42 per cent say corruption is to blame, while 38 per cent point to political correctness.

And in further damning data on media attitudes to the rape gangs, more than four in ten - 43 per cent - agree that the media did not cover the grooming scandal "because of political correctness", with only 18 per cent disagreeing.

Every group in the society surveyed was more likely to agree than disagree with this statement, including Bame voters and Labour voters.