Labour votes against new inquiry into child abuse gangs

Labour MPs rejected a Conservative proposal for a new national inquiry into child abduction and rape gangs.

Meanwhile, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch argued that - with the decision - the government, led by Keir Starmer, risks fueling accusations of a "cover-up," the BBC reported.

Similar was the position of MP Chris Philp, who explained that the Conservatives' intention is for the truth about the cases to be known. He stressed that the government's stance that the necessary investigations have already been carried out is wrong.

He indicated that only local investigations have been conducted and detailed that most of the approximately 50 cities where abuses occurred have not conducted investigations.

"The whole country has been shocked by the rape gang scandal. Over years or decades, thousands of vulnerable young girls were systematically raped by organised gangs of men, predominantly of Pakistani heritage. Instead of those victims being protected and the perpetrators prosecuted, those young girls were failed," Philp wrote in an opinion piece published by Conservative Home.

The situation follows reports that the British government had rejected Oldham Town Council's request for a government-led inquiry into historical cases of sexual exploitation.

In addition, the child sexual exploitation scandal in Rotherham, UK returned to the debate after more than a decade, after tycoon Elon Musk, who will head the Department of Government Efficiency during the next Trump Administration, expressed on the social network X his outrage at the failure of British institutions in this case, one of the most serious cases of sexual exploitation of children in the history of that country.

This tragic event, perpetrated by a majority of men of Pakistani descent, was first revealed by journalists in 2012, following an investigation that had been conducted by The Times in 2010, but the events occurred over 16 years, between 1997 and 2013.

An estimated 1,400 girls, some of them as young as 11, were recruited, drugged, raped and sexually exploited.