Wes Streeting: ‘Farage has been stronger on Tommy Robinson than the Tories’
Wes Streeting says he no longer recognises the Conservative Party during ongoing row over historical child abuse grooming gangs in the UK, stirred by Elon Musk and stoked by “cynical” political rivals.
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In brief…
- Labour has said there will be no new inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal, following calls from Tory rivals, who failed to implement any recommendations from a previous report into widespread abuse.
- Wes Streeting says the Tory Party has drifted “so far from the mainstream” and become “attention seeking and cynical”.
- He says Labour’s priorities are to implement the plan delivered in 2014, not call for a new inquiry.
What’s the story?
Health secretary Wes Streeting has condemned the Conservative Party as “attention seeking” and cynical in relation to its revived interest in the UK’s grooming gang scandals.
The story of how 1,400 children were groomed and sexually abused in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, by groups of men of mostly Pakistan origin has made headlines again since billionaire Elon Musk took an interest in the case, sharing misinformation and personal attacks on Labour MPs.
Since Musk became involved, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has called for a new inquiry, and Robert Jenrick has blamed grooming gang abuse in the UK on migration.
Statistics show that grooming and sexual abuse is vastly more likely to be carried out in the UK by white men and family members or people known to their victims.
Streeting says he doesn’t recognise the Conservative Party that now sits in opposition today.
In 2014, during the previous Tory government, an independent report into the grooming gangs scandal was completed, with 20 recommendations to protect young people from abuse. Not one of these has been implemented.
Streeting says he was "shocked" to discover the report had not been acted on, despite the efforts of his Labour colleagues.
“Yvette Cooper had called for changes to the law to make it an offence not to report or disclose child sexual abuse when she was shadow home secretary under Ed Miliband in 2014,” he tells The News Agents.
“Here we are at the start of 2025 and it's now down to Yvette Cooper as Home Secretary, a decade later, to implement it, because nothing's happened.”
He says Labour will work to implement the 2014 recommendations, rather than commission a new investigation.
Labour prioritising neglected recommendations over new inquiry
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has promised to conduct his own new inquiry into the grooming gang scandal if Labour refuses, and Kemi Badenoch has pledged to introduce an amendment to the soon-to-be-passed Children’s Wellbeing Bill making a new inquiry mandatory.
“The question that I still don't think has been answered is; what would a new inquiry achieve that all of the other inquiries haven't already,” says Streeting.
“Surely the most important thing to do for victims is just to get on implementing the huge number of recommendations that haven't yet been implemented.”
Doing this would likely result in Labour being forced to vote against the bill, which could effectively halt its process through Parliament.
The health secretary says he doubts Badenoch will stick to her word, due to the implications if the bill doesn’t pass.
“I think it's a sign of how far the Conservative Party has fallen as a mainstream political party, when you see them cynically using such a serious issue and victims' experiences to try and score party political points.”
“The Tories had 14 years in government to fix these problems, and many of the problems we see in the country today have been caused by those 14 years of Conservative government.
“It is a bit rich for them, just six months into this government, to be on the attack in this way, especially on such serious issues, where you'd hope we could actually build a degree of consensus of joint endeavour, because these are serious issues and serious crimes, and I think some of the attempts to politicise this has been pretty distasteful.”
‘Tories more right wing than Nigel Farage in 2025’
Streeting says he is “genuinely shocked” by what he considers mud slinging from the opposition against the Labour government.
He now describes the Tories in 2025 as "attention seeking, cynical conservative party that has drifted so far from the mainstream”.
In fact, with the involvement of far-right agitator Tommy Robinson in current conversations, he now believes Farage is on the left of the Tories on this issue.
Elon Musk has called for Tommy Robinson to be released from jail, falsely claiming he is a political prisoner. Farage has distanced himself from Robinson and his history of anti-Islam extremism in the UK.
“I've seen a stronger line from Nigel Farage against Tommy Robinson than I've seen from the Conservative Party. And I just wonder what's happened. I just wonder what's happened to the mainstream Conservative Party,” Streeting says.
“What we're worried about as the government on this issue in particular, is making sure we deliver justice for victims of historical crimes and make sure we are doing everything we can to keep women, girls, children and young people safe from sexual predators.”