A cabinet minister has slapped down a junior colleague after he said the government’s response to the grooming gangs scandal had been sped up by Elon Musk’s interventions on the issue.
Chris Bryant made his comment on BBC Question Time on Thursday night, but was rebuked by his boss, culture secretary Lisa Nandy, this morning.
Bryant said: “I think we’ve had more of a debate because of what [Musk] has said, that is certainly true, and I welcome the fact that we’re having a debate about it because this is one of the most despicable things that has happened in British society.”
He later added: “Undoubtedly all of this has been expedited because of the debate that we’ve had over the last fortnight.”
But on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Nandy rejected Bryant’s claim.
She said: “No I don’t [agree with him] actually. I’ve worked very closely with the home secretary on this and with our minister, Jess Phillips, who has been a longstanding champion of victims of grooming and sexual abuse.
“We made tackling violence against women and girls a top priority. We did that in opposition, we did it in our manifesto, and we’re doing it in government.”
She added: “We’re not a government that governs by noise on social media, we govern for the real world where most people are, on the side of the victims, and we will continue to do so.”
Musk, the world’s richest man and owner of X (formerly Twitter) accused Phillips, the safeguarding minister, of being a “rape genocide apologist” who should be in jail after she rejected calls from Oldham Council for a full national inquiry into the child grooming gangs scandal.
Ministers have instead said the focus should be on implementing the recommendations of Professor Alexis Jay’s previous inquiry into child sexual abuse, which reported in 2022.
Home secretary Yvette Cooper yesterday announced an audit looking into the current scale and nature of “gang-based exploitation” across the country, as well as local reviews into grooming in some areas.
She said local probes would provide more answers and change than a nationwide inquiry.