UK Lawmakers Vote Down Setting Up National Inquiry Against Grooming Gangs Scandal

British lawmakers voted down a proposal for a national inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal.

The amendment to set up a national inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal was voted down in British Parliament.

Source : X

Lawmakers in Britain have voted down an amendment to set up a national inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal. The amendment was attached to the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which would have been killed had the vote passed. 

The amendment was brought by the Conservatives and was voted down  364 votes to 111 votes, a margin of 253, reported BBC. 

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch argued that the government risks fuelling accusations of a "cover-up" by refusing an inquiry.

However, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said several inquiries had already been held into abuse carried out by gangs of men and a new probe would only delay the actions awaited by the victims. 

Had the amendment been passed, it would have killed a major piece of government legislation, the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill which includes measures aimed at protecting children and tougher rules around home-schooling, as well as changes to academics, as per the BBC report. 

What Is Grooming Gangs Scandal?

The decades-old grooming gangs scandal hit the headlines in recent weeks after tech billionaire Elon Musk raked up the issue on his social media platform X. In a series of vitriolic posts, he falsely accused Starmer and other Labour Party lawmakers of enabling the scandal. 

The scandal involved a series of child sex abuse cases in which gangs of men assaulted and raped girls in several towns and cities. Most of the perpetrators involved in the scandal were of British Pakistani heritage. 

In 2011, The Times of London published a series of investigative articles on the sexual exploitation of girls by criminal gangs in England's north and Midlands from 1997 onwards. 

Official probe into the case revealed that at least 1,400 children, some as young as 11, were found to have been groomed for sexual exploitation between 1997 and 2013  in the northern English town of Rotherham setting off a national reckoning. Meanwhile, the local authorities looked the other way for years, according to a report by the The New York Times. 

The perpetrators followed a similar pattern in the grooming in Rotherham: young men courting girls in public places like town centres and shopping malls; gradually introduced to drugs and alcohol: followed by a sexual relationship with one man, who demanded that the girl prove her love by having sex with his friends. 

In 2012, prosecutions in  Oxford and the northern towns of Oldham and Rochdale -- for the abuse of dozens of girls -- included men of Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Afghan heritage who were handed long prison terms.