\n<\/p>\n
A minister has said the government has \u201cfull confidence\u201d in Jess Phillips after four abuse survivors called for her resignation as a condition for their participation in the national grooming gangs inquiry.<\/p>\n
The crisis engulfing the inquiry deepened on Wednesday as the four survivors accused Phillips of \u201cbetrayal\u201d and said she was \u201cunfit to oversee a process that requires survivors to trust the government\u201d.<\/p>\n
But a government minister insisted on Thursday that Phillips would \u201cstay in post\u201d as safeguarding minister, saying she was \u201ca lifelong advocate and champion for young girls who\u2019ve been abused\u201d.<\/p>\n
Josh MacAlister, the children\u2019s minister, said Phillips had the \u201cfull backing of the prime minister and the home secretary\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has already shown that she is properly engaging with the survivor community,\u201d he told Sky News.<\/p>\n
Ministers are scrambling to get to grips with the inquiry and find a new chair to lead it after both candidates they had identified \u2013 former social worker Annie Hudson and former police officer Jim Gamble \u2013 withdrew this week.<\/p>\n
Phillips has come under fire from survivors amid claims that the government sought to broaden the scope of the inquiry from grooming gangs to other forms of child abuse for political reasons.<\/p>\n
Gamble, who withdrew from the process blaming political \u201cpoint-scoring\u201d for creating a \u201chighly charged and toxic environment\u201d, said he nevertheless had confidence in Phillips, telling BBC Breakfast on Thursday: \u201cHas she got everything right, I don\u2019t think so, but none of us have.\u201d<\/p>\n
David Blunkett, the former Labour home secretary, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that while it was important to listen to victims, \u201cfour victims out of the 30 who are on the advisory panel calling for someone\u2019s resignation should not per se result in their resignation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJess Phillips has been one of the most vehement, strong advocates against abuse of women and girls in the government \u2014 in any government that I\u2019ve known since Ann Cryer back in the 2000s.\u201d Cryer raised the alarm about allegations of grooming gangs operating in her Keighley constituency in 2003.<\/p>\n
In response to allegations that the government had sought to manipulate the process, Gamble said he was told he would be able to set the terms of reference as chair.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt no time did I get the impression that they wanted to shy away from the necessary focus to understand why race, ethnicity and culture is part of the problem with particular gangs in this, and there was nothing that I saw that would inhibit me from addressing that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Survivors have accused the government of sidelining them and seeking to broaden the inquiry to include other forms of sexual abuse. They suspect ministers of trying to deflect focus away from Labour-led councils and avoid raising questions over the ethnicity of the perpetrators, many of whom were men of Pakistani descent.<\/p>\n
Phillips said earlier this week that it was \u201cuntrue\u201d the government was seeking to dilute the focus of the inquiry, insisting its scope would be \u201claser-focused\u201d. In a letter to Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, the four survivors criticised Phillips for rejecting their accounts.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing publicly contradicted and dismissed by a government minister when you are a survivor telling the truth takes you right back to that feeling of not being believed all over again. It is a betrayal that has destroyed what little trust remained,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
MacAlister told Sky News on Thursday that the scope of the inquiry was \u201cabsolutely going to be focused\u201d on grooming gangs.<\/p>\n
Keir Starmer has appointed Louise Casey, a civil service troubleshooter, to \u201csupport the work of the inquiry\u201d in an attempt to get the process back on track. The prime minister told the Commons on Wednesday that the inquiry \u201cis not and will never be watered down\u201d and its scope \u201cwill not change\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A minister has said the government has \u201cfull confidence\u201d in Jess Phillips after four abuse survivors called for her resignation as a condition for their participation in the national grooming gangs inquiry. The crisis engulfing the inquiry deepened on Wednesday as the four survivors accused Phillips of \u201cbetrayal\u201d and said she was \u201cunfit to oversee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29993,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[11558,1052,6189,349,357,7466,1354,7467],"class_list":{"0":"post-29992","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-backing","9":"tag-full","10":"tag-gangs","11":"tag-grooming","12":"tag-inquiry","13":"tag-jess","14":"tag-minister","15":"tag-phillips"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}