UK Parliament voted on Wednesday against an enquiry into mass rapes of children by migrant gangs from Pakistan.
According to the results of the parliamentary vote, 364 MPs voted against the Tory initiative. Only 111 MPs were in favour of an enquiry into the rapes and sexual exploitation of children in Oldham, Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford and other towns in the north of England, which were committed from the late 1980s and early 1990s until the mid-2010s, mostly by people from Pakistan.
Last week it was revealed that Jess Phillips, the UK’s deputy Home Office chief executive, refused to launch a national enquiry into these sexual offences and the police, prosecutors and local authorities’ response to them, despite a request from Oldham Town Council. She suggested that such an investigation should be conducted at a local level, as was the case in Rotherham and Telford. The Daily Telegraph saw her refusal as a reluctance to alienate Muslim voters.
Phillips told Sky News on Wednesday that the British government would allow a national enquiry into these sexual offences if approached by victims. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, for his part, said from the parliamentary rostrum after meeting with the victims that there was no consensus among them on the issue. He added that the authorities should not focus on another investigation but on implementing concrete measures to protect women and children.
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Sexual offences committed against underage girls in the north of England, which were silenced or ignored for years, only began to be publicised in 2012. Starmer, who became leader of the Labour government in July, led The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) from 2008 to 2013 and has previously acknowledged that in some cases police and prosecutors avoided bringing ethnic and religious minorities to trial for fear of accusations of racism and Islamophobia. However, Starmer said on January 6 that it was he, when he was head of the CPS, who started prosecuting members of these criminal groups.
According to the BBC, the Rotherham enquiry found that between 1997 and 2013 alone, some 1,400 children suffered sexual abuse, mostly by British men of Pakistani origin. The Telford investigation in turn revealed that around 1,000 girls had been sexually abused over a 40-year period. More than 100 people have been convicted of the offences in the two towns alone.
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Earlier, US billionaire Elon Musk called UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer “complicit in the mass rapes” committed by gangs. “Starmer must go and he must be charged for his complicity in the worst mass crime in British history,” the entrepreneur wrote.
Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, leader of the party Debout la France (France Arise), commented on the news on X:
“364 British MPs vote against national enquiry into Pakistani gang rapes. Double punishment for the victims: to the horror of the crime is added the rejection of their parliament.”
