GROOMING GANGS 'ONE OF BIGGEST SCANDALS EVER'

KEMI Badenoch has branded the cover-up over grooming gangs "one of the biggest scandals Britain has ever seen".

- Steph Spyro

The Tory leader yesterday warned that Sir Keir Starmer's investigation of the mass sexual abuse of children, mostly by Pakistani men, is not enough and called for "an inquiry that actually gets to the bottom of this".

She was joined by campaigners at a London press conference, where she said she was not politicising the issue.

The PM has bowed to pressure to launch a national probe into historical exploitation of thousands of children.

Asked if past Tory governments should be scrutinised, Mrs Badenoch said: "There should be no stone left unturned. Where there is evidence, that should be looked at.

"The actions that we have seen over the last 30 years have shown that work has been done but that work was not enough. This inquiry...needs to look at those institutions that actively covered stuff up.

"We are talking about those who hid evidence, those who asked victims to go away, those who told people that what they were saying was not true. That would be a completely different order of magnitude to any sort of state failure we have seen.

"This is why we say that this is one of the biggest scandals that Britain has ever seen." Asked if she would say sorry to survivors of the abusers, she said: "No one here is asking me for more apologies, they have heard the apologies. Apologies are easy, what we need to see is action.