Badenoch: 'I'm not playing politics on grooming gangs'

KEMI Badenoch has insisted she is not politicising the grooming gangs scandal after the author of a major review on the issue said she was “disappointed” with the Opposition’s approach.

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Speaking at a press conference alongside grooming gang survivors and campaigners, the Conservative leader said she was “not doing politics now”, but criticised people who sought to “tone police those who are pointing out when something has gone wrong”.

She said: “I do think that we should take the politics out of it. But who was it that said when we raised this issue that we were pandering to the far right? That's what brought the politics into it.”

Her comments follow an interview in which Baroness Louise Casey told the BBC she was “disappointed” by the Opposition’s response to her review of the grooming gangs scandal.