Ex-Labour minister calls for Phillips to resign, as PM contacts grooming victims

Sir Keir Starmer is personally intervening to contact victims amid growing turmoil in the national grooming gangs inquiry, after a former Labour minister joined growing calls for safeguarding minister Jess Phillips to resign.

- MILLIE COOKE CAITLIN DOHERTY

Tony McNulty, who served as a minister under Gordon Brown, said that “the inquiry is more important than the minister and the minister should go”. It comes after the four women who resigned from the inquiry’s victims liaison panel called for Ms Phillips to resign, accusing her in a letter to the home secretary of labelling some of their claims “untrue” and saying they had provided evidence to the contrary.

However, in a sign of growing divisions, five survivors who have been invited onto the panel have said they will only continue working with the probe if Ms Phillips remains in post, The Guardian reported yesterday.

The women contacted the PM and home secretary, saying the safeguarding minister has “devoted her life to hearing and amplifying the voices of women and girls who would have otherwise been unheard”.

One of the four calling for Ms Phillips to resign, Ellie-Ann Reynolds, said the final turning point for her was “the push to change the remit, to widen it in ways that downplay the racial and religious motivations behind our abuse”.

Ms Phillips told MPs on Tuesday that “allegations of intentional delay, lack of interest or widening of the inquiry scope and dilution are false”. However, in their letter to Shabana Mahmood, the four victims say that “evidence has since proven we were telling the truth”.

It is understood that the prime minister is now personally contacting the victims who have resigned from the panel.