Minister condemns 'idiot' councils that don't believe they have grooming gang problem

Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips has told Sky News that councils that believe they don't have a problem with grooming gangs are "idiots" - as she denied Elon Musk influenced the decision to have a national inquiry on the subject.  The minister said: "I don't follow Elon Musk's advice on anything although maybe I too would like to go to Mars.

"Before anyone even knew Elon Musk's name, I was working with the victims of these crimes." Politics latest: Starmer responds to report suggesting tax rises needed Mr Musk had called Ms Phillips a "rape genocide apologist" in one of a series of inflammatory posts on X in January and said she should go to jail. Mr Musk, then a close aide of US President Donald Trump, sparked a significant political row with his comments - with the Conservative Party and Reform UK calling for a new public inquiry into grooming gangs.

At the time, Ms Phillips denied a request for a public inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham on the basis that it should be done at a local level. But the government announced a national inquiry after Baroness Casey's rapid audit on grooming gangs, which was published in June.

Asked if she thought there was, in the words of Baroness Casey, "over representation" among suspects of Asian and Pakistani men, Ms Phillips replied: "My own experience of working with many young girls in my area - yes there is a problem. There are different parts of the country where the problem will look different, organised crime has different flavours across the board.

"But I have to look at the evidence… and the government reacts to the evidence." Ms Phillips also said the home secretary has written to all police chiefs telling them that data collection on ethnicity "has to change.