UK Government Backs New Local Inquiries into Child Abuse
LONDON (Reuters) - The British government will provide backing for local inquiries into child sexual abuse across the country, it said on Thursday after a decades-old grooming gangs scandal returned to the spotlight following criticism from billionaire Elon Musk.
The scandal involved organised groups in English towns and cities raping and sexually exploiting vulnerable young girls, prompting a number of local investigations and a broader nationwide public inquiry into child sexual abuse.
Britain's interior minister Yvette Cooper said the government would set out a timetable to implement the recommendations of a national inquiry published in 2022 but also go further and back new local investigations.
"Despite all those national inquiries reports and hundreds of recommendations, far too little action has been taken and, shamefully, little progress has been made," Cooper told parliament.
She stopped short of announcing a new national public inquiry into the scandal, in which the perpetrators have predominantly been of Pakistani heritage. Musk and Britain's opposition Conservative Party, which was in power from 2010-2024 had called for a national inquiry.
Musk, a close ally of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, has also accused British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of failing to tackle the scandal when he was the country's chief prosecutor, saying he was "complicit in the rape of Britain".
Starmer has strongly defended his record as chief prosecutor, saying he had overcome resistance to tackling the scandal by reopening cases.
(Reporting by Catarina Demony and Sachin Ravikumar; editing by William James)
