Labour MP Barry Gardiner has described the Conservative amendment calling for a national inquiry into child grooming gangs as ‘a gimmick’.

Speaking on GB News, Barry Gardiner said:

“I voted in favour of taking action to protect children, which is exactly what the bill that was before Parliament today has done. It’s done that by ensuring that we have a duty of information sharing.

“In fact, when I was Minister for Education in Northern Ireland, I introduced such a duty there. So, there were many aspects of this bill that I was very pleased to vote for, not least, of course, actually reducing the cost of school uniforms for families, which is very important, but real safeguards that were contained in the provisions in this bill.

“What the amendment did was it actually basically just threw the bill out. So the amendment was 13 lines, all of which were attacking the manifesto commitments that we had made on education, on safeguarding, and it would have thrown the bill out.

It wouldn’t have actually done anything to establish the inquiry that they were calling for and that was tacked on as the very last line of a 13 line amendment.

“It was a gimmick, and it was an unsuccessful one.

“It’s not a matter of voting against an inquiry. It was a matter of ensuring that the bill, which actually introduced safeguards for children, was successful, and it was, and that’s how Parliament works.

“If you want to talk about whether there should be a historic inquiry, let’s remember there has been an inquiry into the child abuse scandal, quite rightly.

“It lasted seven years, the Jay inquiry, and not one of the provisions that were recommended in that inquiry were put into effect and implemented by the Conservative government.

“Let’s be very clear, they had that inquiry, they had the recommendations. They did not implement them. That’s why it was important today to get on and implement some of those recommendations.

Now I am very happy to have an inquiry that looks at the systemic, the historic, and seeks to apportion blame. And the more that can be exposed about what went on, in my view, the better. But that is not what parliament was debating today.

“And what we need to do is we need to make sure that there is real action that protects children now and into the future. And that’s what the bill that we voted for today achieved.

“I have not done the research into this that Professor Jay did. He spent seven years looking at this, and he’s been asked whether he believes it would make sense to have a further inquiry.

“His response, as I’m sure you know, was that it could delay things. Now, I respect his view on that. I would be very happy to see more come out, because it’s clear, I think, that there were cover ups that went on in various areas of the country and that should not have happened, and we should find out who did that, if they did it, and then take the appropriate action.

“But that is looking back and trying to apportion blame and trying to make sure that you get at the people who did wrong at that time, historically.

“What we are all interested in, I hope, is protecting children. That’s the bill that the government introduced today. That’s the bill that has gone through Parliament, and thank goodness it has, because it means that children will no longer be able to be taken out, as they were in cases in the past, and groomed.

“My understanding is that it is because respected voices who have spent years looking at this, like Professor Jay has, said that they believe that it could be an Incubus. It could be counterproductive.

“The Jay report makes it very clear that what [Keir Starmer] did as DPP was innovative, and he brought in the protections and the clarity that was needed in the system of prosecutions to make sure that there could not be the ignoring of what was going on for reasons of political correctness or anything like that.

“There has been a national inquiry, there is now a call for a different sort of inquiry, and that’s fine but Labour did not vote against it.

“What they did was they voted to implement the actions, some of which were actually contained in the report that Professor Jay produced to take the action to protect children, which, unfortunately, the previous government used to implement.”