Keir Starmer has been accused of delaying his return from the G7 summit to dodge a grilling on grooming gangs.
The gathering of world leaders in Canada wrapped up last night, but Angela Rayner will be standing in at the weekly PMQs session this lunchtime.
The bombshell report by Baroness Casey condemning institutions for ignoring ethnic factors in sexual abuse of children is set to dominate the clashes in the House.
Sir Keir chose to announced his extraordinary U-turn to back a statutory national inquiry into the scandal as he left the UK on Saturday.
The PM had spent months resisting demands from Opposition politicians and campaigners to trigger a new probe.
But he shifted his position after reading the damning conclusions of Lady Casey’s rapid review. Sir Keir was in Alberta when Home Secretary Yvette Cooper made an apology to victims on behalf of the state, and published the Whitehall troubleshooter’s report.
Although he has faced questions from the media at the G7 – which has been dominated by the Israel-Iran crisis – Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said Sir Keir ‘should have been in the chamber this week talking about this issue’.
The G7 gathering of world leaders in Canada wrapped up last night, but Angela Rayner will be standing in at the weekly PMQs session this lunchtime.
Although he has faced questions from the media at the G7 – which has been dominated by the Israel-Iran crisis – Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said Sir Keir ‘should have been in the chamber this week talking about this issue’
Deputy PM Ms Rayner chaired Cabinet yesterday, the first time she has been handed the responsibility since Labour took over the government
‘He’s taking his time in Canada, he’s not coming back to PMQs… because he doesn’t want to be asked about this,’ she told the Telegraph.
Deputy PM Ms Rayner chaired Cabinet yesterday, the first time she has been handed the responsibility since Labour took over the government.
She is expected to take on shadow home secretary Chris Philp in the Commons later.
Sir Keir had meetings including with Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese at the G7 last night.
Lady Casey’s long-awaited review was published on Monday, finding that councils, police forces and the Home Office repeatedly ‘shied away’ from dealing with ‘uncomfortable’ questions about the ethnicity of rapists preying on thousands of vulnerable girls.
Despite years of warnings, she said, the quality of data collected at a national level remained ‘woeful and a dereliction of public duty’.
With ethnicity still recorded in only a third of cases, the former civil servant said it was impossible to be certain about patterns of offending at a national level.
She revealed she had found the word ‘Pakistani’ Tippexed out of a child sex abuse file.
But Lady Casey said turning a blind eye to many offenders having Asian heritage only gave racists ‘more ammunition’.
Sir Keir had meetings including with Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese at the G7 last night
Baroness Casey vented fury at the failure to tackle the issues over a decade, saying she was ‘raging’ on behalf of the victims
