Andy Burnham joins calls for ‘limited’ national inquiry into sexual abuse gangs | Andy Burnham

The Greater Manchester mayor, Andy Burnham, has joined calls for a “limited” national inquiry into grooming gangs, saying the scope of the local inquiry he had commissioned in Oldham did not have the same legal powers.

On Wednesday, MPs rejected a Conservative amendment to the children’s wellbeing and schools bill, calling for a new, national inquiry into grooming gangs.

Had it passed, the bill, which includes measures aimed to protect children, and tighter rules around home schooling, would have been blocked.

The vote followed vocal attacks online by the tech billionaire Elon Musk against Keir Starmer and the safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, after it was revealed she turned down a request for a public inquiry into exploitation in Oldham, made by the local council.

The prime minister and other ministers have suggested they are open-minded about a future inquiry, but have said the government’s priority is acting on the recommendations of the 2022 report into child sexual abuse led by Prof Alexis Jay.

“I did hear last night coming out of that debate ministers saying they are open to discussing issues now with survivors,” Burnham told BBC Radio Manchester on Thursday.

“I will add my voice into this and say I do think there is the case for a limited national inquiry that draws on reviews like the one that I commissioned, and the one we have seen in Rotherham, the one we have seen in Telford, to draw out some of these national issues and compel people to give evidence who then may have charges to answer and be held to account.”

The mayor said a series of reviews he commissioned into abuse in Manchester, Oldham and Rochdale were limited in what they could achieve because they did not have the same legal powers as a national investigation.

However, Burnham said MPs were right to reject the “opportunism” of the Tory-led Commons vote.

The culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, speaking on ITV’s Good Morning Britain on Friday, said she understood Burnham’s call, saying: “I get the point that Andy’s making. He said that there was a case for a smaller, more limited national inquiry into the specific issues that the inquiry that he instigated could not pick up.

“I do understand that, because the inquiry that we had here in Greater Manchester, astonishingly, some of the Greater Manchester police officers refused to even take part, and the local inquiry couldn’t compel them to do so.”

However, she added: “But I do disagree with Andy actually. The reason that the Theresa May government set up a national inquiry, which ran for seven years and took evidence from thousands of victims, is precisely because of the points that Andy made.

“That inquiry found what every inquiry has found, that young girls weren’t believed because they were young, they were female, and they were working class, and that the systems that were supposed to protect them protected themselves instead of protecting those brave young victims.”

A national inquiry into child sexual abuse in England and Wales was commissioned by May in 2014, when May was home secretary. Jay’s final report was published in October 2022.

On Monday, the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said the government would begin to implement Jay’s call for mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse, with further details expected to be set out in the coming weeks.