British lawmakers voted against launching a national inquiry into the U.K. grooming gang scandal on Wednesday, after objections to the way the vote was being put forward – and amid international scrutiny of the crisis spearheaded by Elon Musk.
The House of Commons voted on an amendment to hold a statutory inquiry into the scandal – where it was revealed that men of predominantly Pakistani heritage had sexually abused girls for years in towns in northern England.
The measure was an amendment to a children’s well-being and schools bill backed by the Labour government. U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer warned that a vote in favor of the amendment would kill the overall bill to which it was attached. The amendment was voted down by 364 votes to 111 in the Labour-controlled chamber, Sky News reported.
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“What we need now is action. What can’t be tolerated is the idea that this afternoon members opposite will vote down a bill which protects children,” Starmer said ahead of the vote, calling it a “wrecking amendment.”
Conservative Party Leader Kemi Badenoch pushed back.
“Be a leader, not a lawyer,” she told him, as she said that a new inquiry should investigate the connected issues between the towns.
“The reason why a national inquiry is important is because this issue is systemic,” she said, involving “local and national officials, the police, prosecutors and politicians.”
“These interlinked issues cannot be covered by local inquiries alone,” she said.
Previous reports had found evidence of “appalling” abuse, with more than 1,400 girls abused between 1997 and 2013 in Rotherham alone. Reports also found that authorities had been scared of fueling racism in their handling of the crimes given the ethnic makeup of the perpetrators. The scandal tapped into brewing concerns about multiculturalism and mass immigration.
The issue came back to the spotlight recently after local officials in Oldham called on the government to launch a national inquiry into the town’s handling of the crisis. A 2022 report had found that children had been failed by officials, but had found no cover-up despite concerns that it would be capitalized on by right-wing activists.
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The U.K. government rejected the request, saying that any inquiry should be organized locally. That, in turn, drew calls from Badenoch and Elon Musk for a national inquiry.
“Across the country, thousands of girls were tortured and sexually abused at the hands of men who treated them as things to be used and disposed of, destroying many lives forever. The prime minister has mentioned previous inquiries. He is right, there has been an inquiry into child sexual abuse. But it wasn’t about the rape gang scandal,” Badenoch said.
Musk, who has been hammering away at the issue on X – even calling for the prosecution of top U.K. government officials, including Starmer – appealed again to the British public before the vote.
“Please call your member of parliament and tell them that the hundreds of thousands of little girls in Britain who were, and are still are, being systematically, horrifically gang-raped deserve some justice in this world,” Musk said on X on Wednesday.
“This is vitally important, or it will just keep happening,” he said.
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Starmer had previously slammed “lies and misinformation” without naming Musk directly, and had accused U.K. politicians of jumping on a “bandwagon of the far-right.”
On Wednesday, he again accused Badenoch of jumping on a bandwagon and urged lawmakers to make sure the broader bill passed.
“One of the provisions in the bill is to protect children vulnerable today who are out of school to prevent abuses ever taking those children out of school. I implore members opposite to defy the misleading leadership of the Leader of the Opposition and vote for a really important bill.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
