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WATCH IN FULL: Kemi Badenoch hits out at ‘dishonest’ Labour as she speaks out on grooming gangs inquiry
Jun 17, 2025
Kemi Badenoch has sat down with GB News National Reporter Charlie Peters for an exclusive interview, as she declared the Conservatives have "done their job" as opposition in getting the grooming gangs scandal a national inquiry.Speaking to GB News, Badenoch branded Labour "dishonest", and made clear that the issue of rape gangs in Britain "needs national attention".WATCH ABOVE.
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Kimi Baden-Ock, we won. That was the email you sent out on Saturday evening after news broke
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that there was going to be this National Grooming Gang's inquiry. Do you regret, in a sense
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taking credit for this campaign crossing over the line? It's just not a victory for survivors
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first and foremost. Yes, it is. But that campaign was about them. 400,000 people signed that
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petition. So the we was the 400,000 people who had signed our petition, signed our campaign
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who were pushing for that. And I think it's very important to remind people that this did not
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happen easily. A lot of pressure was put on the government. We did our job as opposition. We held
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votes, making it impossible for a lot of Labour MPs to avoid this issue. We were actually going
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to have another vote this Wednesday. So the timing of it is particularly suspicious, given Keir
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Starm is not going to be around for PMQs. This is our job. Politics requires us to actually hold
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the government to account. And we will do that in every possible way we can. And through that
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petition, which we organized, we made sure that those people knew which of the Labour MPs were
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not responding to the campaign. And I think all of that pressure, along with the work that you did
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and in particular, what the survivors have been going through to tell their stories
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has got us to this place. So this is not about me. It is not about the Conservative Party
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This is about getting justice for these victims. The Tories never cared and they have engaged with this issue as it's politically expedient
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That's the charge of safeguarding minister Jess Phillips last night. What's your response
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Jess Phillips is the worst safeguarding minister we have ever had. I spoke about this issue
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during the leadership contest. I stood on a stage and I made the point about this being something
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that I was going to campaign on long before all of the furore that we saw this year. This was
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something that I cared about even in government. I knew what was going on with the gangs task force
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for instance. That happened while I was in cabinet. And colleagues of mine from Theresa May
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to Sajid Javid to Suela Braverman had taken a lot of time and did a lot of work. It still wasn't
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enough. I mean, the scale of it has really only come to light. We thought it was just a couple
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of towns here or there, but 50 towns. And we were actually putting a lot of work into a bill
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which Labour did not allow to pass when we went into wash up for the election
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So that bill fell and they have represented our work as their work. I think that's dishonest
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So I'm not taking any lectures from Jess Phillips. She needs to sort of go sit down and look at how
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she has let down quite a lot of people, including survivors, who told me today that she let them
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down. Baroness Casey's audit is painful reading almost 200 pages of appalling reports, much of it
2:49
already in the public domain. But there was one new piece of ysis amongst that, which was
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looking back at the 2020 Home Office report. When Priti Patel was Home Secretary, she released
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a report which found that there was not a disproportionate over of British Pakistanis Casey said that that claim is not evidenced in research or data Is Priti Patel and the Conservatives to blame then for advancing this
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myth, this racial myth, about the grooming gang scandal? I disagree. This was something that we
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raised before and after that. I don't know where the data for that report, what it was based on
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There was a lack of data. That was a problem. There was only 30% gathered, but the Conservative
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Home Office still says there's no representation. I did a report after that as Minister for Equalities
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where I referenced this and talked about loads of integration issues, including the grooming gang one, and talked about ethnicity as well
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So lots of different people were doing different bits of work, but the cumulative evidence that we have from the work that we did in government
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is that ethnicity was an issue. That's why Sajid Javid asked for ethnicity to be collected
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He was called far-righted. That was before Priti Patel's report came out in 2020
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How are survivors going to trust your leadership with the Conservative Party
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Have you got someone on your front bench who put out a report saying that actually
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Pakistanis weren't overrepresented, that most CSE being conducted by groups was white men
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when that information just wasn't there? Do you think Priti Patel should clarify why you should let that report come out
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They can trust me because they have seen me speak not just on this issue, but on many other issues
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What I have repeatedly said, and I put out my own report, that report on race and ethnic disparities
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that we need to actually call things as they are and not succumb to this fear of this political correctness
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that means that you can't call, you can't speak the truth. That's why people can trust me
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I don't know about the report that was put out by Priti Patel. I do know about the work that was done by Sajid Javid
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by Suella Braverman, by Theresa May, all Home Secretaries who are Conservative
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I know about the gang's task force. And all of them secretaries that aren't in your front bench. That's fine. But I'm the person leading my party now
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And it's either we spend time trying to prosecute reports that have gone on in the past or actually look at the people who actually covered things up
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That's really where the scandal is. That's what the survivors are talking about. I don't think many people even saw this particular report. I can look into it
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But right now I am saying on my own record that this is an issue I've always cared about
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I made it a flagship of my leadership bid last year, and I have not let it go since January
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even when a lot of people were saying, why do you keep talking about this? I would say a lot of people have seen that report, and it's been used a lot by the media and by politicians to quieten discussion on it
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But let's move on from that now, because in that review, there was a lot of criticism of previous efforts
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And speaking to reporters last night, Baroness Casey told us that successive governments had faffed about for so many years
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Now, you say that only recently the full national scale of this crisis has come to line
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So certainly from my perspective, right, certainly from my perspective, because we had commissioned
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Baroness Casey to do some work right back in 2015. Specifically on Rotherham. Yes, but that's
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what I mean that we were hearing about individual cases What I saying now is that there so much happening across that someone needs to join the dots We always looked into things in isolation The child sexual abuse inquiry
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was the thing that was supposed to bring it all together, but it brought in sexual abuse
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in the church, in private schools, and it didn't go in depth into the rape gang scandal
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But it was published in 2022. Yes, and we saw that those recommendations would not deal with gangs, so we set up the
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Gangs Task Force, which caught 807 perpetrators, found many more new victims. And that's when
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that was just last year that that happened. And that's when we started putting in more detail
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into bills. That's why we're talking about a national inquiry now. This has been an ongoing
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thing. Nobody stopped any work. This has been ongoing. What's changed is that we're not in
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government anymore. Barnes-KC is calling for two separate inquiries, really. One's going to be a police command
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the National Crime Agency leading that investigation right across the country. Are you concerned that they haven't got the resources to deal with this issue
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And separately on the justice system, we've got people being released from prison for appalling offences much earlier than what they expected to be behind bars for when they were sentenced
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The prison population is absolutely at its limit. Is this country ready to take on this task
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Does there need to be a serious upgrade of our justice capabilities to deal with tackling these groomers
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We need to make ourselves ready. There are no excuses that will be acceptable this time
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We need to make ourselves ready. This is one of the things that Fiona Goddard said in the press conference
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that hearing about... It's from Bradford, that is. Yes, that's right. That hearing perpetrators getting sentences of 20 years
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and then hearing that they may only serve a third, I mean, that's outrageous. So we need to make sure that the police are properly resourced
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and that these are not the people who are getting let out of prison early. This scandal is something that needs national attention
8:04
It is one of the worst scandals our country has ever seen. And also onto that more broader civil inquiry
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Details need to be put forward on what's actually going to happen there. We do know it's been accepted by the Prime Minister, but questions remain on where it will look
8:17
We're hearing about local inquiries with statutory powers feeding into a national commission
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Does that sound sufficient to you? Because we've heard from a lot of survivors and campaigners that they want more areas to be assessed
8:28
in particular Whitehall and government and Westminster, because there's compelling evidence of civil servants covering up this abuse
8:36
of the CPS criminalising children and decisions being made internally to go after them rather than the predators
8:43
Do we need Westminster to be dragged in front of this commission as well? Well, Charlie, you would have heard the survivors say in the press conference
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that they don't want to see just a few towns. They want to see all the towns looked at
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And I said, you know, on that platform, that wherever the evidence takes us, we should be looking
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No stone should be left unturned. and it doesn't matter whether it's local or national government. Westminster isn't a town, though
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That's my point, that nothing should be left unturned. All institutions, whether it's the CPS, whether it's Whitehall
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wherever it is, where there is evidence, follow the evidence and go and look at where there might be cover-ups
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because the cover-ups are what have meant that this has taken so long. It very hard to investigate things if the local authority that has the evidence is not providing it is sending victims away if the police are not taking down evidence if they calling 10 child prostitutes and so on and so forth
9:34
That's where the real scandal is. Now, Tukhia Starmer and the Labour government say they want to smash the gangs
9:39
want to deal with the illegal crossings over the English Channel. But we also heard from Baroness Casey's report that there is a link between asylum seekers in some live cases
9:50
and grooming gang offences. Is the grooming gangs crisis now a border security issue
9:57
And are you nervous that group-based child sexual exploitation could be being fuelled by the small boats crisis
10:05
So it is absolutely correct for Baroness Casey to link these two issues together
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We heard that in some instances it was asylum seekers, people who sought sanctuary in our country
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who actually were committing these crimes. And this is why I say that Britain is being mugged
10:19
People are exploiting our kindness and we need to put a stop to it. So you would know that we've come out with new policies
10:25
The Conservative Party has very strong, tougher policies on migration, not allowing people to use the Human Rights Act to avoid deportation
10:32
But these things are linked. And yes, I am worried about all the people who are coming into the country
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Labour haven't smashed any gangs. The small boats crossings are higher now than they ever were when we were in government
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We've seen the largest increases under Labour because people feel that they are a soft touch
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When we have the Rwanda plan, the third country deterrent, we saw numbers drop
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We saw evidence that people were going straight to Ireland because they were worried about being sent to Rwanda
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Keir Starmer scrapped that plan. He's got no alternative. We saw him go to Albania and be sent back by the Albanian president or prime minister who said that he wasn't interested in being the third country deterrent there
11:10
So they've got no plan right now. They're not smashing anything. And that's another area that we're going to continue putting the pressure on
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Finally, we saw the Labour MP for Telford, Sean Davis, stand up in Parliament yesterday and accuse the previous Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, of rejecting a request for an investigation in Telford
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It transpires actually that he had written a letter to her saying that that investigation shouldn't take place
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Do you think there'll be a lot of Labour MPs around the country a bit nervous about what this inquiry might find
11:42
about actions they might have taken previously while in local authorities around grooming gangs
11:48
Yes, and he is the classic example. If he had said what he said outside parliament, I think that he could have been done for libel
11:56
Auslander, certainly. This is the kind of problem that we are seeing. The people who knew what was going on or who tried to dampen it down
12:03
suddenly pretending that they were on the side of the angels all along. He is one of the people who voted three times against the National Inquiry
12:10
There is a letter, evidence, that shows that he rejected a national inquiry when he was a council leader and asked that the government not get involved
12:19
I remember Lucy Allen, who was the Conservative MP for Telford, asking for an inquiry
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He was the person who was arguing against her and talking her down. So he has a lot of questions to answer. And what he did in Parliament yesterday was absolutely disgraceful
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Kimmy Baden-Ock, thank you very much. Thank you
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