Cooper says five local grooming gang inquiries still set to go ahead, after Tories claim they’ve been dropped in ‘cover-up’
During her BBC Breakfast interview Kemi Badenoch claimed that the government has dropped the plans for five local inquiries into grooming gang, or child rape scandals, that were announced in January. As she was trying to fend of the questions about Adolescence, she said:
One of the things that I’m more bothered by is the fact that just yesterday, we had Labour telling us that they’re not going to be investigating the rape gang scandal, something which had happened all across the country. That’s real. That’s happening right now. We’re not talking about that.
And, in a subsequent interview with Sky News, she suggested that some sort of cover up was going on. She said:
I am absolutely astonished that Labour has dropped what it said it would do in January. And, as I said to Keir Starmer at prime minister’s questions, if he did not have a full national inquiry, people will start to think that there is a cover-up.
They are clearly uncomfortable with having inquiries that are looking into this issue.
They said that they will have a pot of money for councils to bid in. But why would a council bid for money to investigate itself?
(Badenoch may have forgotten that the grooming gang inquiry story only became a big media controversy in January after GB News reported that the government had rejected a request from Oldham council for a public inquiry into the grooming gang scandal in the town in the past.)
Other Tories have also claimed Starmer is engaged in a cover-up. Andrew Griffith, the shadow business secretary, posed this on social media last night.
As a rule I believe in mess ups rather than conspiracy.
But if true that Labour have shelved even the most limited public enquiries into grooming gangs, it does suggest that powerful Labour politicians have something to hide.
Why not seek the truth?
The Conservatives have been claiming that the five local rape gang inquiries have been dropped on the basis of what Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, told MPs in a statement on Tuesday. Phillips did not say the inquiries were being dropped. But she could not report any progress being made towards setting them up, and she set out what sounded like a lengthy process that might lead to inquiries turning into victims’ panels. She said:
We are developing a new best practice framework to support local authorities that want to undertake victim-centred local inquiries or related work, drawing on the lessons from local independent inquiries such as those in Telford, Rotherham and Greater Manchester. We will publish the details next month.
Alongside that, we will set out the process through which local authorities can access the £5m national fund to support locally-led work on grooming gangs. Following feedback from local authorities, the fund will adopt a flexible approach to support both full independent local inquiries and more bespoke work, including local victims’ panels or locally led audits of the handling of historical cases.
Today, in an interview with LBC, Yvette Cooper rejected claims that plans for the local inquiries were being watered down. She said:
There’s a huge information about this. This is completely wrong. We’re actually increasing, not reducing, the action being taken on this.
Child sexual exploitation, grooming gangs – these are some of the most vile crimes, things like rape or exploitation, coercion. We’re increasing the action against that.
So we’ve already set out one local inquiry – that will be in Oldham. We’re drawing up the framework at the moment for the further local inquiries. We’ve got the Louise Casey audit that’s underway at the moment.
Asked if the five local inquiries promised in January would go ahead, she replied: “Yes, there may be more.”
Even though some of the worst grooming gangs scandals were happening up to 20 years ago, and even thought there have been multiple prosecutions and inquiries into these crimes over the past decade or more, the Conservatives and Reform UK are picking up significant public and media support with their argument that the full truth is being withheld and further inquiries are needed.
According to Sky News, Phillips plans to hold a briefing for Labour MPs worried about this issue at 5pm this afternoon.
Key events
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Reopening Doncaster Sheffield airport ‘makes no economic sense’, says Green MP
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Starmer rejects suggestion Trump is not taking his calls over tariffs
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Why purdah rules haven’t stopped Starmer announcing Doncaster airport reopening just before city’s mayoral election
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Starmer says 3,000 extra neighbourhood police officers and PCSOs will be in place by March next year
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Farage rejects Badenoch’s suggestion of Tory-Reform coalitions in town halls
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Tories dismiss Cooper’s assurance local rape gang inquiries going ahead, saying only national inquiry will suffice
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John Healey says ‘coalition of willing’ has ‘well developed’ plans to help Ukraine and ‘we’re stepping up’
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About 1,200 jobs to go at Cabinet Office in civil service efficiency drive
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Visa applications from migrants wanting to come to UK down more than a third over past year, figures show
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Starmer says government won’t just ‘sit back and hope’ in response to Trump’s policies
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Tory peer helped secure meeting with minister for Canadian firm he advises
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Cooper says five local grooming gang inquiries still set to go ahead, after Tories claim they’ve been dropped in ‘cover-up’
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Badenoch defends not planning to watch Adolescence, saying ‘my job is not to watch lots of TV’
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Lib Dems claim Reform UK and Tories have ‘merged in all but name’ with Badenoch as Conservative leader
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Wes Streeting welcomes NHS England figures saying 3.1m extra hospital appointments have taken place since election
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Hospital waiting list falls for six month in a row, down to 7.4m, NHS England figures show
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England’s ‘complex’ health and care system harming patients, report says
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Yvette Cooper says Trump tariffs U-turn shows why PM has been right to respond to him in calm, ‘steady’ manner
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Gordon Brown calls for ‘economic coalition of the willing’ to tackle Trump tariffs
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Kemi Badenoch condones Tories forming pacts with Reform UK if necessary to take control of councils
Reopening Doncaster Sheffield airport ‘makes no economic sense’, says Green MP
The Green MP Siân Berry has said reopening Doncaster Sheffield airport does not make economic sense. In posts on social media, she said:
Reopening Doncaster airport makes no economic sense. It was deemed no longer financially viable in 2022 with airlines choosing to fly from the three airports that lie within 60 miles of Doncaster. How long before it closes again, and more jobs are lost?
This Govt should invest in improving transport links between Doncaster, the East Midlands, Manchester and Leeds, to generate sustainable jobs and a way to reach them with reliable, green public transport, as well as helping people access existing airports for existing flights.
Berry also posted a link to a Yorkshire Post leader article expressing doubts about the plan. It says:
The big question now will be whether the airport can be a financial success in the hands of the public sector.
DSA made losses in every financial year of its operation between 2005 and 2022 under private ownership, collectively adding up to almost £180m.
Council officials have said they believe they can attract up to five airlines to use DSA and quadruple its previous freight traffic figures. It now appears they will get the opportunity to turn that vision into a reality.
Starmer rejects suggestion Trump is not taking his calls over tariffs
Keir Starmer has rejected a suggestion that President Trump is not taking his calls over tariffs.
In an interview with ITV’s Carl Dinnen, who asked if Starmer had spoken to Trump since the president imposed 10% tariff on all British exports to the US, Starmer said his team was talking to Trump’s “every day”, discussing what could be done to reduce the tariffs.
When Dinnen put it to the PM that it sounded as though Trump was not taking his calls, Starmer replied:
No, not at all.
You have to understand that, for the UK and the US, our teams talk all of the time, whether that’s on defence, on security, on intelligence and on trade, on a deal. So that is constantly going on. That’s what you’d expect of two very close allies.
But, at the same time, I’m clear that this is a change which isn’t, in my view, temporary, and therefore we’ve got to do the hard yards of making sure we’re turbocharging our own economy … also talking to to other world leaders about what we can do to lower trade barriers.
ITV has posted the clip on social media.
‘With respect prime minister, it feels like Trump’s not taking your calls…’@carldinnen grills Starmer on whether he’s spoken to Donald Trump since he put 10% tariffs on the UK
The PM insists ‘my team are in contact with the President’s team every day’ pic.twitter.com/ZsABY10wkw
— ITVPolitics (@ITVNewsPolitics) April 10, 2025
Why purdah rules haven’t stopped Starmer announcing Doncaster airport reopening just before city’s mayoral election
Today Keir Starmer has been publicising two potentially popular government announcements.
First, the government is backing plans to reopen Doncaster Sheffield airport.
According to the news release, the Department of Housing, Communities and Local Government is supporting the decision by Oliver Coppard, the South Yorkshire mayor, “to invest £30m devolved funding in critical infrastructure to support the creation of a sustainable aviation hub, propelling regional prosperity and driving private investment into Yorkshire”. Starmer put it more bluntly on social media:
As part of our Plan for Change, Doncaster Sheffield Airport will re-open: turbocharging economic growth and putting money back in the pockets of working people across communities like Doncaster, Sheffield, Rotherham and Barnsley.
Doncaster is one of the six places in England where mayoral elections are taking place on 1 May. Labour won easily four years ago, but Reform UK is hoping to do well in this contest.
And, second, the Home Office has announced details of new rules to beef up neighbourhood policing. Starmer has been talking about those this afternoon. (See 3.19pm.)
You may wonder why this is allowed. Under so-called “purdah” rules, the government is supposed to hold off announcing anything party political during an election campaign. It is allowed to carry on governing, but it is not supposed to use government resources to announce things (like new airports) that might confer electoral advantage.
The dates are not fixed. A Commons library briefing note says:
For UK and devolved government departments the pre-election period for local elections is not fixed to any particular date. The general convention is that special care should be taken in the three weeks preceding the elections. For local elections in England in 2025 that is 10 April to 1 May.
The Doncaster Sheffield airport announcement, and the neighbourhood policing announcement, were both dated 9 April.
Starmer says 3,000 extra neighbourhood police officers and PCSOs will be in place by March next year
In a news release issued overnight the Home Office announced that “every neighbourhood in England and Wales will have dedicated teams who will spend their time on the beat with guaranteed police patrols in town centres and other hotspot areas at peak times such as Friday and Saturday nights”.
On a visit to Cambridge, Keir Starmer has gone a bit further, saying that 3,000 of the 13,000 extra neighbourhood police and PCSOs (police community support officers) that the government is pledged to recruit by the end of this parliaemnt will be in place by March next year.
Addressing police officers, Starmer said:
I want you to have the tools that you need to do the job that we ask you to do.
With our neighbourhood policing guarantee, we’ll deliver 13,000 new neighbourhood officers by 2029.
And today I can announce the first step, 3,000 new neighbourhood officers by the start of next year – all of them visible, on the beat and serving their communities, not stuck behind a desk, or taken away to plug shortages from elsewhere.
And from this July, so a few months time, every neighbourhood will have a named contactable officer.
They’ll have guaranteed police patrols in town centres and hot spots, particularly at peak times like Friday and Saturday nights.
People will be able to go online and measure how their local neighbourhood team is performing. There will be a range of ways for local residents and businesses to raise their concerns and to demand change from their neighbourhood policing team.
Kemi Badenoch does not always get a good write-up in the Economist, but here is a second Economist political correspondent applauding her response to complaints on BBC Breakfast this morning about her not watching Adolescence. (See 11.23am.) This is from Matthew Holehouse on Bluesky.
If she could channel it better, Badenoch’s scarcely-concealed view that much of politics is silly bullshit could be quite popular.
Farage rejects Badenoch’s suggestion of Tory-Reform coalitions in town halls
Nigel Farage has rebuffed a suggestion from Kemi Badenoch that Conservative and Reform UK councillors could form coalitions in town halls after the local elections, Eleni Courea reports. The Reform leader said his party had “no intention” of forming coalitions with the Tories at any level after 1 May.
Tories dismiss Cooper’s assurance local rape gang inquiries going ahead, saying only national inquiry will suffice
The Conservatives have accused the government of doing a U-turn over grooming gang inquiries.
In a press notice headed “Conservative response to Labour’s grooming gangs U-turn”, prompted by Yvette Cooper’s comments this morning (see 12.17pm), Katie Lam, the shadow Home Office minister, said:
The government thought that they could quietly cancel these inquiries on the last day of parliament.
The public is rightly outraged and now ministers are panicking, making it up as they go along.
The Telford inquiry alone cost £8m. How exactly are they going to hold “more than five” proper independent inquiries for only £5m?
And how many more than five? Why not fifty? Why shouldn’t all victims get the justice that they deserve?
Will local councils — many of which stand accused of covering up these vile crimes — still be able to choose whether they are investigated?
We need a national inquiry. And any local inquiries must be genuinely independent and properly funded. Until the government can commit to that, these announcements aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.
The claim that there has been a U-turn is based on the gap between Cooper’s comments today (she said “we’re actually increasing, not reducing, the action”, and claimed there could be more than five inquires) and Jess Phillips’ comments on Tuesday (when she did not cancel the local inquiries, but did suggest the whole process was being slowed or watered down).
An alternative theory (likely to appeal to Danny Shaw – see 1.27pm) would be that, having overstated the significance of what Phillips said on Tuesday, the Tories have now backed away from saying the local rape gang inquiries have been cancelled.
John Healey says ‘coalition of willing’ has ‘well developed’ plans to help Ukraine and ‘we’re stepping up’
In Brussels John Healey, the defence secretary, has opened a meeting of defence minister from the 30 countries that are part of the UK/France-led “coalition of the willing” making military plans to help guarantee the security of Ukraine in the event of a peace deal.
In remarks that were broadcast live, Healey said:
Our plans are well developed, and we have clear objectives for Ukraine.
First, to secure safe skies.
Second, to secure safe seas.
Third, to support a peace on the land.
And fourth, to support the Ukrainian armed forces to become their own strongest possible deterrent.
Our reassurance force for Ukraine would be a committed and credible security arrangement to ensure that any negotiated peace does bring what President Trump has pledged – a lasting peace for Ukraine.
Healey said the ministers would be briefed by the British and French defence chiefs. They would focus on “how operational planning of the coalition could work, and how we make sure that we’re fully prepared for the moment a peace agreement is reached”.
But the war is continuing, he said. Support for Ukraine must continue. And he said many of those attending today would be at tomorrow’s meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, when they would pledge more military support to bolster Ukraine on the battlefield.
Healey ended:
There are 30 countries here today, 30 countries bound by a simple belief – that peace is possible and we must be ready for when that peace comes.
That’s why the work of this coalition is so vital. We’re stepping up. We’re serious.
Jakub Krupa is covering the meeting in more detail on his Europe live blog.
About 1,200 jobs to go at Cabinet Office in civil service efficiency drive
The Cabinet Office will shrink in size by about a third, with about 1,200 jobs to go and another 900 transferred to other departments, Rowena Mason reports.
Visa applications from migrants wanting to come to UK down more than a third over past year, figures show
The number of migrants applying for key visa routes to the UK has dropped by more than third in a year, PA Media reports. PA says:
Applications covering a total of 772,200 people were submitted across the main visa categories in the year to March 2025, down 37% from nearly 1.24 million in the previous 12 months, Home Office data shows.
The decline is likely to reflect changes in legal migration rules introduced early in 2024 by the previous Conservative government, including a ban on overseas care workers and students bringing family dependents, and a steep rise in the salary threshold for skilled workers to £38,700.
The figures have been published by the Home Office and cover the main worker, study and family visa categories.
The drop has been driven by a sharp fall in applications by foreign health and care workers and their family members, which decreased by 78% from 359,300 in 2023/24 to 80,700 in 2024/25.
There was an even steeper fall in applications by family members of those wanting to come to the UK on a sponsored study visa, down 83%, though the number of main applicants for this visa dropped by just 11%.
The previous government introduced a change in January 2024 that stopped students bringing family members apart from those studying postgraduate research courses or those with government-funded scholarships.
Researcher at the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, Dr Ben Brindle, said: “The tightening of immigration rules under the previous government has led to a sharp decline in visa applications over the past year.
“This was driven primarily by a fall in applications from health and care workers and students’ family members – most of whom now cannot come to the UK.
“Main applications from health and care workers also fell, possibly reflecting fewer vacancies and government focus on exploitation in the sector.
But Dr Brindle said that applications from migrants recruited for jobs outside health and care had fallen less than expected, and that with the increase in salary thresholds “it appears that many employers are simply paying workers more”.
And here are three graphs from the Home Office report illustrating the figures.
Danny Shaw, the home affairs commentator and former BBC journalist who worked as an adviser to Yvette Cooper for a short period when she was in opposition, has been posting messages on social media arguing that claims that the government is backpedalling on grooming gangs (see 12.17pm) are flat wrong.
NEW Home Secretary Yvette Cooper says there’s “misinformation” re Govt action on grooming gangs. I’d say it’s a wilful refusal to understand what they’re doing. The most fearless Whitehall troubleshooter, Baroness Casey, is doing an audit – she won’t pull any punches, never has.
Casey is looking at the: ‘scale, nature & drivers of group-based child sexual exploitation at a national & local level’… including an.. ‘assessment of the data around the ethnicity of victims & perpetrators, in relation both to Pakistani-heritage & other grooming gangs’… She’ll report in June
As for local inquiries.. Home Office says there remains a: ‘£5m fund to support local independent inquiries & related local work to tackle grooming gangs supported by a good practice framework drawing on learning from local inquiries like Telford’
Govt is also making grooming an aggravating factor in sentencing & ordering inspections of the work police forces do on this. On child sexual abuse more broadly Home Office has announced a range of measures – more than any other area of crime
Here are some more pictures from Keir Starmer’s visit to Doncaster Sheffield airport this morning.
Starmer says government won’t just ‘sit back and hope’ in response to Trump’s policies
Keir Starmer has said the government will not just “sit back and hope” in response to President Trump’s tariff policies.
In his first public remarks since President Trump abruptly U-turned on his tariffs policy last night, Starmer said the government would “rise to the moment”.
Starmer did not criticise directly Trump over his policies, and he did not give any fresh detail as to how the government would respond. Over the last week or so he has repeatedly said that the world is entering a new economic era and that, in response, the government must redouble efforts to protect UK industry, boost growth and strengthen trade links with like-minded, free trade economies.
Speaking to reporters at an event in Doncaster, Starmer said:
This government is ambitious for Britain.
I’m not going to stand here and pretend that tariffs are good news. That is not true, and you wouldn’t believe me if I said it, but just as we’ve seen recently on defence and security across Europe, and with Ukraine, they do make one thing very clear, and that is that the world is changing, and we as a country must change with it.
In other words, we’ve got to rise to the moment here, recognise where our future lies, renew Britain and deliver security for working people.
Starmer also said his Labour administration was “not a government that’s just going to sit back and hope” but would deliver “fundamental change”.
Tory peer helped secure meeting with minister for Canadian firm he advises
Ian Duncan, a Conservative peer, helped to secure a meeting with a minister for a Canadian company he was advising while it was seeking government funding worth millions of pounds, Rob Evans and Henry Dyer report.
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has described the government’s stance on the grooming gang local inquiries (see 12.17pm) as “cowardly”, Sky News reports.
He also claimed a national inquiry would be launched on Monday. He said:
I am told there will be a development coming on Monday, led by somebody who played a very prominent role in exposing the grooming gangs, that will be coming on Monday.
In January Farage said, if the government did not set up its own national inquiry, Reform would set up its own. After the local inquiries were announced, the party shelved its own plans. But Rupert Lowe, the MP recently expelled from Reform, wants to run his own version and he has raised more than £500,000 through crowdfunding to pay for it.
