Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips can repair relations with grooming gang survivors so the inquiry can go ahead, Harriet Harman has said.
A row over who chairs and oversees the long-awaited inquiry into grooming gangs has seen four of about 30 survivors on the panel quit and say they will only return if Ms Phillips resigns.
The women, who are overseeing the setting up of the inquiry, have accused her of wanting to expand the inquiry’s scope so it focuses on more than grooming gangs – something Ms Phillips denies.
But Baroness Harman, a former Labour home secretary, told Beth Rigby on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast she thinks there has been miscommunication which “can be solved if there is underlying trust and confidence”.
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She said this situation has happened before, with the Grenfell fire inquiry when friends and family of those killed were not happy about the original chair or scope, but came around and were satisfied with the outcome.
It also happened, she said, when murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence’s parents did not trust then-home secretary Jack Straw to set up an inquiry into the handling of the police investigation.
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“Actually, that trust was built, although at the outset of the [Lawrence] inquiry their lawyers stood up and asked for it to be adjourned and suspended indefinitely,” she said.
“And that happened before it actually got going and became a really important landmark inquiry.”
Baroness Harman said Ms Phillips was “wrong to attack the people that are coming after her” after the minister gave a fiery rebuke in the Commons over criticism of the inquiry, including about its scope and about two potential chairs – an ex-senior police officer and a former social worker – who have both now withdrawn.
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One of the survivors, Ellie Reynolds, said she felt an inquiry had become “less about the truth and more about a cover-up”.
Ms Phillips, who previously managed Women’s Aid refuges for domestic abuse victims, denied this and insisted the government was “committed to exposing the failures”.
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Baroness Harman said the minister’s “attack… made the situation far more difficult”.
But she added: “It must be exasperating for Jess Phillips to have her credibility, her commitment, her integrity questioned by people who’ve made no commitment to the struggles that she’s given her life’s work to.
“But although it must be exasperating, she can’t afford to be exasperated because this is about answering the questions that have been put.
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“Because watching this is not just the 30 who are on the panel that have been chosen by the government to help with the inquiry, but it’s the thousands of other girls who’ve been abused and for whom this inquiry matters enormously.”
Sir Keir Starmer has backed Ms Phillips to continue in her position.
