Starmer has faith in Phillips as grooming gangs victims call for her to quit

Sir Keir Starmer said he “of course” has faith in Jess Phillips after a group of women who resigned from the grooming gangs inquiry called for her to stand down as safeguarding minister.

Four women who quit the inquiry’s victims liaison panel have said in a letter to the Home Secretary that they would be prepared to return if she resigns as safeguarding minister.

Meanwhile, reports emerged that a fifth survivor had left the panel, while separately another had joined the call for Ms Phillips to resign.

Two candidates have withdrawn from the running to chair the inquiry.

Ministers have rallied around Ms Phillips, with a spokesperson for Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood saying she has her “full support” and Health Secretary Wes Streeting praising her work to support victims and survivors of violence.

Sir Keir said during a Thursday visit: “The most important thing in relation to the grooming gangs is that we have the national inquiry and that absolutely gets to the truth and to justice.”

Asked if he has faith in the minister, the Prime Minister told BBC South East: “Yes, of course, I do.

“Jess has been working on issues involving violence against women and girls for many, many years.”

The Prime Minister is going to reach out to the victims, it is understood.

The four women wrote in a letter to Ms Mahmood that Ms Phillips had labelled some of their claims “untrue” and that they had provided evidence to the contrary.

One of them, Ellie-Ann Reynolds, said the final turning point for her was “the push to change the remit, to widen it in ways that downplay the racial and religious motivations behind our abuse”.

Ms Phillips told MPs on Tuesday that “allegations of intentional delay, lack of interest or widening of the inquiry scope and dilution are false”.

However, in their letter to the Home Secretary, the four victims say that “evidence has since proven we were telling the truth”.

Ms Reynolds, Fiona Goddard, Elizabeth Harper and a woman signed only as “Jessica” state in the letter that there are five conditions that must be met for them to return to the advisory panel.

They call for victims to be able to speak freely without fear of reprisal, the inquiry’s scope to remain “laser-focused” on grooming gangs and the current victim liaison lead to be replaced by a mental health professional.

They have also called for the inquiry chair to be a former or sitting judge and for all survivors on the panel to be “genuinely consulted” on the chair’s appointment.

The survivors’ letter, shared on Ms Goddard’s X account, says: “Being publicly contradicted and dismissed by a government minister when you are a survivor telling the truth takes you right back to that feeling of not being believed all over again.

“It is a betrayal that has destroyed what little trust remained.

“We have been failed by every institution meant to protect us. We were failed as children, we were failed by police who didn’t believe us, failed by social services who blamed us, and failed by a system that protected our abusers.

“We will not participate in an inquiry that repeats those same patterns of dismissal, secrecy, and institutional self-protection.”

A fifth victim has quit the panel and backed the call for a judge-led inquiry, The Telegraph has reported.

Gaia Cooper wrote to NWG, the charity running the victims’ liaison, saying that she hopes both sides of the political spectrum will stop using the inquiry as “a political battering ram” and accused both of being “complicit in cover-ups and failures”, according to the newspaper.

And the BBC reported that another survivor using the pseudonym Carly had joined the call for Ms Phillips to resign, but wanted to remain part of the inquiry.

It is thought there are no candidates left in the running to be chair after former police officer Jim Gamble and Annie Hudson, a former director of children’s services for Lambeth, both withdrew.

Mr Gamble said he had pulled out of the appointment process because of a “lack of confidence” in him among some survivors because of his police background.

He also hit out at politicians “playing games” with the inquiry and said victims had been “disrespected and misinformed”.

He cast doubt on whether a judge could lead the inquiry, telling BBC Breakfast on Thursday morning that the chair should be picked based on “integrity” and “character” rather than what institution they had been part of.

He also noted that the Government was trying to stick to the recommendations in Baroness Louise Casey’s “national audit” of group-based child sexual exploitation, which he said did not advise appointing a judge.

Her findings, published in June 2025, prompted Sir Keir to order the creation of the national inquiry.

The Home Office said it was “disappointed” that candidates to chair that inquiry have withdrawn and that it needed to “take the time to appoint the best person suitable for the role”.

Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy acknowledged that there had been “setbacks” this week but added that “we move forward”.

“The starting point is: this is hard. My drawing on 25 years of experience in public life, dealing with families experiencing pain, suffering, sometimes grief – and I’m thinking of in my career, scandals like Windrush, like Grenfell Tower – there often is not a uniform voice,” he told reporters.

He said it was “very tough” but that Sir Keir had been clear that the inquiry will leave “no stone unturned” and that the background of the perpetrators including their ethnicity and religion “is absolutely on the table”.

In the Commons on Wednesday, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer insisted the inquiry “is not and will never be watered down” and its scope “will not change”.

He said: “It will examine the ethnicity and religion of the offenders, and we will find the right person to chair the inquiry.”

The Prime Minister also vowed in the Commons on Wednesday that “injustice will have no place to hide” as he announced Baroness Louise Casey is being drafted in to support the work of the inquiry.

Baroness Casey’s audit found “many examples” of organisations shying away from discussion of “ethnicity or cultural factors” in such offences “for fear of appearing racist”.

He said she and Ms Phillips were “the right people to take this forward”.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting also backed the safeguarding minister, telling Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour he did not think she should resign and that there was “no one in Parliament who has done more to tackle violence against women and girls than Jess”.