SHADOW Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick has accused the Prime Minister of smearing those calling for a public inquiry into grooming gangs by appearing to link them with far-right activists.

Speaking on GB News, he said: “I thought it was the most outrageous smear. Look, millions of people across our country want to see justice for the victims.

“What we’re talking about here is thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of vulnerable young girls who were tortured and raped in the most horrific evil manner in towns and cities the length and breadth of our country, and to hear the Prime Minister smearing those of us who want to see the truth emerge, I thought was absolutely disgusting.

“And more than just that, this was the same attitude that got us into this mess in the first place, it’s because people like Keir Starmer have said you should turn a blind eye for fear of political correctness, that we have seen this happen time and again, decade after decade. Well, it has to end.”

He added: “If young girls are suffering in this way today, as they certainly must be, then we have to do more. That is without question, but it’s wrong to say that the last government didn’t act.

“It was Theresa May that commissioned the reviews that first shed light on this with Professor Alexis Jay. It was Sajid Javid who mandated data collection, for example, by ethnicity, so we can understand the scale of the problem.

“And when I was in the Home Office, it was Suella Braverman who took real action. She created the grooming gangs task force that’s led to 550 arrests and is said to have protected 4,500 victims.

“She was the one who drafted the law, which sadly fell away at the general election, but now Labour are going to take forward so that it is made mandatory that public officials have to report when they have suspicion of child sexual abuse and that we make an aggregated factor in sentencing so the grooming gang perpetrators, these vile, evil individuals, get longer sentences than they do today.

“I have long advocated whole life sentences for these grooming gang perpetrators, and I’ve said that if they’re foreign national offenders, get them out of our country.

“Deport them, no ifs, no buts, so they never step foot on this soil, the soil of our country again. And the cowardly public officials who did turn a blind eye, they should be prosecuted as well.

“Not a single one has been prosecuted so far, and that is completely wrong.

“We need to take action, and we need now to have a full national public inquiry, because the previous report only looked at six towns and we know, in part because of the good reporting of GB News, that this is now happening in probably 50 towns across our country, if not more.

“This is a massive scandal, probably the biggest racially aggravated scandal of its kind in modern history. That’s why we need this full national inquiry, and we need it to start as soon as possible.”