Wes Streeting accuses Elon Musk of making ‘disgraceful smear’ against Jess Phillips
05 January 2025 11:00am GMT
Wes Streeting has accused Elon Musk of making a “disgraceful smear” against Jess Phillips in the escalating row over grooming gangs.
The Health Secretary defended the safeguarding minister after Mr Musk claimed she “deserves to be in jail” and called her a “rape genocide apologist”.
The US tech billionaire, a key ally of Donald Trump, made the comments after Ms Phillips refused to fund an inquiry into historic child sexual abuse in Oldham a decade ago despite a request from the town’s council.
Mr Streeting’s remarks are the most strident pushback from Labour to date against Mr Musk after Downing Street largely refused to engage with his most recent claims on X.
A report in 2022 found children in Oldham were failed by agencies that were meant to protect them amid alleged grooming by “predominantly Pakistani offenders”.
Oldham Council’s Labour group agreed to support a new independent inquiry last year, and wrote twice to Ms Phillips to urge her department to throw its weight behind this work.
But in a reply revealed by GB News last week, she said it was “for Oldham Council alone” to decide whether to hold such an investigation “rather than for the Government to intervene”.
Mr Streeting told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg: “It is a disgraceful smear of a great woman who has spent her life supporting victims of the kind of violence that Elon Musk and others say that they’re against.
“And it’s all very well sitting there – and I’m not just talking about Musk, I talk about armchair critics on social media. It’s all very easy to sit there and fire off something in haste and click send.
“People like Keir Starmer and Jess Phillips have done the hard yards of actually locking up wife beaters, rapists, paedophiles. They’re good people with great records outside politics.”
Minutes earlier, the Health Secretary also criticised Mr Musk in a separate interview with Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips.
Pressed by Sir Trevor on the Tesla owner’s comments about both the Prime Minister and the safeguarding minister, Mr Streeting said: “It’s a ridiculous thing to say. It’s ill-informed, it’s not fair on either of their records. I’m not interested in what he’s got to say about this.
“I’m interested in what we’re doing as a government which is actually taking the record and commitment that both the Prime Minister and Jess Phillips, and Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, have on this issue, to deliver the real change that victims deserve.”
The Conservatives and Reform UK have both criticised the decision not to hold a fresh national public inquiry, while Mr Musk has posted dozens of highly critical comments on X, accusing Ms Phillips of refusing to hold an inquiry to protect Sir Keir Starmer, who was director of public prosecutions at the peak of the scandal.
Mr Musk wrote earlier this week: “In the UK, serious crimes such as rape require the Crown Prosecution Service’s approval for the police to charge suspects.
“Who was the head of the CPS when rape gangs were allowed to exploit young girls without facing justice? Keir Starmer, 2008–2013.
“Who is the boss of Jess Phillips right now? Keir Starmer. The real reason she’s refusing to investigate the rape gangs is that it would obviously lead to the blaming of Keir Starmer [head of the CPS at the time].”
Sir Keir has previously admitted that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had let vulnerable girls down under his watch.
A case was dropped against a rape suspect in 2009 despite all evidence pointing to their guilt and widespread child exploitation by grooming gangs continued in the following years.
Mr Musk last week accused him of being complicit in “the rape of Britain”, amongst other remarks suggesting he cared more about imprisoning social media users than sex abusers.
Ms Phillips is the MP for the Birmingham Yardley constituency, which has a Muslim population of 42.6 per cent, the 10th highest in the UK.
She won her seat by just 693 votes at the general election in July amid a backlash to Labour’s stance on the Israel-Gaza conflict and a challenge from an independent Muslim candidate.
The re-emergence of the grooming scandal has shone a light on further issues between Labour and a once strong base of support in Rochdale, Oldham and Rotherham, all of which have significant Muslim populations.