Keir Starmer is starting his LBC phone-in. He is broadcasting from Hartlepool.
Nick Ferrari, the presenter, starts by asking about the Rishi Sunak announcement about grooming gangs.
Starmer says, on child exploitation, we should do anything possible.
He says, as DPP, he gave the green light to prosecute the Rochdale case. That involved Pakistani men, he points out.
On mandatory reporting, he says he called for that 10 years ago.
That is “a decade lost”, he says. “The prime minister and others have to really explain why they have wasted that decade.”
On ethnicity, he says “the vast majority” of sexual abuse cases do not involve ethnic minorities.
And he says it was really instructive for him, when his team asked him for permission to prosecute the Rochdale cases, one of the men they were prosecuting had been arrested but not charged some years before.
He asked why. And what he found was that good faith police officers, and good faith prosecutors, had made assumptions about the young girl victims. Because they had not reported the abuse early, and because they had gone back to the perpetrators, and because they had been drinking, it was assumed they would not be believed.
He says he insisted on a change in approach.
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Q: When will Sue Gray start working for you?
Starmer says the committee deciding when she can start, the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba), is still looking at that.
Starmer says grooming a child to go into drugs or gang related activitity should be a specific offence.
At the moment this has to be prosecuted under other offences, he says.
Q: Will you renationalise water companies?
Starmer says he has looked at this. But renationalisation would cost an awful lot of money. He says he would rather spend the money training doctors and nurses.
Starmer says he has not talked to Jeremy Corbyn for two and a half years.
Q: Is he a friend?
Starmer says Corbyn is not a friend.
Q; You called him a friend?
Starmer says he worked with him as a colleague. But he was never a friend in the sense that they used to go and visit each other.
Asked about the delays at Dover, Starmer says the government should “get a grip”. He says it was obvious that border arrangements would change after Brexit, and he says they should have planned for this.
Starmer says the decision to deny Charles Bronson parole was right.
Asked if the double child killer Colin Pitchfork should get parole, Starmer says he does not know the circumstances, but he does not think he should be released.
And asked if Levi Bellfied should be allowed to marry in jail, Starmer says he prosecuted Bellfied and has no sympathy for him at all.
Starmer says the children most likely to end up in jail are children who have problems in primary school, and then get excluded at secondary school. He says the government should be focusing on this group, to stop them offending in the first place. That is why initiatives like Sure Start from the last Labour government were so important.
Starmer says it is “shocking” that, for every 100 cases of sexual violence against women, only 1.6 gets prosecuted. He says when he first heard the figure, he had to ask his team to check it because he found it hard to believe it was true.
Q: Rosie Duffield says you have not spoken to her since 2021. Shouldn’t you be supporter her given the abuse she has faced.
Starmer says that comment was from a few weeks ago. He spoke to her recently, he says. He says she is an important voice in the party.
Q: She complained you did not notify her when you visited Kent recently?
Starmer says it is normal to notify the constituency MP, but not MPs from the county.
Nick Ferrari says NEU members have voted by 98% to reject the government’s pay deal.
Starmer says he is “disappointed” because he wants this to be resolved. He urges both sides to compromise.
Q: Do you supporter teachers going on strike during the exam period?
Starmer says he supporters their right to go on strike. But he does not want to see the strike go ahead.
Starmer says he cannot commit to giving junior doctors a 35% pay rise.
A caller tells him junior doctors stack up so much debt as they are training it is no longer a sensible career choice.
Starmer accepts that this is an issue.
Keir Starmer is starting his LBC phone-in. He is broadcasting from Hartlepool.
Nick Ferrari, the presenter, starts by asking about the Rishi Sunak announcement about grooming gangs.
Starmer says, on child exploitation, we should do anything possible.
He says, as DPP, he gave the green light to prosecute the Rochdale case. That involved Pakistani men, he points out.
On mandatory reporting, he says he called for that 10 years ago.
That is “a decade lost”, he says. “The prime minister and others have to really explain why they have wasted that decade.”
On ethnicity, he says “the vast majority” of sexual abuse cases do not involve ethnic minorities.
And he says it was really instructive for him, when his team asked him for permission to prosecute the Rochdale cases, one of the men they were prosecuting had been arrested but not charged some years before.
He asked why. And what he found was that good faith police officers, and good faith prosecutors, had made assumptions about the young girl victims. Because they had not reported the abuse early, and because they had gone back to the perpetrators, and because they had been drinking, it was assumed they would not be believed.
He says he insisted on a change in approach.
Good morning. Rishi Sunak is today announcing a crackdown on grooming gangs. He is announcing a “grooming gangs taskforce” which will see “specialist officers parachuted in to assist police forces with live child sexual exploitation and grooming investigations to bring more of these despicable criminals to justice”, according to the No 10 news release. But Sunak is also presenting this as a crackdown on “political correctness” because, as Pippa Crerar reports in her story, he also claims this is a threat to women and girls too. In a statement issued overnight Sunak says:
The safety of women and girls is paramount. For too long, political correctness has stopped us from weeding out vile criminals who prey on children and young women. We will stop at nothing to stamp out these dangerous gangs.
Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, has been giving interviews this morning, and she told the Today programme that Sunak’s announcement did not amount to a serious strategy. She said:
I think what is happening is the government is trying to distract everybody from focusing on the issues and the policies.
If they were serious about tackling child abuse and tackling child sexual exploitation, why are they cutting support for taking action on trafficking? Why are they not having proper support for victims?
This isn’t a serious strategy to take action, and we need a serious strategy because this is one of the most serious crimes of all.
We will hear from Keir Starmer himself on this shortly.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9am: The National Education Union announces the result of its latest strike ballot.
9am: Keir Starmer holds a ‘Call Keir’ phone-in on LBC.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
Sunak and Starmer are both doing visits this morning, in Leeds and Hartlepool respectively, so we will be hearing more from them too.
If you want to contact me, do try the new “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a PC or a laptop. (It is not available on the app yet.) This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line, privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate), or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.
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April 03, 2023 at 03:34PM
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Starmer says majority of sexual abuses cases do not involve ethnic minorities after Sunak's 'political correctness' claim ... - The Guardian
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