logo
Blackpool: Heated exchange in grooming gang inquiry debate

Blackpool: Heated exchange in grooming gang inquiry debate

BBC News30-01-2025
There were heated exchanges as councillors debated calls for Blackpool to be part of a national inquiry into child grooming gangs.Despite warning the resort has many of the risks associated with child sexual exploitation, Conservative group leader councillor Paul Galley failed to get a notice of motion passed.Mr Galley had submitted a motion to a meeting of the full council urging for a letter to be written to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper asking for a national inquiry, with Blackpool included.Members of the Justice for Charlene Downes campaign group booed and unfurled banners which said Break the Silence on Child Abuse as his notice of motion was thrown.
Child targeted online
The ruling Labour group instead voted for an amendment welcoming the government's decision to implement the recommendations made by the Jay Report, following a seven year inquiry into child sex abuse.Councillor Jim Hobson, cabinet member for children's services, said the outcome of an inspection into child safeguarding had been received, which praised the council's response to children at risk of exploitation.But Mr Galley told the meeting child grooming gangs potentially operated from hotels and amusement arcades and warned "Blackpool should have a voice" in any future inquiry which needed to cover links to coastal towns.Conservative group deputy leader councillor Michele Scott added: "We have all seen the reports of vile crimes against children. We have heard how this is a far greater problem in our society and far more widespread than any of us could have imagined."She said a child in her own ward had recently been targeted by an online groomer and was saved only due to the vigilance of their family, while the police had recently sent text messages to residents warning them of the risks of grooming and county lines.Councillors including councillor Jim O'Neill from Reform UK said the recommendations of the Jay Report should be implemented at the same time as a new national inquiry was held.But the Labour group said Blackpool had been successfully tackling the risk of child sexual exploitation in the town since 2004 when the multi-agency Awaken task force had been set up following the disappearance of 14-year-old schoolgirl Charlene Downes.
Listen to the best of BBC Radio Lancashire on BBC Sounds and follow BBC Lancashire on Facebook, X and Instagram and watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Traffic diverted due to Belfast protest against war in Gaza
Traffic diverted due to Belfast protest against war in Gaza

Belfast Telegraph

time24 minutes ago

  • Belfast Telegraph

Traffic diverted due to Belfast protest against war in Gaza

At one stage traffic was diverted and some buses re-routed. Hundreds of protesters gathered with pots and pans lining Donegall Place and blocking oncoming traffic during the protest this evening. An online post described it as 'an emergency protest organised in Belfast against the weaponisation of starvation and aid and the ongoing genocide in Gaza, Palestine.' The PSNI and Translink has been approached for comment. Israel's war in Gaza has killed more than 59,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. It does not distinguish between militants and civilians. We need your consent to load this Social Media content. We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Meanwhile, SDLP MPs Claire Hanna and Colum Eastwood and Alliance's Sorcha Eastwood are among 221 MPs from across different political parties who have joined forces to call on the Government to recognise a Palestinian state. The MPs urge the Government to take the step ahead of a United Nations conference in New York next week, following France's announcement it would recognise Palestine at the gathering. Their letter, co-ordinated by Sarah Champion - Labour chairwoman of the International Development Select Committee, said: "We are expectant that the outcome of the conference will be the UK Government outlining when and how it will act on its long-standing commitment on a two-state solution; as well as how it will work with international partners to make this a reality." Parliamentarians from Labour, the Conservatives, Lib Dems, SNP, Greens, Plaid Cymru, SDLP and independents were among those who signed the letter. Senior signatories include Labour select committee chairs Liam Byrne and Ruth Cadbury, the Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey, as well as Tory former minister Kit Malthouse. Ministers have faced growing calls to recognise a Palestinian state immediately amid mounting global anger over the starving population in Gaza. Israel 'tarnishing reputation', Lammy says as country rejects UK warnings Sir Keir Starmer said on Friday evening that such a move needed to be part of the "pathway" to peace in the Middle East. "That pathway will set out the concrete steps needed to turn the ceasefire so desperately needed, into a lasting peace," the Prime Minister said. He added: "Recognition of a Palestinian state has to be one of those steps. I am unequivocal about that. But it must be part of a wider plan which ultimately results in a two-state solution and lasting security for Palestinians and Israelis. In a statement released on Friday alongside the leaders of France and Germany, the Prime Minister urged "all parties to bring an end to the conflict by reaching an immediate ceasefire". Sir Keir, French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Friedrich Merz also called for Israel to stop restricting the flow of aid into Gaza.

It's easy to sneer at Corbyn after farcical launch of his new party but here's why Starmer should be very, very afraid
It's easy to sneer at Corbyn after farcical launch of his new party but here's why Starmer should be very, very afraid

The Sun

time24 minutes ago

  • The Sun

It's easy to sneer at Corbyn after farcical launch of his new party but here's why Starmer should be very, very afraid

IT is easy to sneer at ­Jeremy Corbyn and his new political party. As Labour leader Corbyn took his former comrades to their biggest defeat since 1935, winning just 203 seats. 2 2 As leader of a fringe party he will have zero chance of becoming Prime Minister. We can all be thankful for that. The launch of the party was itself farcical, with Corbyn already apparently falling out with his co-founder, former Labour MP Zarah Sultana. It appears to be called 'Your Party', and even has a website by that name, yet within hours of the launch Sultana tweeted in protest 'it's not called that!' and insisted that a name will be chosen at the putative party's first conference. When challenged on the row, Corbyn announced that Sultana was 'in Coventry' (where her constituency is), failing to spot the euphemism. All very Corbyn-like. If I were Keir Starmer, however, I would be taking the launch of the new party very seriously indeed. While Your Party, or whatever it is called, has no chance of forming a government, it has every chance of contributing to the downfall of the current one. Just look how Reform UK ate into the Conservative Party vote in last year's General Election, helping reduce it to a rump of just 120 seats. Corbyn has every chance of inflicting as much damage on Labour as Reform UK did on the Tories. Add to Labour's misery Corbyn and Sultana haven't announced much in the way of policy yet — you wouldn't expect them to have done — but their declaration on Thursday included two positions which absolutely hit the right buttons for Labour's increasingly disenchanted band of supporters on the Left. First, they want to end arms sales to Israel, and second, they propose to take all utility companies into public ownership. Inside UK's 1st Reform pub with £2 pints, boozers drinking 'Remainer tears' & even Corbyn's allowed in, on one condition As for the first, just look how Labour suffered at the hands of independent pro-Palestinian candidates in the last election, with Jonathan Ashworth losing his supposedly safe seat in Leicester and Wes Streeting, now Health Secretary, scraping home by just 528 votes in Ilford North. Shabana Mahmood, now Justice Secretary, saw her 28,000 majority shrink to just 3,421 in the face of a challenge from a pro-Palestine candidate — and that was against the backdrop of a national Labour landslide. A nationally organised ­General Election campaign which focuses on Gaza — even one organised by Corbyn — can surely only add to Labour's misery on this front. Whatever the rest of us might think of Hamas, and worry that a Palestinian state — if created now — would simply become a terrorist state, this is a touchstone issue on the Left and has the potential to cost the party a substantial number of seats. As for nationalising public utilities, that would be hugely popular among voters — and not just Labour ones. According to a recent ­YouGov poll, the public favours public ownership of energy companies by a margin of 71 per cent to 17 per cent and of water companies by 82 to eight per cent. Where Corbyn would find the money to renationalise utility companies is, of course, another matter, but my guess is that many voters will not be bothered by that little problem. At the next election, Starmer will in one sense be in an even worse position than Rishi Sunak was in last year. Starmer will have two upstart parties chipping away at his vote. While Corbyn's party will be attracting votes on the Left, Reform UK has already started eating into the traditional working class ­Labour vote as Nigel Farage adopts an agenda that is more economically left-wing. To add to this, Labour holds a very large number of seats on small majorities. It won a landslide only because its unimpressive 34 per cent share of the vote was very efficiently spread. It won't take much for Labour's majority to evaporate. Not for the first time, you have to wonder at Starmer's political naivety in chucking Corbyn out of the Labour Party. It may have seemed a good wheeze at the time, five years ago, to make a statement that Labour really had changed. There was also a good reason for it in Corbyn's claim that accusations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party had been 'massively overstated for ­political reasons'. But Corbyn had been saying ridiculous things for decades and had never been thrown out by Labour. Vanished without trace Tony Blair correctly worked out that Corbyn had a huge following on the Left and it was best to tolerate his ­presence. Starmer seems to have a poor political brain by comparison. Mastering a political start-up is notoriously difficult in ­Britain's first-past-the-post ­election system. Who now remembers ­ChangeUK, the anti- Brexit party which was launched with eight MPs who had defected from their parties but which quickly vanished without trace? Even Roy Jenkins and ­Shirley Williams' SDP only lasted eight years in spite of some impressive early by-election wins. But Starmer should remember how the SDP nevertheless helped keep Labour a long way from power during the 1980s. His fate may just have been sealed.

How Trump's Alligator Alcatraz tactic has sent migrant numbers PLUMMETING – while soft-touch UK rolls out the red carpet
How Trump's Alligator Alcatraz tactic has sent migrant numbers PLUMMETING – while soft-touch UK rolls out the red carpet

The Sun

time24 minutes ago

  • The Sun

How Trump's Alligator Alcatraz tactic has sent migrant numbers PLUMMETING – while soft-touch UK rolls out the red carpet

COMPARE and contrast the images. At the heart of London's ­financial centre, comfy mattresses are loaded into a four-star hotel as they prepare for hundreds of special new guests. 13 13 13 No, not well-off tourists here to inject some much-needed cash into the UK's struggling economy, but the ­latest batch of small boat migrants who have illegally landed, ready to be hosted in style to the tune of £5.5million a day. Meanwhile, 5,000 miles away on an abandoned airport in the bug-ridden and croc-infested Florida Everglades, up to 3,000 illegal migrants are banged up in what Donald Trump calls ' Alligator Alcatraz'. 'The only way out is a one-way flight,' declared the White House when they opened the brutal ­detention centre, where high-security cages sleep 30 at a time in a swamp-like hellhole. It's been designed for one purpose only: deterring illegal migration. Labour scrapped the only proper deterrent on the table, in a clear ­signal to those queuing at Calais to carry on crossing with impunity. Harry Cole While Britain rolls out the red ­carpet for our soaring number of uninvited guests, since January ­America has seen a comparative ­border miracle. Crossing attempts on the southern border have plummeted, and those that do make it are rapidly deported. With President Donald Trump landing at Prestwick in Scotland last night before inspecting his golf courses Turnberry and Menie, Sir Keir Starmer will be dropping in for a chat on Monday to talk trade and world peace. But instead, he should bring his notebook and pen and start with a very simple question . . . How has America got a grip of its border crisis, while impotent Britain is humiliated by a daily stream of fresh boats, migrant rapes and assaults, and more tinder box ­communities on the edge? Migrants REFUSING to leave luxury taxpayer-funded hotels forcing Home Office crackdown Since returning to the White House in January, President Trump has embarked on a slew of aggressive and eye-catching immigration clampdowns. From the off, both on the Mexico border and deep into the country's biggest cities, it was made clear there's a new sheriff in town. On the very day Trump was sworn back into the White House, he declared a national emergency, ­classifying the tens of thousands of monthly arrivals coming through Mexico as an 'invasion'. New sheriff in town Opposition parties have been demanding a similar escalation here in the UK, but so far that has fallen on deaf ears in Downing Street. Rhetoric aside, the US move unlocked millions of dollars of ­military budget funding to dramatically increase patrols on the border. More than 7,000 troops were sent to the Southern states, with federal agents around the wider country given sweeping immigration powers to detain illegal migrants. After construction of Trump's 'big beautiful wall' was paused by his predecessor Joe Biden, work immediately began again in January, serving as a visual deterrent if nothing else. 13 13 And more significantly, the White House reintroduced rules that non-Mexican asylum seekers must wait in Mexico rather than be allowed to enter the US while their claims are processed. Another Biden-era policy which allowed migrants to use a mobile app to schedule asylum appointments pre-arrival was also scrapped, leaving 30,000 claimants in the lurch. As the new arrivals were squeezed, those already here were ­ruthlessly targeted, and deportations have been rapidly hiked. Undocumented migrants can now be removed from anywhere in the US without so much as a hearing. While the US government's ­methods are not for the squeamish, they have clearly been effective. Harry Cole Previously, that strict measure was reserved only for those detained within 100 miles of the border. Compare that to the tens of ­thousands in the UK put up while their bogus asylum claims, funded by taxpayer legal aid, exhaust appeal after appeal. Turning again to the military, the US air force has gone into deportation overdrive, shipping out thousands of migrants, with more than 1,000 flown out in the first week of the new administration alone. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have arrested more than 300,000 undocumented immigrants in 2025, with a heavy emphasis on those convicted of crime. In the first 50 days of Trump's ­second presidency, the administration claimed that 32,809 arrests were made, nearly matching the number detained in the entirety of Biden's last year in office. And the highly visual deterrent measures did not stop there. 13 13 13 While Starmer scrapped the Rwanda scheme as his first action in office, the United States has ­convinced ­Guatemala, Panama, Costa Rica and El Salvador to take ­deportees, even if they are not their own citizens. Talks with 30 other countries are ongoing, helping the White House to claim that 139,000 immigrants had been deported by April of this year. And did it work? The latest ­numbers say yes. There were just 7,181 crossings or attempted crossings from Mexico in March, compared to 143,000 in the same month last year. June 2025 saw the lowest number of attempts or crossings in 25 years at just 6,070. And, crucially, all ­apprehended migrants were either detained or deported, with zero 'releases' into the community. Just contrast that with Britain. In a single day in May, 1,194 migrants landed on the coast of Kent. Billions more spent In Labour's first six months in office, there was a 29 per cent increase in arrivals compared to the previous year. From election day to the end of 2024, 23,242 migrants arrived to enjoy bed and board on the taxpayer. In 2025 — so far — another 21,117 have crossed, up a staggering 56 per cent compared to 2024 and a shocking 75 per cent higher than in 2023. For a new administration that vowed to 'smash the gangs', it's an abject humiliation and comprehensive failure, on course to smash only unwanted records. Excuses range from sunny days to the lazy French not playing ball, but given Starmer's first act as PM and no replacement for Rwanda yet, the blame game rings hollow. Labour scrapped the only proper deterrent on the table, in a clear ­signal to those queuing at Calais to carry on crossing with impunity. Add to that the lure of Britain's black market, where new arrivals can go from dock to takeaway delivery driver in a matter of hours, and it becomes a national joke. 13 13 13 According to the last available UK figures, there are some 118,000 ­asylum seekers awaiting decisions, with the hotel bill steady at £5.5million every day. Labour made a big song and dance about the 4,390 deportations in their first six months in office, yet 2,580 were foreign national offenders rather than small boat arrivals. Official Home Office figures have been less forthcoming since then. But with 95 per cent of arrivals attempting to claim asylum, without a dramatic hike in ­deportations this problem is not going to go away. Despite a Labour manifesto ­commitment to 'end asylum hotels, saving the taxpayer billions of pounds', that target has been kicked into 2029, meaning billions more will be spent until at least the end of the decade. And compare 'Alligator Alcatraz' to how soft-touch Britain pampers those in the asylum queue. This week, we learnt pre-charged debit cards handed to migrants have been used in 6,537 attempts to gamble in bookies or casinos. Illegal black market There are more than 80,000 of these pre-loaded 'Aspen' cards in circulation, topped up every ­Monday by the Home Office with up to £49 a week for guests using self-catering ­accommodation. They are meant to give weekly payments so users can buy necessities. In Wandsworth, South West ­London, where Labour won control of the council last year for the first time in decades, those living in limbo are given perks not available to locals but paid for by locals. While awaiting asylum decisions, new arrivals are given subsidised travel on pay–as-you-go electric bikes at half the normal rate. There's half-price soft play for those that actually brought children, but not much use to the thousands of single men that make up the majority of crossings. 13 And there's even cut-price tickets for literature festivals, local fireworks displays and — I'm not ­making this up — half-price annual fishing permits to cast off at the local ponds. The French call our asylum ­system El Dorado, the city of gold, and frankly they have a point. While Donald Trump is doing everything he can to deter migrants, we are handing out freebies, four-star hotel suites and turning all but a blind eye to ­illegal black-market work. While the US government's ­methods are not for the squeamish, they have clearly been effective. Sir Keir warned his Cabinet this week that the very social fabric of Britain is starting to fray and social disorder is a major risk among a population that feels ignored on immigration. Well, surely then it's time to get real and take some uncomfortable measures? Yes, Trump is not bound by foreign courts, but he took on his own legal system on many immigration measures and won — something Sir Keir should look into if he really is as worried as he claims about the impact of unfettered crossings and community breakdown. The PM could learn a thing or two from the President, if he's ­serious.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store