Keir Starmer stands by Jess Phillips, his safeguarding
minister, despite threats of a lawsuit from a woman who quit the national
grooming gangs inquiry.
In a letter to Ms. Phillips on Friday, Fiona Goddard's attorneys warned her about remarks she made about their client and two other victims who resigned from a panel on the grooming gang investigation.
In a letter to Dame Karen Bradley, the chair of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, Ms. Phillips accused them of lying and disputed that the government was "seeking to dilute the focus of the inquiry." The organization has already demanded that Ms. Phillips resign.
The notion of watering down was "patently not untrue," according to Ms. Goddard's attorneys, Switalskis, and Ms. Phillips's letter was "defamatory" because it implied their client had been dishonest.
They also referred to a text message conversation in which Ms Goddard raised concerns with Ms Phillips about an item on an agenda for a meeting with survivors that asked whether the inquiry should take a “broader approach” than an “explicit focus on ‘grooming gangs’”.
They said Ms Phillips had replied: “I know it’s hard to trust, but I can promise you no one is trying to manipulate the response, and it is my view it is only a grooming gang’s [sic] specific inquiry, but it is not right for me to make that decision without it being formally consulted on.
Ms Goddard said she had been “abused and smeared online” as
a result of Ms Phillips’s statement.
The solicitors concluded: “Ms Goddard will accept a written apology from Ms Phillips to put an end to this matter.”
The last candidate to chair the planned inquiry, Jim Gamble, a child abuse specialist who oversaw the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) police command, withdrew due to public outrage and victim resistance, causing the planned inquiry to descend into chaos this week.
On Wednesday, when Tory leader Kemi Badenoch quoted victims’ demands that Ms Phillips resigns or is sacked, Sir Keir responded: “I respect the views of all the survivors, and there are different views – I accept that – but I think the safeguarding minister has probably more experience than any other person in this House in dealing with violence against women and girls, and alongside her will be Louise Casey.
These two individuals have spent decades, decades, standing up for those who have been abused and sexually exploited, and I absolutely think they are the right people to take this forward.”
He also insisted that the inquiry will not be watered down. He told MPs that the victims who resigned from the panel are welcome to return at any time.
He said: “I do acknowledge that in recent days some members, including Fiona, have decided to step away from the panel. Should they wish to return, the door will always be open, but even if they do not, we owe it to them, to Fiona, and to the country to answer the concerns that they have raised.
The inquiry is not and will never be watered down; its scope will not change, it will examine the ethnicity and religion of the offenders, and we will find the right person to chair it.”
Preet Kaur Gill, Ms. Phillips' colleague Birmingham MP and a former social worker who worked in child protection before her election in 2017, has entered the dispute and cautioned against the scope of the investigation being expanded.
She said: “While child sexual abuse in all its forms demands urgent attention, Casey’s audit was clear that this particular form of organised, group-based exploitation exposes unique institutional failings that have not been addressed through previous inquiries.
Broadening the scope risks losing the focus that Casey rightly identified.
The need to hold systems to account for their role in allowing organised grooming and exploitation to persist despite repeated warnings.”
What legal grounds is the survivor citing for the threatened
lawsuit?
The survivor hanging to sue Jess Phillips is likely citing
legal grounds related to the purposeful infliction of emotional torture or
damages caused by scandalous or deceiving statements.
Specifically, such an action would contend that Phillips’s public redundancy or contradiction of survivors’ during the public grooming gangs inquiry caused significant emotional detriment and traduced the trust necessary for securing work.
In these cases, the burden of evidence in civil suits focuses on showing a transcendence of substantiation that the conduct caused detriment. Survivors must validate statements and emotional impact. Similar legal threats are also used to seek remedies like financial compensation or injunctive relief to help further emotional detriment.