Badenoch says Britons not as rich as they think and refusing ‘to live within our means’
Badenoch accuses Labour of making mistakes, and says the last Conservative government made mistakes too, using the passages briefed in advance. See 9.36am and 11.45am.
Badenoch goes on to say the UK is not as rich as it thinks.
If we are going to turn our country around, we’re going to have to say some things that aren’t easy to hear.
Let’s start with our problems. We think we are rich, but we are living off the inheritance that previous generations left behind, a complacency that Britain will always be wealthy, and a refusal to live within our means.
We owe it to that next generation to leave an inheritance for them and not mortgage their future to make our lives more comfortable, and that will demand the kind of tough, soul-searching conversations we’re not having right now.
Energy supply is vulnerable, more vulnerable than ever, and our energy is far, far too expensive when it should be secure, cheap, plentiful.
Demography is destiny. People are having fewer children. Our society is getting older. We are living longer and needing more support towards the end of our lives. Look at productivity. A shrinking group of people are working to support an ever growing number of those who are unable or unwilling to work.
The information age means it is easier than ever for rogue governments to destabilise us and for rogue companies and countries to steal our know how.
And – no ifs, no buts – we simply cannot take all the millions of people who want to come here from elsewhere. Our country is our home. It is not a hotel. If people arriving don’t want to integrate into British culture, they shouldn’t be here.
Key events
Bernard Jenkin (Con) told Yvette Cooper that he welcomed her statement, and that he thought she had come a long way since last week, but that he thought the local inquiries need to have the power to summon witnesses to appear and to compel the production of documents. He said they should have these powers.
Cooper said that the best protection for victims would come from the work done by police. And she said the previous local inquiries did not have the powers of a national inquiry (which can order the production of papers and witnesses). But those inquiries “still managed to uncover serious problems and also make serious recommendations”, she said.
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, accused Keir Starmer of “smearing” people concerned about child rape by suggesting they were far right last week.
(That is a misleading account of what Starmer actually said.)
He described the announcement of local inquiries in five towns as inadequate.
What the home secretary has announced today is totally inadequate. It will only cover a fraction of the towns affected, and it appears these inquiries will not have the legal powers they need. That is why we need a full national public inquiry covering the whole country and with the powers under the Inquiry Act needed to obtain the evidence required.
Here is Peter Walker’s story about Yvette Cooper’s announcement.
Cooper also says the Home Office will increase support for police tackling online abuse, including funding undercover online officers infiltrating live streams and chat rooms.
Cooper says local inquiries can be more effective than national inquiries.
And so she has asked Tom Crowther, who carried out the Telford inquiry, to develop “a new framework for victim-centered, locally-led inquiries where they are needed”.
These will start in Oldham, and four other pilot areas, she says.
And this will include support for councils who want to explore “other ways to support victims, including local panels”.
Cooper says there will be an extra £5m to back these inquiries.
But Cooper says just looking at historical cases is not enough. She goes on:
There are currently 127 major police investigations under way on child sexual exploitation and gang grooming across 29 different police forces. Many major investigations have involved Pakistani-heritage gangs and the police taskforce evidence also shows exploitation and abuse taking place across many different communities and ethnicities.
She says the ethnicity data is not adequate. She says she has asked for an overhaul, with data published covering when investigations end, not just when they begin.
And she says she has asked Louise Case, the crossbench peer and former civil servant, to carry out a “rapid audit” of gang-based exploitation across the country, and to make recommendations.
The independent inquiry into child sexual abuse concluded that an accurate picture of the prevalence of child sexual exploitation could not be gleaned from the data and evidence it had available. So this audit will seek to fill that gap.
Cooper says the audit will look at evidence not previously available. And it will “properly examine ethnicity data and the demographics of the gangs involved and their victims”.
Cooper says Casey is the right person to do this because she carried out a “no-holds barred” report on child abuse in Rotherham.
Cooper says Casey will spend three months on this audit, meaning she can start before she has to start work on the commission on social care that she has also been asked to lead for the government.
Cooper says the government will introduce stronger sentences for grooming, making organising abuse and exploitation an aggravating factor.
She says the remit of the independent child sexual abuse review panel will be extended, so it does not just cover historical cases before 2013. That means any victim will be able to ask for a review of their case, without having to go back to the institution that failed them.
She says she is writing to all chief constables urging them to look again at historic gang exploitation cases where no further action was taken.
Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, says Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, has been meeting survivors of sexual abuse in Oldham today.
She says she will tell MPs what the next steps will be.
She says the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA) produced its report, after a seven year inquiry, in 2022.
She says before Easter the government will set forward its timetable for implementing the recommendations from the IICSA report.
Four of the 20 recommendations relate to the Home Office. They wll be accepted in full.
And all the recommendations from IICSA’s standalone report into grooming gangs, published in February 2022, will be implemented.
Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, has just started giving her Commons statement about grooming gangs.
Kemi Badenoch’s problem is that she leads a party with a dire record in government and has not yet done much to persuade voters that she’s different. The extracts from her speech released in advance contained a hint that she was willing to address this, because in those passages she went further than she has done before in disowning the Tory record on Brexit. (See 9.36am.) But, overall, the speech as a whole did not live up to the expectations created by the overnight preview. Badenoch’s enthusiam for truth-telling seems extremely limited and, after she got through the pre-briefed bits (which were mostly at the start of the speech), the rest of it sounded very familiar. The analysis of its drawbacks filed earlier, at 11.45am, still stands.
Sam Coates from Sky News had a point, too, when he said the overall tone was negative and gloomy. None of it sounded uplifting.
But Nigel Farage has found something to joke about. He posted this on social media.
A total of 21 people are currently watching Kemi Badenoch’s speech on Facebook and her YouTube stream crashed.
It’s a good job she understands the digital age.
That is a reference to Badenoch’s tweet over the Christmas holidays about the Reform UK membership ticker, in which she claimed Farage “doesn’t understand the digital age”.
Q: [From Katie Balls from the Spectator] Is there anything you want to apologise to voters for on behalf of Tory party? And do you think Donald Trump’s election will lead to a ‘“vibe shift”?
On apologising, Badenoch said:
When we had a speech last month about immigration – and that’s one of the things where I came out upfront and said we acknowledge that we made mistakes – I was knocking on a door recently, and I was apologising to the person at the doorstep, and said, I’m not interested in your apology, I want you to get these people out, and that’s what I’m going to be focused on.
On vibes, Badenoch said:
I think that things have been in a state of flux for at least 10 years. There’s been a vibe shift almost every 18 months, and we’re seeing the latest iteration. We are going to have to be flexible as a party.
And that was it.
Badenoch took a lot of questions, but none from leftwing news organisations.
Q: Do you think the last Conservative government should have held an inquiry into grooming gangs? And do you still stand by your claim Reform UK membership numbers are wrong?
On the inquiry, Badenoch says she does support a national inquiry into grooming gangs. That was not her view at the time, but it is her view now, because of what has happened since.
On the row about the Reform UK membership figures (she claimed Reform were making up the figures – Reform produced evidence that seemed to disprove this), Badenoch says:
I stand by between I made at the time. I think if you read [the tweet] very carefully, you’ll see I was very specific.
But I don’t think the public are interested in litigating membership numbers. They want to know what we are going to do for them, and that is what my speech today is about.
In her tweet, Badenoch claims the Reform UK membership numbers being shown on a ticker were fake, but also that Reform were wrong to claim they had more members than the Tories because Reform were using the last published figure for Tory members – when the most recent figure has not been disclosed.
Her answer today suggests she wants to draw a line under the affair.
Cooper suggests lack of national inquiry powers won’t hold back local inquiries
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp says Labour’s plans for five local inquiries ‘totally inadequate’
Cooper says Home Office to fund more local inquiries, starting in Telford and four other pilot areas
Cooper says Louise Casey will do 3-month audit of extent of gang-based abuse, including looking at ethnicity of offenders
Cooper says timetable for implementing child abuse inquiry recommendations to be set out before Easter
Yvette Cooper’s statement to MPs about grooming gangs
Badenoch’s speech – snap verdict
Badenoch plays down need for apologising over Tories’ record, saying getting Labour out more important
Badenoch says public ‘aren’t interested in litigating membership numbers’, drawing line under row with Reform UK
