Overview
- The five women serve on a panel advising the inquiry and recently told Keir Starmer they would stay only if Jess Phillips remains in post and if anyone who believes their evidence should be included can contribute.
- At a Monday press conference alongside former panel member Ellie-Ann Reynolds, Nigel Farage said the government had widened the inquiry beyond Pakistani grooming gangs and suggested the five were survivors of a different kind of abuse.
- The women called his remarks degrading and humiliating, insisted they are survivors of grooming gangs, and asked him to apologise for what they said was categorically untrue.
- The inquiry was ordered in June after Louise Casey’s audit, which found disproportionate numbers of Asian men among suspects in some areas but warned national conclusions are limited by missing ethnicity data.
- The advisory process remains fractious, with multiple resignations over the inquiry’s scope, Farage urging a Parliament-led commission, and other survivors warning that a narrow street-grooming focus would exclude cases that began online or through peers or family.