Furious row erupts over grooming gangs vote as Labour slam ‘sickening’ Tory move after Musk claims: PMQs live – UK Times

Sir Keir Starmer is claimed to have been “genuinely furious” about Elon Musk’s attack on him and Jess Phillips over the grooming gangs scandal.

While No 10 initially ignored the billionaire’s attacks, the prime minister messaged aides on the final day of his holiday in Madeira on Friday to say that abuse directed as his safeguarding minister had crossed a line, The Times reported.

According to the outlet, Sir Keir was said to be “genuinely furious” by what he viewed as “bad faith” politics from Mr Musk and the Tories, with one ally comparing his response during Monday’s press conference to his views of Boris Johnson as a “charlatan and a liar”.

The Labour government has laid down a challenge to Elon Musk and other social media giants, promising to go after tech firms allowing online abuse on their platforms.

It comes as the government launches a new crackdown on explicit deepfakes, introducing a new offence meaning perpetrators could be charged for both creating and sharing these images.

Sitting down with The Independent, victims minister Alex Davies-Jones said the hyper-realistic images are “abusive, degrading and humiliating”, promising to tackle what she said was “an epidemic of a problem”.

Issuing a warning to tech platforms, she emphasised that Ofcom has robust powers to go after them if there is illegal activity happening on their sites.

“[Ofcom] has got teeth, and they’re robust enough to go after them”, she warned – pointing to the regulator’s powers to fine platforms up to £18m, or 10 per cent of their annual revenue, whichever is higher.

Our political correspondent Millie Cooke reports:

Nigel Farage has been paid tens of thousands of pounds to be the ambassador of a gold bullion company, the latest alternate income for the Reform UK leader.

The Member of Parliament for Clacton was paid £189,300 from Direct Bullion for a brand ambassador role in December, according to the latest MP’s register of interests. By comparison, the basic annual salary for an MP is £91,346, plus expenses.

The hefty sum amounts to just four hours of work per month, according to the self-reported register, and includes some work undertaken before Mr Farage was elected in July.

Our data correspondent Alicja Hagopian reports:

A thinktank has suggested that voters may be willing to “make trade offs” over paying fees for access to NHS care after a new survey revealed that “free at the point of care” has reduced as a priority.

New Redfield & Wilton Strategies polling for Policy Exchange showed that improved NHS performance for core services, including “improved access to GPs” and “shorter waiting times”, are more important.

The survey appears to reflect growing frustration in the UK with the difficulty in seeing a GP and the so-called dentistry deserts across the country.

Our political editor David Maddox reports:

The education secretary said the Conservatives’ push for a vote that would halt progress of a Bill aimed at bolstering child safety is “absolutely sickening”.

Bridget Phillipson told Times Radio: “We are looking right across the recommendations that Alexis Jay set out and there are crucial recommendations from the review that she carried out.

“That’s why today we are setting out legislation that addresses many of the wider challenges that we see right across our system. It’s why the Home Secretary announced in the House of Commons the action that we are taking.

“So we are wasting no time in legislating to keep children safe. The question for the Conservatives today is why they are intent on blocking this landmark piece of child protection legislation that would keep the very children safe that they claim they are concerned about.”

She added: “They come along today as we set out legislation to protect the very children they claim to care about and they intend to block it and kill it stone dead. It is absolutely sickening.”

Our political correspondent Archie Mitchell has more details on the row here:

The Liberal Democrats have accused the Tories of using survivors of the grooming gangs scandal “as a political football”.

Lib Dem education spokesperson Munira Wilson MP said: “The Conservatives are using the victims of this scandal as a political football.

“The Conservatives alongside Reform, goaded along by Elon Musk will be voting for a motion which will not secure a national inquiry for victims of child sexual abuse, but instead it would kill these crucial child protection measures completely.

“The Liberal Democrats will be putting forward our own amendment to take real action to tackle the child sex abuse scandal, by implementing the recommendations from the national independent inquiry in full.”

Tory shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith has claimed that Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter “may have saved humanity”.

In a post on X, where Mr Musk often reposts such statements to his 210 million followers, the Tory frontbencher wrote: “The [Elon Musk] purchase of X may have saved humanity. With X becoming a true freedom of speech platform, the common ground of public opinion is no longer determined by a left-leaning elite.

“Recent political earthquakes in the US, the UK and now Canada are a release of pent up democratic will as citizens regain their ability to speak freely.

“Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press created the preconditions for democracies to replace bad kings or clerics. X is now doing the same for unaccountable and failing bureaucratic states.”

After weeks of dire economic warnings for the prime minister, he has now come under fire from one of Britain’s biggest entrepreneurs.

The Punk IPA tycoon said Sir Keir asking regulators how to boost business growth “is like asking chickens for tips on how to sell more McNuggets”.

Writing on LinkedIn, he added: “Maybe if you want to drive growth, you should ask the people who actually create it… like entrepreneurs, founders and business owners. Just a thought Keir Starmer.”

Elon Musk has continued his conspiratorial attacks on the Labour government, ahead of the Tories’ attempt to table an amendment to Labour’s children’s safety bill to include a symbolic vote on grooming gangs.

With Labour MPs set to back the government’s bill, Mr Musk wrote on X: “Now why would Keir Starmtrooper order his own party to block such an inquiry? Because he is hiding terrible things. That is why.”

Sir Keir was praised in a 2013 parliamentary report for his efforts to bring grooming gangs to justice while director of public prosecutions.

“Mr Starmer has striven to improve the treatment of victims of sexual assault within the criminal justice system throughout his term,” the report said, adding that his “response should provide a model to the other agencies involved in tackling localised grooming”.

Bridget Phillipson has denied the government is committing “educational vandalism” with its Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.

Tory shadow education secretary Laura Trott has accused Labour of being set on “tearing up everything that has driven up school standards”, amid fears that academies will lose freedoms that can help to recruit teachers and improve pupil outcomes in challenging areas.

Academies – which are independent of local authorities – currently have the freedom to set their own pay and conditions for staff, and some academies exceed the national pay scales for teachers.

But under the new legislation, all teachers will be part of the same core pay and conditions framework whether they work in a local authority-run school or an academy.

Responding to Conservative criticism, the education secretary told LBC: “I think the only vandals here are the people that today intend to vote down the single biggest piece of child protection legislation. They are the vandals.”