Angela Rayner has failed to apologise for Sir Keir Starmer’s "smear" where he accused those calling for a national inquiry of "jumping on a far-right bandwagon".
While Rayner stood in for Starmer, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp urged the Deputy Prime Minister to apologise for her boss's remarks.
"Standing up for rape victims is not far-right. So will the Deputy Prime Minister apologise for what the Prime Minister said?" Philp asked.
Despite Starmer's comments receiving an enormous backlash, Rayner refused to apologise during her heated exchange with Philp the House of Commons.
"The Prime Minister did not just raise issues but acted on them," she said.
"He brought the first prosecutions agaisnt grooming gangs, called for action to address ethnicity issues in 2012 and he [Philp] will know that the data the previous Government collected was inaccurate and not complete."
Rayner has failed to apologise for Sir Keir Starmer’s 'smear'
|PARLIAMENTLIVE.TV
"The Prime Minister made those comments specifically about Tory ministers who sat for years and did absolutely nothing," she spat.
Starmer himself was forced to clarify his remarks yesterday during a visit to Canada for the G7 summit.
He confirmed to GB News that it was not a "far-right" issue for viewers of Britain's News Channel to be concerned about grooming gangs.
"No, no, no and I'm certainly not criticising your viewers," Starmer said when probed about the "far-right" claim.
"There's one thing that I find frustrating," he added. "It's politicians who had the opportunity in power to do something about it and did absolutely nothing."
"I've been raising this issue for 15 years. I'm really glad that I'm the Prime Minister that's actually now put in place a national inquiry, something which wasn't done under the last Government."
READ MORE ON KEIR STARMER'S 'FAR-RIGHT SMEAR':
'I'm really glad that I'm the Prime Minister that's actually now put in place a national inquiry,' Starmer told GB News
|PA
On Saturday, the Prime Minister ordered a full-scale national inquiry into the rape gangs scandal after having read the recommendations of a report compiled by Baroness Casey over the last few months.
But on January 6, he accused politicians who backed an inquiry, of "amplifying what the far-right is saying" and "jumping on the bandwagon" to gain attention.
The spat at PMQs came after Home Secretary Yvette Cooper laid out the findings of Baroness Casey's landmark report on Monday.
Cooper confirmed Labour would be moving to accept all 12 of the report's recommendations.
"This will mark the biggest programme of work ever pursued to root out the grooming gangs," the Home Secretary told MPs. "Those vile perpetrators who have grown used to the authorities looking the other way must have no place to hide."
PICTURED: Yvette Cooper outlines the Casey review to MPs
|HOUSE OF COMMONS
Labour will be moving to introduce:
- New laws to protect children and support victims;
- New major police operations;
- A national inquiry to direct local probes and hold institutions to account for failures;
- New ethnicity data and research;
- New action across children's services to identify young people at risk;
- Further action to support child victims and tackle new forms of exploitation online;
- Change the law to ensure that adults who engage in penetrative sex with a child under the age of 16 will be charged with rape.