LABOUR’s deepening split over a national inquiry into rape gangs erupted today as top party figures clashed over how to handle the scandal.

Lisa Nandy slapped down Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham’s call for a “limited national inquiry,” warning victims had already waited too long for action.

Mr Burnham told the BBC he wanted to join up the dots from previous reports in places like Rotherham and Telford.

He said: “In my view, the Government was right to reject that form of opportunism. But I did hear last night coming out of the debate, ministers saying they are open to discussing issues now with survivors.

“And I will add my voice into this and say I do think there is the case for a limited national inquiry that draws on reviews like the one that I commissioned and the one we’ve seen in Rotherham, the one we’ve seen in Telford, to draw out some of these national issues, and compel people to give evidence who then may have charges to answer and be held to account.

“That is something I couldn’t do at my level.”

But this morning, the Culture Secretary hit back, warning more inquiries risk betraying victims who have already waited too long for justice.

Asked about his intervention, she told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “I get the point that Andy’s making. He said that there was a case for a smaller, more limited national inquiry into the specific issues that the inquiry that he instigated could not pick up.

“I do understand that because the inquiry that we had here in Greater Manchester, astonishingly, some of the Greater Manchester Police officers refused to even take part, and the local inquiry couldn’t compel them to do so.”

She added: “But I do disagree with Andy actually.

“The reason that the Theresa May government set up a national inquiry, which ran for seven years and took evidence from thousands of victims, is precisely because of the points that Andy made.

“That inquiry found what every inquiry has found, that young girls weren’t believed because they were young, they were female, and they were working class, and that the systems that were supposed to protect them protected themselves instead of protecting those brave young victims.”

Ms Nandy’s opposition to Mr Burnham’s intervention came after Downing Street also shut down the suggestion, arguing another inquiry would merely mean further “delay”.

But the Mancher Mayor’s comments pile more pressure on the PM after he blocked a Conservative attempt to force an investigation earlier this week.

Tory Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said politicians and officials who hushed up child rape gangs for years must face their “day of reckoning”.

He told The Sun’s Never Mind The Ballots show: “I want to know who covered this up.

“I want to know who failed these victims by being negligent, by disbelieving their accounts. I want to see a day of reckoning for those people who did not do their job properly.”

He admitted Elon Musk’s relentless social media posts had “raised the salience” of the horrors by largely Pakistani-heritage men that shook northern towns.

It comes as fresh analysis revealed grooming gangs were behind nearly two child sexual abuse offences a day last year.

Figures from the Hydrant Programme revealed 717 child sexual exploitation crimes linked to grooming gangs in 2023, with 572 reported in the first nine months of 2024.

The programme was launched following Alexis Jay’s scathing 2022 report highlighting failures to gather quality data on offenders and victims.

Her findings warned that poor data collection had fueled an “uninformed debate” over the ethnic backgrounds of abusers.

The data from all 43 police forces in England and Wales showed “group-based” offences made up 3.7 per cent of child sexual abuse cases in 2023, with 17 per cent linked to grooming gangs.

Most perpetrators – 83 per cent – were white, while 7 per cent were Asian, 5 per cent black, and 3 per cent mixed race.

Richard Fewkes, who leads the Hydrant Programme, said there was no evidence any ethnicity was over-represented relative to the UK population.

He told The Telegraph: “In very general terms, what we see across all group based offending is that no particular ethnicity stands out based on population data.”

But he warned the focus on grooming gangs could overshadow victims of family abuse, the most common form of group-based child sexual offences.

The current row over the subject was triggered after it was reported the government had refused Oldham Council’s request for a government-led inquiry into historical child sexual exploitation.

Tech giant Elon Musk has since made several incendiary interventions on the subject, including accusing Sir Keir of being “complicit in the rape of Britain”.