The Reform UK Westminster City Councillor has slammed the “sickening cover up” in London.

Laila Cunningham has condemned Sadiq Khan’s handling of the grooming gangs (Image: Getty)

Laila Cunningham has demanded that questions over the London grooming gang “cover up” be answered as she slams the “disgusting and sickening” handling by those in power. The Reform UK Westminster City Councillor has claimed Sadiq Khan changed the wording of ‘grooming gangs’ to ‘multi-offender sexual exploitation cases’ in order to deny what has been happening in London.

“That’s what offered him the excuse to look at Susan Hall and say ‘what do you mean by grooming gangs? It doesn’t exist’,” she told the Daily Expresso podcast. This comes after a Daily Express probe prompted the Met Police to review 9,000 potential cases in London. The London Mayor had previously said there was “no indication” of Rochdale or Rotherham-style gangs operating in the city.

 

The Mayor had previously said there was “no indication” of grooming gangs in London (Image: Getty)

Ms Cunningham said: “It’s absolutely disgusting and sickening that Mark Rowley said there were none, and then a few months later, under public pressure, say we’re reviewing 9,000 cases, and then a few weeks later he said actually it’s not 9,000, we’ve reviewed those, there’s 1,000 and something.”

An initial data search identified around 9,000 historic cases that might fall under the broad national criteria. However, after reviewing 2,200 of them, only about 1,200 remained in scope, Sir Mark Rowley told the London Assembly on November 13.

She continued: “I do feel it’s a cover up, and I feel it’s absolutely disgusting, and whatever form it was, he hasn’t commented on it at all – there are questions swirling.”

In January, Ms Hall made nine consecutive attempts during Mayor’s Question Time to ask Khan whether gangs were currently operating, or had previously been active, in the capital.

In one exchange, the mayor said “the situation in London in relation to young people being groomed is different to the parts of the country”

Ms Cunningham added: “I spoke to one of the grooming gang victims from the north and she said that a lot of them were driven up to London, a lot of the abusers had contacts in London.

“This needs to be public because we’re not going to let those girls suffer in silence again, and we’re not going to let anyone with power get away with it in London.”