Nigel Farage will criticise Andy Burnham over his record on grooming gangs as the Makerfield by-election battle gets under way, The Telegraph understands.
The Reform UK leader accused Mr Burnham of failing victims, suggesting that this would be a key message in the party’s campaign for the Greater Manchester seat, which will be contested by Mr Burnham for Labour.
It comes after a Manchester police whistleblower, who exposed the Rochdale cover-up, said that Mr Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, had fallen at “the final hurdle” by glossing over the scale of ongoing abuse and exploitation.
Mr Farage told The Telegraph: “Burnham failed the grooming gang victims and he will fail the people of Makerfield too.
“He would be a disaster for the economy and betray every Brexit voter in the constituency. Open Borders Burnham must be stopped.”
Maggie Oliver, the former detective constable who blew the whistle on her force’s handling of a child sex abuse ring in Rochdale, said she was “really grateful” to Mr Burnham for launching reviews that exposed serious failings in the handling of historical child sexual abuse allegations.
But she claimed that the final assurance review, which concluded there had been “significant improvements” in tackling child sexual exploitation, had been a “paper exercise” and had not “given survivors their voice” or got to grips with the scale of ongoing abuse.
Ms Oliver said: “I am more than grateful he took the steps he did but I am disappointed that on the final hurdle when we could have looked at what is happening today, they really did not reflect the voices of the victims or survivors. They took the coward’s way out.”
She set up the Maggie Oliver Foundation to support victims and survivors of child sexual abuse and exploitation after spending 16 years in Greater Manchester Police (GMP). She resigned from the force in 2013 over its handling of an investigation into the Rochdale child sex abuse ring.
This March she won a significant High Court victory over the Government by securing a judicial review into successive administrations’ failures to implement the 20 recommendations of Prof Alexis Jay’s independent inquiry into child sexual abuse.
Ms Oliver has said she will not stand in the Makerfield by-election, after rumours she might contest the seat for Reform. On Friday, she posted a 2024 letter to Mr Burnham on social media, in which she had resigned from the assurance review stakeholder panel.
She criticised Mr Burnham on X, writing: “What I saw in Mr Burnham and GMP was a willingness to say there had been huge failures in the past but when looking at action around failures still going on today, there truly was no duty of candour on display! Instead they turned away. Again.
“Once again, the voices of those victims and survivors whose voices should have been front and centre of this report were totally silenced and blocked out of the assurance review, making it worthless. The establishment again marking its own homework.”
Mr Burnham set up reviews of allegations of cover-ups of historical child sexual abuse and exploitation in Manchester and Rochdale as soon as he became mayor in 2017.
These exposed institutional failings and evidence that the authorities had turned a blind eye to the abuse, predominantly involving Asian men exploiting white girls.
While the reviews resulted in more than 100 arrests and multiple convictions, Mr Burnham advocated a national statutory inquiry, because that alone would have the legal power to compel witnesses to give evidence.
This was in contrast to Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, who resisted holding a national inquiry.
Ms Oliver said: “I know Andy Burnham reasonably well and I always give credit where credit is due. I am a non-party political person but I know my subject inside out. I personally have a lot to be thankful to Andy Burnham for.
“He has said consistently that he heard me speaking about these cover-ups in the national media and as soon as he came into post as Mayor of Greater Manchester he ordered these independent reviews. I am really grateful that he did that.”
However, Ms Oliver said she was unhappy with the final stage four review. She said: “It was meant to be an assurance review to look at whether things had improved within GMP since the independent review team had looked at what had gone on.
“I would say that assurance review gave nobody any assurance… In my opinion, the report that followed and which said everything was fantastic was a paper exercise and did not do anything for survivors, did not give survivors any voice.”
Failure to listen to survivors
Ms Oliver said the failure to take account of survivors’ experience meant the review could not provide necessary reassurance.
She wrote: “You have to be prepared to look at where we need to change and where we need to improve. You cannot do that until you speak to survivors trapped in the system today.
“We are handling dozens of cases currently throughout the whole country including many cases within GMP. There is still a long way to go to give victims and survivors a service that is fit for purpose.”
Sir Keir announced a national inquiry with powers to force witnesses to give evidence after it was recommended last June by Baroness Casey of Blackstock. Her audit had found systemic, decades-long failures by authorities to protect children from grooming gangs in England and Wales.
Baroness Longfield has been appointed to chair the inquiry and will be questioned by the home affairs committee this week on her plans. She has pledged to investigate “any factor” including the ethnicity of perpetrators that “contributed to patterns of abuse”.
After criticism of its approach, GMP has set up a dedicated unit staffed by some 100 officers to investigate child sexual exploitation and abuse.
It has applied tactics that are normally used in investigations into organised crime gangs. Ongoing operations have seen dozens of high-profile convictions.
A spokesman for the Greater Manchester combined authority said that the stage four review had found “clear evidence that Greater Manchester has responded to those historic failings and made real changes” but added: “We are not complacent and we continue to drive improvements across our system.
“Nothing can make up for what happened to the victims of these crimes, but we are determined that they will be listened to and protected, and the perpetrators will be brought to justice.”