Jess Phillips: Musk abuse has 'turned my world upside down'

Jess Phillips has told ITV News she is worried for her safety after Elon Musk attacked her on his social media site X, ITV News' Deputy political editor Anushka Asthana reports

Jess Phillips says online abuse by Elon Musk has "turned my world upside down" and the tech billionaire "knows absolutely nothing" about grooming gangs and child sexual exploitation.

Speaking to ITV News' Deputy Political Editor Anushka Asthana, the Safeguarding Minister said when Musk called her a "rape genocide apologist" and an "evil witch", her immediate thought was "what a joke", but "then you wake up with the realisation it's millions of people he's said that to."

"The thing that annoys me the most about it is it takes up so much bandwidth of my time, from a man who knows absolutely nothing about the subject he's talking about", she said.

"The only thing I ever want to be doing is being able to use all of my brain power to focus on the hundreds of girls I have supported over the years, who have been victims of grooming gangs".

The discussion around grooming gangs erupted online in response to a letter from Phillips in which she rejected a request for a government-led inquiry into sexual exploitation in Oldham.

The Birmingham Yardley MP defended her decision not to have a government inquiry, because she saw how effective a council-led inquiry was in Telford, where "things changed, way quicker."

"When I was asked to make that decision my instinct was to try and get for Oldham what I’d seen in Telford", she said.

Phillips however admitted she hadn't spoken to the Oldham victims, but she's "very much hoping to do that and arranging that". It was the victims in Oldham who pushed the council to request a government inquiry, in an effort to better scrutinise authorities.

The safeguarding minister rejected the suggestion the government took action to implement a key recommendation on tackling grooming gangs on Monday as a result of Musk's intervention: "It didn’t take Elon Musk’s intervention for that to happen, because I am apoplectic that progress has been so slow", she said.

"Within the first days of me being in the job that I am in, I set up a cross government group in order to get the recommendations looked at by every department", she told ITV News.

Phillips also revealed she is concerned about her safety after the online abuse she has received: "I worry about my safety... I have to take account of the risks in my life, this is one of them currently.

"The few days of madness is nothing compared to the decades sat in police stations with girls bleeding from a battery that they've taken from a grooming gang. So I'll put on my big girl pants and just suck it up."

Oldham Council had written to the Home Office asking for a government backed inquiry into grooming gangs in the town after victims called for more robust scrutiny of those in power, but Phillips denied the request, saying a council-led inquiry would be more effective. Similar locally-led inquiries took place in Rochdale and Telford.

The Conservative government turned down a similar request from Oldham Council in 2022, but are now calling on the government to launch a full public inquiry.

It was then amplified by Elon Musk, who launched an attack on Phillips and Starmer, accusing them of being complicit a cover-up of the scandal.

Musk wrote that Phillips "deserves to be in prison", calling her an "evil witch and a rape genocide apologist".

Jess Phillips is no stranger to online abuse, facing regular threats and intimidation during the most recent election campaign. Last year she described X as a "place of misery" and said she planned to use the site less.

Musk also said Starmer should be jailed for failing “rape gangs” to justice when he was director of public prosecutions (DPP) between 2008 and 2013.

Starmer hit back at Elon Musk on Monday, defending Jess Phillips and accusing Musk of spreading "lies and misinformation".

The PM said Phillips had "done a thousand times more" to protect victims of child sexual abuse than those attacking her can "even dream about."

"When the poison of the far right leads to serious threats to Jess Phillips and others, in my book, a line has been crossed.

"Those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible were not interested in victims, they're interested in themselves", he told reporters in Surrey.

Starmer also accused the Conservative Party of "simply jumping on the bandwagon to get attention", after leader Kemi Badenoch called for a national inquiry into grooming gangs.

A 39-year-old man was charged over the weekend with sending malicious communications to Jess Phillips and two other individuals.

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