>> good evening, i'm miriam cates and you're watching gb news coming up on state of the nafion news coming up on state of the nation tonight as britain's crisis in child protection is uncovered, we'll be asking the uncomfortable questions about the many factors and numerous failings that left and still leave children vulnerable to abuse and the unprecedented scale of low skilled immigration over the last few years could cost taxpayers billions of poundsin cost taxpayers billions of pounds in future decades. is it time to rethink the rules on indefinite leave to remain? state of the nation with me miriam cates starts now. i'm also joined by a stellar panel writer and cultural commentator lois mcclatchey miller and former labour mp lloyd russell—moyle. and as even lloyd russell—moyle. and as ever, let me know your views at

gbnews.com/yoursay. now nigel farage is live. reform conference speech is coming up very soon. but first, britain is in the midst of a child protection crisis, the scandal of the child rape gangs in rotherham, oldham and as many as 50 other towns has shocked our nafion 50 other towns has shocked our nation and the world and it forces us to ask some very difficult questions. how could anyone torture and rape girls as young as 11, and then pass them to others to be tortured and raped all over again? how could such prolific and organised offending go on for so long without being stopped? why were those who tried to draw attention to these crimes ignored or even threatened? how can the total dehumanisation of white british girls by pakistani men be acceptable to, or at least overlooked by, some parts of the muslim community? as more and more harrowing details emerge about the abuse and the failures to prevent it, we must resist the temptation to only accept the facts that fit our

own political narrative. those on the left must accept that mass immigration from muslim countries has resulted in the importation of large numbers of people who don't share western views on women, children and human rights. those on the left must also acknowledge that the liberal belief that all cultures are equally valid and should not be criticised, was one of the factors that enabled the pakistani abusers to evade challenge. but those on the right must accept that this is not only a story about immigration, it's a story about how society , consistently and how society, consistently and throughout history, ignores children who are poor and parentless. it's a story about left behind towns whose economies and communities have been decimated by globalisation. it's a story about how false and dangerous ideas about childhood and child rights, and the deliberate undermining of the age of sexual consent, has left millions of children vulnerable to abuse. yesterday i said on this channel that i empathise with safeguarding minister and domestic abuse campaigner jess phillips, who has been attacked

following a post on x by elon musk that claimed she was a rape genocide apologist. one commentator criticised what i said, telling me that i shouldn't feel sorry for phillips, that i should feel sorry for the children who are sorry for the children who are so brutally abused instead. of course, i feel sorry for those poor girls. what mother? what human being could fail to be appalled and sickened and devastated by what they suffered? but it's very obviously possible , at the same obviously possible, at the same time, to feel empathy for a woman who has been singled out by the richest and most influential man on earth for unjustified condemnation on the world stage. more than one thing can be true at the same time, and unless we have the honesty and unless we have the honesty and the humility to accept that there are many factors that led to this abuse, including failures in our own british culture, then we will not learn the lessons and make the changes to protect children in future. so what are those lessons and what are the necessary changes? let's ask my panel. lois, so many things went wrong, didn't

they, that led up to this scandal. of course, immigration was a factor, but what are the other issues that you think are coming to the fore now? >> it's a toxic cocktail, isn't it? and when you look into the reports and thank goodness we are giving attention to these girls who have been victims for two decades, three decades at this point. >> and as you look into the reports, you see that at the time they weren't taken seriously because they were treated as as if they were consenting, as if they were empowered teenagers, as if they wanted this and therefore it wasn't that wrong. i think we have to take a huge step back at this moment and think, how are we treating under 18 year old girls? what are we going wrong? there is a culture right now that that empowers children like adults, but treats adults like children. and we really have to reverse that. we have to take a step back and say, no, children need to be kept safe at home. parents need to be empowered to teach them what they need to know to stay safe. they need to be informed about everything. and i know we're going to be talking a bit later about the lack of care and duty of care

that came from sexual health clinics and others who were seeing cases of young girls come in having, you know, being pregnant, having sexual diseases, having clearly been victims of abuse. and nothing was said and nothing was raised because of legislation, because of a system which didn't notify parents, which didn't alert police in these circumstances, which led them to put the burden on on the child to protect their rights and not have that protection for them. so this has to be a critical moment. this has to be a juncture where we say no more. we cannot sit around for another decade and have this scandal re—emerge in another ten years. and we've done nothing to protect these little girls. >> absolutely. and one of the factors, lloyd, in this case, was that those girls were poor. i mean, lots and lots of them were in care, but they were also from towns. you know, i grew up in sheffield. they were from towns that had really suffered economically. and history shows that poor kids just often don't get listened to or respected. >> yes. and particularly children that have got a weak

family. and i think we have to be honest, and i don't think the right or the left actually is really honest about this. there are many families that are bad families, i'm afraid. bad parents, not because of necessarily a fault of their own. it can be. they've got addictions. they passed away. whatever many reasons, and this idea that only the family then can look after those children is just plainly wrong. in some of these cases, the family did know and they were trying to speak out and the system shut them up. now that is clearly totally wrong. but in a lot of other cases, in fact, the majority that i've read, these children come from incredibly broken families. and so the state, i think, needs to take responsibility and say , when responsibility and say, when a family is broken, what do we do to help build it back up? now, it might well be that we build it might well be that we build it back up and we build the nuclear family there. or it might well be we put other support mechanisms in to that family, to that community. and i think in previous communities

where you had close knit communities that knew what each other's were doing, there were there were disadvantages to that as well. >> but it wasn't all about the nuclear family. there were some advantages. yes. >> yeah. the old adage, it takes a village to raise a child. and if we are going to have more transigent communities and i don't just mean immigration, i mean people just moving within britain, you know, kind of people can't buy a house. and so they constantly having to move every six months to a new rental property. and it means that you don't build proper communities, you don't build that community that's looking after and looking out for that young girl. and so i think the state needs to be honest also about the role that we play in building stable families, making sure people can have permanency in their homes, making sure that they have connections, that we have things like, you know, things like surestart was meant to help build that, but it was washed away too soon. so there is a lot to do, and a lot is about, i think, community first. >> yeah. but i mean, you know, i think many people would agree

with much of that. but i think what i'm trying to get at is if these one of the reasons that this happens to these girls, no doubt, is because they were they didn't have those strong connections, family and community. but connections, family and com