Sir Keir Starmer has said he will finally cave in and accept recommendations for a national child grooming gang inquiry after months of fury. Speaking on the plane to Canada, the Prime Minister said the conclusions set to be published in Louise Casey’s review next week will be accepted by the Government.

Baroness Casey was asked by the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to conduct a “rapid audit” of the “current scale and nature of gang-based exploitation across the country”.

The Prime Minister has now confirmed he will accept the report’s recommendations and conclusions, which also explicitly links the abuse of vulnerable children to illegal immigration.

Sir Keir told journalists: “From the start I have always said that we should implement the recommendations we have got because we have got many other recommendations … I think there are 200 when you take all of the reviews that have gone on at every level and we have got to get on with implementing them.”

“I have never said we should not look again at any issue. I have wanted to be assured that on the question of any inquiry. That’s why I asked Louise Casey who I hugely respect to do an audit. Her position when she started the audit was that there was not a real need for a national inquiry over and above what was going on.

“She has looked at the material she has looked at and she has come to the view that there should be a national inquiry on the basis of what she has seen. I have read every single word of her report and I am going to accept her recommendation.

“That is the right thing to do on the basis of what she has put in her audit. I asked her to do that job to double check on this; she has done that job for me and having read her report, I respect her in any event. I shall now implement her recommendations.”

He further confirmed that the national probe will be a statutory inquiry under the inquiries act, which gives the probe the ability to compel witnesses to testify.

The PM said it will “take a bit of time” to organise and the government will set out further details in due course.

Baroness Casey’s bombshell report will draw a direct link between undocumented migrants arriving in Britain, and the growth of grooming gangs in towns up and down the country.

The bombshell publication will also finally confirm that young white British victims were “institutionally ignored for fear of racism”.