Interior minister Yvette Cooper in January asked Louise Casey, a former senior official, to undertake a “rapid audit” of the current scale and nature of gang-based exploitation in Britain.

“(Casey’s) 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,” Starmer told reporters yesterday.

“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.”

The child sexual abuse scandal, which revealed how gangs of mostly Pakistani men had groomed, trafficked and raped young white girls more than a decade ago, returned to the political agenda this year after US billionaire Elon Musk criticised the British government.