LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Saturday he would accept a recommendation for a national inquiry into grooming gangs who sexually abused thousands of girls, having previously resisted calls for a statutory review.

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 on Saturday.

`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.-Reuters