A video posted to X captures the moment a man confronted Andy Burnham on a street during campaigning for the Makerfield by-election, accusing the Greater Manchester Mayor of failing to support a rape gang inquiry. The Labour candidate immediately replied: 'I did, I ordered one.' When the man insisted it was a cover-up, Burnham said: 'I ordered one in 2017.' Pressed on why it had not happened, Burnham answered: 'It has, go and read the reports online. One into Manchester, one into Oldham, one into Rochdale, new charges.' Burnham later claimed the person filming was 'a Restore supporter from Sheffield'.
The exchange comes after years of inquiries into child sexual exploitation (CSE) in Greater Manchester. Less than two months after Burnham was first elected Mayor in July 2017, Baroness Beverley Hughes was tasked with compiling an initial review. Her findings led Burnham to commission an independent review led by Malcolm Newsam CBE and Gary Ridgway. The first report, published in January 2020, detailed how victims were let down by police and local authorities. A second followed in June 2022 and a third in January 2024.
“Andy Burnham confronted by voter who rejects his claim he ordered grooming gang inquiry, as video shows mayor defending his record.”
Maggie Oliver, a former detective constable who resigned from Greater Manchester Police over the force’s handling of the case, has praised two of the reports as 'quite thorough'. However, she has been heavily critical of the Oldham inquiry published in 2022, and resigned over the handling of a fourth report into the police’s current approach.
In January last year, Burnham was one of the earliest high-profile Labour figures to back a 'limited' national inquiry into CSE. 'There will always be limitations with what you can do with a local review,' he said. 'The review team could not compel someone to speak to them. That is something I couldn’t do at my level.' Sir Keir Starmer announced a national inquiry in June 2025, following an audit by Baroness Louise Casey.
Yet Burnham’s broader record has drawn criticism. In a New Statesman analysis, his approach was described as 'old Londonism' rather than a new 'Manchesterism'. The piece noted that while Burnham brought local buses under public control with subsidised flat fares, he proposed and then ducked congestion charging for Manchester – a policy London already has. Burnham has promised a break with '40 years of neoliberalism' and argued that 'the London set [who] have run Labour for too long' must be challenged, but critics question whether his programme truly breaks from centralised thinking.
The confrontation on the street underscores the combustible mix of raw emotion and policy complexity that continues to surround the grooming gang scandal – and Burnham’s position in the middle of it.