Corbyn ‘ignored sex claims’

LABOUR leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn was accused by a fellow MP yesterday of ‘doing nothing’ over child abuse allegations in his constituency.

During the 1970s and 1980s, dozens of children were raped and sexually abused in care homes run by the London borough of Islington, where the veteran socialist has his seat.

But most of the abusers escaped justice because allegations made at the time by victims were ignored. The scandal only came to light in the 1990s after whistleblowers revealed the scale of abuse. In an open letter, Labour MP John Mann – who is backing Yvette Cooper for leader – said it was ‘inappropriate’ for Mr Corbyn to stand. Last night Mr Corbyn said the allegations marked a ‘new low’ in the party’s increasingly acrimonious leadership fight – insisting he has ‘a long record of standing up for his constituents’.

Mr Mann claimed the veteran Left-winger ‘inadvertently helped the rubbishing’ of allegations made by Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens in the 1980s and blamed the ‘trendy Left’ for covering up abuse. In his letter Mr Mann said Mr Corbyn was a man of the ‘highest personal integrity and ethics’ but he added: ‘My concern is about your politics and how that results in actions, or in this case non-actions.’

He claims that Mr Corbyn was contacted by abuse victims in the early 1990s and he promised to raise it with a health minister, but it was unclear it had done so. Mr Mann said: ‘Your inaction in the 1980s and 1990s says a lot, not about your personal character, which I admire, but about your politics which I do not.

A spokesman for Mr Corbyn said he had called for an independent inquiry into abuse in Islington.