𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Sometimes it seems increasingly clear that our politicians don’t like answering questions: that is painfully true for Lord Sadiq Khan.

For months this paper has sought to speak to the Mayor of London and put to him a series of questions about London’s Grooming Gangs scandal.

It follows extraordinary work by the Daily Express Investigations team, and the staggering bravery of survivors, who have helped expose the scale of this injustice.

We have tried to speak to the Mayor, and been stonewalled at every turn. So, equipped with a camera and microphone, when I saw him at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool, I took my chance.

You do not allow a man who has rebuked and denied respectful requests for an interview for months to waltz on past, without attempting to speak to him.

So I stood outside an event he was due at, with a microphone and a camera and one simple question: would the Mayor of London apologise to the survivors of the grooming gangs scandal he once denied existed?

Arriving at the event with armed guards and a retinue of communications staff, he elected not to answer. Blanking us and walking right past.

His team told us not to worry – he’d come out after his event and give us a few minutes. So wait we did.

True enough about half an hour later, out he came. Again it seemed he could not make the time, walking off as his aides told us to book an interview through the proper channels.

We know exactly what “book an interview” means with this Mayor’s office. Our investigations team has tried before and they were stonewalled every time.

Barked at and ordered away, his team told us the Mayor did not have a moment to spare, and they had to rush him to his next engagement.

What happened next came, therefore, as something of a surprise. With no time to spare for us, Sadiq Khan climbed the stairs and settled in for a friendly chat with Alastair Campbell.

Time, it turned out, was never really the issue.

For months, your newspaper has worked to expose the scale of the grooming gangs scandal – the alleged cover-ups, the failures and the girls let down by the authorities meant to protect them.

Sadiq Khan once dismissed the very existence of this crisis in his own city. The survivors we speak to don’t ask for much.

They ask to be seen and they tell us, again and again, that they feel invisible to the man who runs London – the man whose job it is to keep the most vulnerable safe.

So we asked the question, on their behalf, because somebody has to. We are not interested in political point-scoring.

We are not interested in a soundbite for its own sake. We ask questions because survivors of unimaginable abuse deserve answers – not silence, not a swerve towards the stairs, not a warm word for an old friend from the political class while the people who actually suffered are ignored.

Sadiq Khan had his chance to answer for those women. He chose Alastair Campbell instead. We won’t stop asking.