SIR KEIR STARMER defended the national grooming inquiry today after four women quit the survivors’ panel, complaining that the probe was being watered down.

The Prime Minister told MPs that “injustice will have no place to hide” as he announced that former victims’ commissioner Baroness Louise Casey will support the inquiry’s work.

Former police officer Jim Gamble, believed to have been the only remaining candidate to chair the inquiry, has meanwhile reportedly withdrawn from consideration for the role, with pressure on the inquiry understood to be the reason.

He follows Annie Hudson, a former director of children’s services at Lambeth council, who was reported to have withdrawn on Tuesday, which leaves the government looking for alternative candidates.

Cross-bench peer Baroness Casey previously led a “national audit” of group-based child sexual exploitation that found “many examples” of organisations shying away from discussion of “ethnicity or cultural factors” in such offences “for fear of appearing racist.”

Her findings, published in June, prompted the PM to order the creation of the national inquiry.

Sir Keir also defended Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips after Fiona Goddard, one of the women who quit the panel, called for her to resign over her denials that the inquiry was being watered down.

During Prime Minister’s Questions, Cabinet minister Emma Reynolds admitted that she was “sorry if they [the survivors] felt let down by the process,” prompting Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch to say: “Fiona’s question is simple: ‘What’s the point in speaking up if we’re just going to be called liars?’”

Sir Keir insisted that the “door will always be open” should those who quit the panel wish to return, vowing that the inquiry “will never be watered down” and its scope “will examine the ethnicity and religion of the offenders, and we will find the right person to chair [it].”