GB News’ Ellie Costello and Stephen Dixon (Image: GB NEWS)
‘ Ellie Costello wasn’t holding back on the important questions as she tackled the thorny topic of grooming gangs and migration with Tory MP and Shadow Secretary of State for Housing Kevin Hollinrake, exclaiming: “You’ve failed!”
However, some viewers took to X to ask why she was “aggressively attacking” a Conservative MP, yet “allowing” Labour ministers to “evade” enquiries. The debate began as grimacing Kevin described the grooming gangs scandal as “horrendous”, but Ellie fired back: “Do you think you should have done more, under your watch, to expose what’s going on in this country?”
Kevin defended that a national enquiry had been called for, but Ellie exclaimed: “Forgive me, Kevin Hollinrake, but you had a national enquiry [already] and it was so narrow in scope!” She accused: “It only looked at six towns. GB News has exposed actually there could be 50 towns that need investigating.
“Do you admit that you failed and that when you had the recommendations from that report in 2022, you did nothing to implement them?” He insisted, “That’s not true”, but Ellie challenged again: “Not a single one of those recommendations was implemented!”
Hollinrake then defended that he’d implemented “18 of the 20 recommendations”, arguing that “these things take time” and that a second follow-up enquiry was needed – but being blocked by Labour.
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GB News’ Ellie Costello challenged Kevin Hollinrake (Image: GB NEWS)
Hollinrake took aim at Labour, continuing: “It’s not right that people who had the opportunity to deal with those scandals cover those scandals up and don’t really take the difficult decisions.
“We want to see exactly who knew what [and] that’s what Labour is blocking. We want to see the enquiry – Labour doesn’t. Why is that?”
Viewers at home agreed, with one exclaiming: “Not sure what’s going here as a pattern is emerging – yet again Costello aggressively attacking a Tory but letting the Labour minister get away with evading every question written for her?
“Presenters need to be much more robust with these politicians. They come out with the same old same old line, but we all know the Jay enquiry hardly touched on these rape gangs and certainly not countrywide.
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“You need to challenge them on that and keep on until they admit it did not deal with it well enough.”
Another viewer agreed that Ellie’s fury was focused in the wrong direction, adding: “@GBNEWS I do like these two presenters but they are NOT strong enough to take on these MPs that come on, they aren’t tough on questioning.”
A third demanded to know why Labour had “brushed [the issue] under the carpet”, while a fourth demanded: ” It needs to be raised every week until an inquiry is done!”
Meanwhile, a poll has shown that 74% of respondents believe those convicted of grooming gang offences should be deported from the country.