A British minister accused Musk of endangering her life.

Home Office Secretary Jess Phillips said Elon Musk’s “false information” about gangs in the UK and the government’s response was “putting her life at risk”.

Phillips has been under constant attack by the tech billionaire, calling her an “evil witch” and a “genocide apologist”.

Britain has been rocked in recent days by a row over the handling of cases involving the sexual exploitation of women, after Musk called for a new national inquiry into the scandal.

Musk’s fury against Phillips, who holds the security brief in the UK government, began after she rejected an inquiry by Whitehall-led Home Office Oldham Council into the cross-dressing scandal in Greater Manchester.

Highlighting the national inquiry into child sexual exploitation due to end in 2022, he urged the local authority to carry out its own review, citing precedents from investigations in other gang-rape towns, including Telford and Rotherham.

On Tuesday, Phillips told the BBC that the threat to her own life had increased after Musk attacked her on social media X, describing the situation as “extremely exhausting”, but added: “I’m no stranger to people who don’t do it.” Find out what they are talking about to silence women like me.

However, she added, her treatment at Musk’s hands was “nothing” compared to the experiences of abuse victims.

Phillips told Sky News that SpaceX owner Musk should be “cracked with getting to Mars” and expressed her anger at political opponents, including Tory leader Kimi Badenoch, after Musk made the same wish.

Musk was reached for comment.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer issued a strong defense of Phillips on Monday, paying tribute to her record of defending women victims of violence and abuse.

Phillips’ comments came after shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick admitted the Conservatives could have “done more” to prevent sexual assault when they were in government.

Jenrick defended the previous Tory administration’s record but told the BBC: “Could we have done more, should we have done more now? Yes, absolutely – we need to rip this out.

In the year Professor Alexis Jay, who led the national study into seven-year-old child sexual abuse in England and Wales, which reported in 2022, said the review only looked at rape squads in six towns but could operate up to 50.

Jenrick defended his party’s criticism of the Labor government’s decision not to launch a Whitehall-led inquiry into the Oldham scandal.

He argued that the last Tory government had refused to launch an investigation into Oldham’s gang-rapes, with the first question coming from “a few councillors”, the latest from the local authority.

Jenrick, who ran unsuccessfully for the Tory leadership last year, last week defended his controversial comments that mass immigration to the UK from “alien cultures” with “medieval attitudes towards women” had contributed to the scandal.

He said he would not “dress up” or “sanitize” his language to avoid guilt, suggesting that fear of being labeled a racist was the main reason the authorities had not taken action against the gangsters, who were mainly of Pakistani heritage.

Starmer calls Conservative politicians “Emphasize what the right is saying“On the sexual exploitation of children, after not taking action for “14 long years”.

Jay said on Tuesday he was “political” about the case and warned that a new investigation would delay implementation of the review’s recommendations.

She accused people of “wading into the debate” in a “very ill-informed way” on the issue.

Jay has previously criticized the former Conservative government for failing to implement the top 20 recommendations in its 2022 report, which warned of “dangerous” violence in society.