Conservative MP Scott Benton said that efforts of Lancashire police to bring an 11-year-old gang “ringleader” to justice have been “compromised” by Blackpool City Council’s children’s services, which “refuses to criminalise teenagers”.
But the council said it was "completely untrue" to suggest that there had been "any interference” from children's social care in the work of the police to address criminal acts or youth anti-social behaviour.
It added: “To suggest that an 11-year-old is the ringleader of a gang of teenagers is both harmful to individual children and detracts from the very real national issue of county lines, where vulnerable children are exploited.”
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