Prime minister David Cameron has appointed education secretary Nicky Morgan to launch a new Child Protection Taskforce – as it emerged two Rotherham councillors have been caught up in a wider investigation into historic child sexual exploitation charges.

The remit of the taskforce is to build on the government's wider reforms of the children's care system and multi-agency collaboration.

Mr Cameron said: ‘Through this work we will accelerate our current reforms to children's social work, and will overhaul the way that police, social services and other agencies work together locally.'