17:20:00
Ayoub Khan (Birmingham Perry Barr) (Ind)
I begin where every debate on this subject must: with the victims and survivors of child sexual abuse, like the brave women here in the Public Gallery. There are few crimes more devastating, and there are few duties more important for this House than ensuring that every perpetrator is identified, convicted and punished with the full force of the law.
Let me be clear at the outset: I support the proper collection and publication of data that helps us to understand patterns of offending, to close gaps in safeguarding, to improve prosecution and to protect children. As a barrister, I believe in evidence. I believe in facts. I believe that the criminal justice system must follow the evidence wherever it leads, regardless of whether those facts are convenient or uncomfortable. However, I also believe that we must be honest about what some people are doing with this issue, because there is a difference between using data to protect children and using children as a shield for prejudice. There is a difference between seeking transparency and seeking a radicalised political weapon. I am afraid that around this petition and the wider debate, there are some who appear far less interested in victims than in validating their own hatred of ethnic minorities, Muslims, migrants and foreign nationals. That is not safeguarding. That is not justice. That is exploitation of another kind.
We have to be incredibly careful here, because the facts simply do not support the narrative that some would like to peddle. The data currently collected by the police is undoubtedly incomplete, and I welcome serious efforts to rectify that, but it is simply not true to suggest that we are operating in an evidential vacuum. The Ministry of Justice already records ethnicity and nationality data for those convicted and held within the prison estate. Although more up-to-date figures would of course be welcome, the available data show that as of 2020, more than 88% of prisoners serving sentences for sexual offences with an associated child sexual abuse offence were white. Fewer than 6% were Asian and fewer than 0.5% had no stated ethnicity.
That is a relatively complete dataset. On those figures, white men are significantly represented, yet no serious person in this House would argue that white people are inherently more likely to commit child sexual abuse because of their ethnicity, culture or background, and rightly so, because it would be obscene policy and an obscene politics to draw sweeping conclusions about communities of millions from the crimes of 16,000 of the most depraved individuals in our society. When people insist on doing exactly that to Pakistani, Muslim, Asian or migrant communities, they are not following the evidence; they are revealing a prejudice. They are not interested in protecting children; they are interested in blaming communities. That does not mean we ignore cases involving Asian men, Muslims, foreign nationals or anyone else; it means the opposite. It means we investigate all of it. It means we should prosecute all of it. It means we do not allow any community to hide behind discomfort, political embarrassment or fear of reputational damage.
However, it also means that we reject the grotesque idea that rape, abuse or grooming are the product of select or even inferior ethnicities, religions or nationalities. These are crimes committed by human beings. They are rooted in power, misogyny, coercion and the exploitation of vulnerability. They are not committed only by Muslims, migrants and minorities—far from it.
If we are going to talk about consistency, let us talk about consistency. When John Ashby raped a Sikh woman in Walsall, he did so while directing Islamophobic abuse at her because he believed she was Muslim. That was not incidental; it was part of the terror inflicted on the victim. Yet many of the very people who are usually desperate to talk about ethnicity and religion suddenly changed their view. They said rape is rape. They criticised media outlets for making it about religion. Suddenly, the victim’s identity and the hate-driven nature of the attack was cleansed and downplayed. But when the perpetrator is Asian, Muslim or foreign, those same people insist that identity is everything. That is not concern for victims. That is selective outrage.
When the victim is from a minority community, they tell us not to mention her race or religion. When the perpetrator is from a minority community, they tell us that his race or religion explains the crime. That double standard should shame anyone who claims to care about justice. I say this plainly: celebrating or minimising the rape of a woman because she is Sikh or because she is presumed to be a Muslim, is vile. Denying the religiously or racially aggravated nature of such a crime is vile. It is not British. It is not patriotic. It is not about protecting women and girls.
I support better data collection, but unlike some, I do so because I am consistent and because facts matter. I support it because bad data creates a vacuum, and that vacuum is filled by either denial or hatred. We should not tolerate either. The Government must ensure that ethnicity and nationality data is collected accurately, consistently and nationally. They must ensure that safeguarding agencies share intelligence properly. They must ensure that victims and survivors are believed, supported and protected. They must ensure that local authorities, police forces, schools, health services and prosecutors cannot fail children because they are afraid of asking difficult questions.
The victims of child sexual abuse deserve better than to be turned into ammunition in a culture war. They deserve justice and, above all, they deserve honesty. They deserve a system that is brave enough to collect the facts and decent enough not to twist those facts into bigotry. Let us have transparency. Let us collect the data and let us publish what can properly and safely be published, but we must do it for the right reason—to support survivors and bring offenders to justice, not to feed hatred or attribute those crimes to certain communities. This is a problem that everyone in our society shares and one that we all bear. It belongs to all of us to prevent it, and it belongs to Members to confront it with facts, consistency and compassion.
17:27:00
Nigel Farage (Clacton) (Reform)
While this debate is very welcome, it is on the broad range of sexual offences against children and the gathering of data about the perpetrators. I suggest, and certainly my constituents in Clacton suggest, that there is something uniquely evil and awful about mass-rape gangs. That is not in any way to diminish sexual abuse committed in the home or elsewhere by trusted people, but there is something uniquely evil about what is going on.
I certainly speak for many of my constituents in saying that there is a feeling that for a couple of decades the authorities at all levels have not done the job of genuinely pursuing justice because of racial sensitivities. I was unaware of the problem, its scale and the cover-up until the Rotherham by-election in 2012, when the current hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) was elected. In the intervening years she has spoken out more bravely on the issue than most Members of this House. I was genuinely shocked by the stories I was told by families who came forward, and stunned that the police, social workers and local councillors had received multiple reports of what had happened. When I say mass rape, in some cases we are talking about individual girls being raped by hundreds of men over a period of time. Something genuinely shocking had happened.
In the intervening years, we have had the Jay report, the Casey report, attempts by Home Secretaries and current attempts to find out the truth about what has gone on. While a handful of people have been held to account, the truth is that the vast majority have not. I was surprised that during 14 years of Conservative Government, we did not have a proper judicial inquiry with the necessary powers. I have done my best to encourage the current Prime Minister to do the same, but sadly to no avail.
There are two things that it strikes me would be helpful. First, we ought to get published, with redacted names, all the reports of police and social services over the past 40 years, across the whole country, as a public record that everybody can read. But the thing that really surprises me is the reluctance of Members of Parliament to realise their own powers. We are in the Palace of Westminster, in this remarkable historic building, and we are all privileged to be here. We have enormous powers. They were last effectively used back in 2011 by the Public Accounts Committee, which in the wake of the global financial collapse of 2008 used the powers of this Palace to turn Committees into courts. That means that they have powers of subpoena; it means that people can be brought into Committee Rooms like this, under oath, and could face charges of perjury if they do not tell the truth.
My suggestion is this: rather than waiting for this Home Secretary or the next one, who may come soon—who knows?—to act with full judicial power and the ability to subpoena, why don’t we, as Members of Parliament, forget party affiliation, recognise the upset, concern and fear of our constituents that we are increasingly living in a two-tier justice system in this country, come together and force the Government to have a powerful Committee in this place? Let us call the heads of social services, let us call senior police officers and let us call former or serving councillors, or even former or serving MPs, and get to the truth.
17:31:00
Cameron Thomas (Tewkesbury) (LD)
I thank my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) for moving the motion. At the heart of this issue are exploited children and predatory men. Sexual exploitation of children continues to occur across the country. It is not exclusive to a particular skin tone, an individual culture or religion, but leaders and those in authority must acknowledge and address patterns. Who are any of us to deny the testimonies of the victims, as were so heavily laid out by the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe)? Those with responsibility must feel empowered to act in defence of women and girls, without fear of persecution or judgment or of prosecution under the Equality Act.
It should not take a humanist to recognise that various interpretations of the Quran, the hadiths, the Torah and the biblical Old Testament continue to validate varying degrees of female subjugation. Malala Yousafzai was shot by religious fundamentalists in Pakistan for daring to advocate for girls’ education. Therefore, where exploitation has taken place by groups that entirely comprised men of Pakistani heritage, there can be no pretence that culture did not factor in their subjugation of those women and girls.
I am proud that the UK leads much of the world in our elevation of women. I am equally proud of the enrichment that cultural diversity has brought to our own. But why pretend that integration is frictionless or that any two cultures are perfectly compatible? The rational among us would want integration to take place, so let us not take it for granted. Where there is incompatibility between cultures in this country, no inch should ever be given that would undermine the rights of women and girls.
Sir Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
This issue is very real. Very close to here, a fun run organised by Tower Hamlets council did not allow women over 13 to join in. I totally agree with what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but let us be clear: it is happening, it is happening frequently and it is happening very close to where we are having this debate.
Cameron Thomas
I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention. I have to say that I am not entirely familiar with the specific instance that he has laid out, but certainly it is ongoing today and across the country.
The reasonable among us must not avoid these uncomfortable societal issues. We must never leave the floor open and unchallenged to racists and white supremacists who unfairly denigrate demographics at large for the crimes of a few. In the absence of reasonable voices, this issue has been weaponised by the far right and deployed by its propagandists to sow racial, cultural and religious division.
Hannah Spencer (Gorton and Denton) (Green)
As has been raised, why were those women and girls never believed? I have a constituent whose sister was a victim of grooming gangs and tragically died from HIV contracted as a result of that abuse. Another constituent wanted me to be here today because all too often this conversation is dominated by men. The women who were sexually abused and exploited as children by grooming gangs deserve to have their voices heard.
Dame Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)
Order. Ms Spencer, I appreciate that you are very new to this House, and it is great that you are at this debate. I note that you will be making a speech later, and there will be time, but what you are doing at the moment is making an intervention, so it needs to be really brief.
Hannah Spencer
Thank you, Dame Siobhain; I was just coming to my question. Sowing division will not keep children safe. Does the hon. Member agree that the next steps must be guided by listening to survivors and by fostering a culture in which women and girls are believed?
Cameron Thomas
I fully endorse the hon. Member’s comments. I often feel self-conscious about bringing this issue forward as a man, when really we should be listening to the voices of women and girls, particularly those who have been victims of these crimes.
Victims of domestic and sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking deserve to be treated with compassion and sincerity. Their tragedies should not be a foundation over which clamber opportunistic and ambitious politicians desperate to score political points over their opponents, as did the Conservative party in January 2025. It is a continuing tragedy that these cases are most vociferously contested by thugs who attack police and defile our national emblems, by political opportunists and by hostile foreign commentators who call for civil war and violent uprisings against the elected Government. They rarely, if ever, consider the victims. Social media commentators periodically ask me, “What are you doing about grooming gangs?”; they never ask me what I am doing for the victims.
Elon Musk’s interest in the 2024 summer riots and the unimaginable crimes that they followed was not in the protection of women and girls. Rather, it was based upon his apartheid-nostalgic white supremacism. Musk’s concern for women and girls extends only to his own attempt to exploit them, as evidenced through his reluctantly public exchanges with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. That brings me to the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth—again, I feel self-conscious for delivering this from behind him. Despite Musk’s relationship with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth continues to publicly court him. Last year, he was paid £40,000 by Elon Musk through his platform X, the same platform over which Musk provoked the riots in 2024.
In closing, let us bring forward this motion, and let the evidence show that I am sure most sexual abuse of this kind does occur within the family—but let the evidence show where it does not, and let us act upon it as one.
17:39:00
Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Siobhain. I congratulate the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone), who opened the debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee; the lead petitioner, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe); and the many campaigners who have fought tirelessly, and continue to fight, for justice for the victims of child sexual exploitation.
The petition is asking for
“a statutory requirement on councils, the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and all other related institutions to collect, record and publish the nationality, ethnicity, immigration status and religion of child sexual offenders, including gang based crime”,
and rightly so. It believes that to properly protect children and prevent the mistakes of the past, it is essential to collect and record all that information. I agree with the petition, which states that data would
“protect children and inform public policy…allow for better understanding of offender demographics, ensure transparency, and support targeted safeguarding strategies.”
It also states:
“Without this information, critical patterns may be missed, weakening efforts to prevent abuse and protect vulnerable children.”
I agree with this narrative, and I join the over 260,000 people who have taken the time to sign the petition.
Although I appreciate that the petition covers several areas, I would like to start by focusing on the importance of the retention of data in cases of grooming gangs and child sexual exploitation. In her audit published in June last year, Baroness Casey rightly recommended a full national inquiry into grooming gangs. As part of her recommendations, as is set out clearly on page 151, Baroness Casey rightly said that it should be mandated that all local authorities, police forces and other relevant agencies retain all relevant records. Any evidence or data that could help the national grooming gangs inquiry should be retained, and the Government should be mandated to inform that retention.
After much back and forth with various Home Office officials, the previous permanent secretary at the Home Office, the previous Safeguarding Minister and the previous and current Home Secretary, I learned that it took the Home Office 212 days to issue that direction to our police forces and other key Home Office agencies instructing them to preserve those records after Baroness Casey’s report was published in June last year. That is nearly seven months after publication. I then learned that it took eight months for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to write to local authorities with the same instruction. That is a staggering failure at the heart of this Government to address a key recommendation from Baroness Casey.
My first question to the Minister is “Why such a delay?” Secondly, what kind of records are likely to have been lost, or potentially destroyed, in the seven months that it took the Home Office to issue the specific instruction to police forces and the eight months that it took MHCLG to issue the same instruction to local authorities? That question is worth asking, because the reality is that many local authorities up and down the country resisted more openness and transparency on this issue for years—for decades—including Bradford council, whose area my constituency is in.
Another key issue in cases of organised child grooming gangs is not only the lack of data, but the lack of certain types of data. In her audit, Baroness Casey stated:
“The appalling lack of data on ethnicity in crime recording alone is a major failing over the last decade or more. Questions about ethnicity have been asked but dodged for years. Child sexual exploitation is horrendous whoever commits it, but there have been enough convictions across the country of groups of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds to have warranted closer examination.”
I have seen that for myself in my Keighley constituency, within the Bradford district, where the vast majority of convictions have been of men of Asian ethnic background, whose offences were predominantly against white young girls.
We have to be sensible when talking about this issue because, as Baroness Casey rightly found in her audit, only 37% of suspects had their ethnicity data recorded. That is simply not good enough, and addressing it is a key recommendation by Baroness Casey. I welcome the recommendation that the Government mandate the collection of ethnicity and nationality data on all suspects in child sexual abuse and criminal exploitation cases; I only wish that it had come sooner. In my view, the very same approach should apply to the immigration status and religion not only of the victim, but of the perpetrator, so that we can get to grips with the complexity of this issue.
A national inquiry is now taking place. The areas subject to local investigations will be announced by 13 July. Why on earth is that taking so long? I commend the work done by the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth, but is the information collected by his inquiry being fed into the national grooming gangs inquiry led by Baroness Longfield? It is crucial that that information is considered.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Reform)
I thank the hon. Member for giving way; he is being very generous with his time. I met the panel of the rape gang inquiry just a few months ago. I asked that information from the inquiry of the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) be passed on to that panel, and they agreed on that.
Rupert Lowe
rose—
Robbie Moore
I will also take the next intervention.
Rupert Lowe
The hon. Member has made a very good point. We have been in touch with the Government and Baroness Longfield and have said that we will help them, but so far nobody has actually made contact with me.
Robbie Moore
The point is that all hon. Members in this place have a duty to represent our constituents and to feed any information that we have to Baroness Longfield, as the chair of the national grooming gangs inquiry, so that we can make sure, now that the terms of references have been set, that the local inquiries that form part of that national inquiry take place in the right areas.
That brings me to my key point. Keighley and the wider Bradford district is an area where people have been ignored and abandoned, at a local and national level, for far too long. For years people there have fought hard for our area to be included but they have been ignored. Since I was first elected to this place to represent the people of Keighley and Ilkley, I have stood alongside victims and survivors such as Fiona Goddard and alongside leading child abuse lawyers such as David Greenwood to call for one simple thing: a full independent inquiry should take place across Keighley and the wider Bradford district. These heinous crimes did happen and are happening right now. For decades, child sexual exploitation and gang-related grooming have haunted communities that I represent. Lives have been shattered. Trust has been broken. Far too often, those crying out for justice have been met with silence.
My second question for the Minister is: will she announce in this debate that Keighley and the wider Bradford district will be included as part of the national grooming gangs inquiry? If the Government were confident enough in January 2025 to announce that Oldham would be included, why on earth are they not confident enough today to announce that Keighley and the wider Bradford district will be included? As I have said many times before, I fear that the scale of the issue across the Bradford district will dwarf that in places such as Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford and Oldham, where previous inquiries took place. Bradford has been referenced a lot in relation to child sexual exploitation, and many victims and survivors have unfortunately been trafficked through the city. I would therefore like to hear a positive response from the Minister.
My final point is about the cost of the national grooming gangs inquiry. The Government have allocated £65 million to that inquiry, but we are yet to understand which local areas will form part of it. My third question to the Minister is: will the Government expand the allocation of funds to the national grooming gangs inquiry if the inquiry’s chair, Baroness Longfield, deems that more money is needed because more areas need to be looked at as part of the inquiry?
Sir Julian Smith
I pay tribute to the amazing work that my constituency neighbour has done over many years on this issue. The issue of taxi networks in the north of England, particularly those operating in Bradford and Keighley and in my area of Skipton and Ripon, is an example of the fact that analysing broader issues properly will require more funding.
Robbie Moore
I completely concur with my right hon. Friend. I do not want the Government’s independent inquiry to be restricted by the amount of funds that it has been allocated. We need to make sure that the inquiry is robust, transparent and open, and that no stone is left unturned.
Terry Jermy (South West Norfolk) (Lab)
I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman said about the importance of gathering data, but something that has not really come out in this debate is an acknowledgment of the significant cuts to public services over the past decade, including cuts to youth services. I was a youth worker in Norfolk for many years, where I was the lead for child protection. Our services were decimated by cuts, and it is youth workers who very often spot signs of abuse and stop it. The hon. Gentleman is calling for additional funding; would he support money for youth work in hotspot areas so that we can protect children?
Robbie Moore
I absolutely concur with the hon. Member’s point. Youth services are a key indicator. Many of those who work for local authorities engage with victims and survivors, and of course they have a safeguarding responsibility and an ability to spot the signs of abuse. If youth services are one of those mechanisms, and if certain local authorities say that funding is an issue, then yes, of course—if that results in the right outcomes.
My final point is that there is always much focus on the national grooming gangs inquiry, but it seems that there is less focus on the report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, which was an excellent piece of work by Professor Alexis Jay. It made 22 recommendations, but here we are, 22 months into this Government, and only six of those recommendations have been acted on. I fully acknowledge that the report came out in 2022 and that the previous Administration did not make enough progress on the recommendations in the 20 months that they had to act on them before the general election, but we are now 22 months into the new Government. My fourth question is: what additional progress are the Government making on implementing all 22 IICSA recommendations? I acknowledge and welcome the progress that has been made.
Mr Brash
Some of the Jay report recommendations were implemented by the Government through the Crime and Policing Act 2026, which came before the House recently. How did the hon. Gentleman vote on it?
Robbie Moore
The Crime and Policing Act did not go anywhere near far enough to provide the safeguarding mechanisms to protect vulnerable victims and survivors who have experienced heinous crimes of child sexual exploitation. I will not vote for poor, badly thought-through legislation introduced by this Government.
Beyond the six that have been acted on already, what additional progress will be made on the 22 recommendations? I conclude by advocating that the Minister include Bradford and Keighley in the national grooming gangs inquiry.
17:53:00
Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Siobhain. The petition calls on councils, the police and the CPS to publish their child sexual offender data on nationality, ethnicity, immigration status and religion. I cannot overemphasise the importance of that in making sure that the victim’s voice is heard.
I would like to use an historical example from the Sikh community in my constituency, who came forward when the child rape gang scandal was in the news. So many of my Sikh constituents came to me in tears, publicly. They said, “We came forward saying that our girls were being raped and targeted in schools. We were trying to protect them, but we were told by the police, politicians and the media that it was an Asian problem and that we needed to just deal with it within our own community.” They were ignored—no one wanted to listen to them, because it was Pakistani Muslims who were attacking their girls. They were trying to do things to protect them, and they have historically been ignored and told it was an Asian problem that they could deal with themselves.
I was not the MP at the time, but I have dealt with cases, including historical cases, that have come to me. It would be remiss of me not to say that I believe it is vital that the religion, immigration status, ethnicity and nationality are mentioned in reporting, because how can we target specific areas of criminality if we do not know those key details?
Another historical example that occurred before I was an MP involved a girl who was abducted, raped and killed in an area for which I was a councillor. The person who committed those crimes was from an eastern European country that was exporting its criminals. It would let them out of prison, and they could either go to the UK or go back to prison—those were their choices, so we were getting a huge number of sexual offenders and murderers coming to the UK. Without recording ethnicity data in the police stations in areas where crimes were being committed, we could not link those things together. If Interpol did not release that information, we were not aware of that crime, which is why it is essential that we publish that information.
When we look at mass rape gangs and the protection of group-based child sexual exploitation, which is a very specific kind of exploitation—the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) spoke about the horrific, sadistic abuse and torture that these girls have endured—no one wants to hear these things out loud. It is disgusting; it is an abomination; it is a shame and a blight on our country.
It would be remiss of us not to do everything in our power to uphold the rule of law and ensure that any ethnic or religious groups that were targeting those girls are brought to justice. If this was a Catholic rape gang, or a Protestant rape gang, or something like that, we would be shouting from the rooftops that something needed to be done. We need to be honest about what is happening, where and why these abuses are taking place, and what ethnic and religious groups are targeting our young women.
Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech. Does she agree that although the public perception seems to be that these crimes are a northern towns issue, there are also young girls who have historically been abused in London? It is disgraceful that people in authority in London are still in denial that these crimes are happening here, in our capital city.
Joy Morrissey
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point; London has had horrific abuses. I worked with a girl who the Children’s Society intervened on. She had been gang-raped and exploited. She had been moved from local authority to local authority, and it had been covered up. We are not addressing these things, because we have been drowning in a sea of political correctness and we are afraid to call out the truth.
Ian Roome (North Devon) (LD)
I know that everybody here, and the nearly 500 people from my constituency who signed this petition, will be struck by the gravity of the terrible crimes that are being committed up and down the country. Does the hon. Lady agree that, when justice is delivered only years or even decades later, we should all be asking uncomfortable questions about what might be happening on the streets today in our own constituencies, however difficult that is?
Joy Morrissey
We do need to ask those questions, and we need to be unafraid to stand up for the girls who have been raped, exploited and lied to—who have been let down by the local authority and let down by political correctness gone mad. We have forgotten who we are here to protect—the victims, the girls. No matter how unpleasant this truth is, we need to face it. Whether it is Pakistani gangs or other ethnic groups, we need to face it in the broad light of day, and we need to make sure that the victims’ voices are heard.
[Martin Vickers in the Chair]
17:59:00
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Reform)
I thank the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) and the lead petitioner, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe), for helping to organise the debate.
Thousands of young girls had their childhoods stolen from them in the most evil way imaginable. These are obscene crimes, and it is hard to think of more depraved acts than those committed by the men involved. I have struggled at times, as many have, to read the court transcripts that have been put into the public domain. Every time, my mind has turned to my own girls, as I have thought about them and what could have happened to any of the children we know and love. It is truly hard to comprehend. This is also not in the past tense; it is almost certainly still happening in communities across our country.
I would like to praise, thank and honour those girls—those women—who have chosen to speak out as whistleblowers and to campaign, and who have done so to this very day. They will never get their childhoods back, and the scars will never fully heal, if at all, but their bravery is truly extraordinary.
I would like to pay tribute to those Members of Parliament who have raised this issue. Many would say it is too few, and many would say it is too late, but there have been Members of Parliament on all sides of the House who have done so—including the hon. Members for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) and for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), as well as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Fareham and Waterlooville (Suella Braverman), who was here a few moments ago. In each of those cases, they were often attacked, insulted, denigrated and accused of being xenophobic or racist, when they were actually right. They were doing what is our duty as Members of Parliament: shining a light on the great social injustices facing our country.
I would like to pay tribute to Adam Wren, who is the director of Open Justice. He is campaigning for transparency in our legal system, and his work to uncover and publish court transcripts propelled this issue back into the national conversation last year. It was only when many people read extracts from those court transcripts that they really understood what had actually happened, and that “grooming gangs” was a euphemism that did not come close to capturing what was really going on and the appalling crimes that were happening.
Of course, I would like to thank all those who signed the petition, including those in my Newark constituency. That has led to this debate and, given the unanimous view expressed by Members in the House today, I hope it leads to action by the Government, which would be supported by everybody across this Chamber.
In March 2024, I tabled new clause 39 to the Criminal Justice Bill, which would have mandated that an annual report be laid before Parliament on the nationality and visa or asylum status of every offender convicted in England and Wales in the previous 12 months. It attracted cross-party support, but the then Conservative Government opposed it. Last year, I tabled a similar provision, again with cross-party support, but it too failed, this time because of opposition from the present Government. I hope that this petition can be the catalyst to make it third time lucky, and that we ensure that this issue is settled once and for all. The statutory requirement suggested in this instance relates specifically to child sexual offenders and gang-based crime. Naturally, I support it, and I see no good reason why it should not be applied to all crimes.
As the petition argues, once the Government routinely publish the data, it will show offender demographics, which will allow policies that target the right people. It should give people the confidence to talk about these appalling crimes without fearing the backlash from spurious accusations of racism or xenophobia—accusations that so many have faced.
Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)
No person of any colour, creed, religion or community, or in any position of power, should be allowed to get away with heinous crimes and using sex as a weapon. When the right hon. Member talks about there being nowhere to hide, does he stretch that out to anyone in a position of power, no matter who they are, not being allowed to get away with these things, and to nobody turning a blind eye to anybody using sex as a weapon?
Robert Jenrick
Of course. I want equality before the law. No one, from the most exalted figure in this land to the lowest, should be free from scrutiny, accountability and, ultimately, the full force of the law.
Above all, we should publish this data because it would give the Government of the day incontrovertible evidence and the rationale to make the necessary changes. That would include our immigration system, because, at its heart, our immigration system should have one abiding objective above all others, whether economic or social: it should put the safety of the British people first. If the data shows that men from certain countries are disproportionately likely to commit sexual crimes against young girls here in our country, any responsible Government would suspend visas immediately and design a different system that protects women and girls in this country.
Right now, as we have heard throughout the debate, there is an unwillingness across councils, the police and prosecutions to report and act upon the truth. The facts about crime are covered up because of a toxic combination of bureaucratic inertia and weak leaders who pussyfoot around the truth. They refuse to acknowledge any evidence that contradicts their illusion of Britain as a harmonious, well-integrated country or that confounds their glib statements that diversity is our strength. It is not always the case, as we have seen.
In 2012, an audit by the Children’s Commissioner on grooming found that ethnicity was recorded in 79% of cases. By 2025, Baroness Casey found that ethnicity data was recorded in only a third of cases. More broadly, Ministry of Justice data shows that the police and courts are collecting less data on the ethnicity of criminals, including those who commit child sex abuse, than at any time in the past 15 years, so the problem is getting worse—much worse.
The former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley (Yvette Cooper), ordered officials to publish the nationalities of foreign offenders awaiting deportation. That is obviously welcome, but it is a tiny proportion of the issue, and even that we are still awaiting. The only solution to guarantee transparency is to make public authorities duty-bound by the law of the land to report the truth. So of course we should all support the petition.
But I want to go further. First, we must release the court transcripts—unredacted—and change the entire climate in our criminal justice system, so that court transcripts of any case are easily available to everyone, from journalists to Members of Parliament to campaigners. The current system is unsustainable and completely absurd in an age of AI, when these transcripts could be made available in an affordable way.
Secondly, we need to release every email, memo and record held by central Government, local councils and police forces relating to grooming gangs as soon as possible. How ridiculous that everything being released today—the WhatsApp messages, text messages and so on, which are admittedly about serious errors of judgment and are related to appalling crimes in and of themselves— about the paedophile friend, Peter Mandelson, is attracting this extraordinary furore in the House of Commons Chamber and the media, yet these documents, relating to thousands and thousands of girls in each and every one of our constituencies, are being withheld. Let us get them into the public domain and use transparency to drive change.
Thirdly, we should increase the funding of the National Crime Agency to go after the perpetrators and the public officials who are obviously complicit. Fourthly, we should lock up the perpetrators, with mandatory whole-life sentences. The current sentences handed down to some of these perpetrators are insults to the victims. This is not a new thing, and it is not the fault of this Government; it is a long-standing failure of our criminal justice system. I started, perhaps too late, to pay an interest in this a year or so ago and was stunned at the pathetic short sentences being handed down by judges.
Let me give one example that I came across in Bradford Crown court. A judge handed out a six-and-a-half-year sentence to a man who drugged a 13-year-old girl and then raped her at least twice, queuing up with other men to rape her. The young girl obviously lives with the scars today; in fact, she later became addicted to drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism. Six and a half years for that! Imagine if that was your daughter—or anyone, frankly, in this country. He would probably have been out on licence in four years had the sentence not been increased after I and others referred it to the Attorney General and ultimately the Court of Appeal as unduly lenient. Let us change the law and make these individuals—these vile perpetrators—serve the rest of their lives in prison. That is the least the victims deserve.
Lastly, we should strip citizenship from dual citizens and deport them—deport them far away from these shores. If countries will not take them back, as some do not wish to, why on earth are our constituents paying millions of pounds in foreign aid to those countries? Why on earth is the Home Office issuing thousands of visas to them so that their citizens can come here for business, as students or for pleasure? No! We should use every lever of the British state to get these vile individuals out of our country and protect our women and girls.
None of those things will be enough for the victims, whose childhoods were stolen from them and for whom the scarring will never fade. What possibly could be? But this proposal will move us a step closer to correcting this injustice and, above all, to preventing future ones.
