Shadow Home Secretary has called for all grooming gang members to be deported (Image: PA)
Every foreign member of a child rape gang must be deported – “no ifs, no buts”, Sir Keir Starmer has been told.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp told the Daily Express “there must be no soft approach” to dual nationals implicated in “this national scandal”.
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The senior Conservative said ministers must be willing to draw up new laws if deportation orders are repeatedly blocked by judges.
Mr Philp also declared the Home Office should “stop or slow” issuing visas to citizens from countries “like Pakistan” if they “refuse to take back eligible people”.
Keir Starmer is being urged to increase deportations of grooming gang victims (Image: POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper provoked fury last week by refusing to commit to a national inquiry, instead choosing to back five “Telford-style” local inquiries.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp told the Daily Express: "The victims of this national scandal deserve justice, and that means harsh punishments for those found guilty of being part of these rape gangs.
“All eligible rape gang convicts must be sent back to their countries of origin, no ifs, no buts - we must deport them all.
“There must be no soft approach. If the law needs to be changed, then it must be changed and rapists deported at once.
“If countries like Pakistan refuse to take back eligible people, then the Government must use the powers the Conservatives brought in through the Nationality and Borders Act and stop or slow issuing visas to Pakistani citizens until their government complies, and takes these criminals back."
The Home Office has refused to publish figures for the number of grooming gang members that have been deported, despite fears many of the perpetrators are Pakistani.
Police have been required to collect data on the ethnicity of those in child grooming gangs since April 2022.
But the previous government, led by Rishi Sunak, ordered a further crackdown, saying political correctness must not stop police using suspects’ ethnicity as an identifying tool.
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, which was published three years ago, warned that “victims and survivors suggested that professionals feared allegations of racism and that this was prioritised over their safety”.
Home Secretary Ms Cooper has ordered Baroness Louise Casey to carry out an audit on the scale of “gang-based exploitation across the country”.
Kishwer Falkner, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission admitted the Government’s plan doesn’t go far enough and called for a national inquiry.
She said: “If you look at sexual abuse in general, white British people will form the majority of abusers.
“But focusing specifically on the exploitative gang abuse, there does appear to be a distinctive Pakistani problem, more than among other south Asian Muslims.
“Maybe, as some still insist, their role has been exaggerated.
“Either way, we need the facts, cold and hard, from an authoritative statutory inquiry that will bring some kind of national reckoning in the way we have had with other scandals — Grenfell Tower, the Post Office, contaminated blood.
“It need not last as long as some of those nor prevent the immediate implementation of some of Cooper’s plans.
“We need an understanding of the cultural patterns, as Cooper concedes, not to demonise a whole community but to hold the pathology of a subset up to the light and ensure it never happens again.
“It would also provide the platform for a proper repudiation of the crimes by the Pakistani community itself.
“For a community so concerned about “honour” and “shame”, it is dismaying to note that there does not seem to have been a loud, community-wide disavowal of these crimes, nor a shunning of those released from prison (some far too early).”
Qari Abdul Rauf, a ringleader of the Rochdale paedophile ring, has repeatedly fought attempts to deport him.
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The father of five, who worked as a taxi driver and Muslim preacher, was among nine Asian men found guilty of sex offences against vulnerable girls in 2012 and received a six year jail sentence.
He was released in November 2014 after serving just two years and six months and - despite former Home Secretary Theresa May ordering him to be deported - he remained free in Rochdale.
Pakistan also reportedly refused to take Rauf.
Announcing the plans, Ms Cooper said: “As we have seen, effective local inquiries can delve into far more local detail and deliver more locally relevant answers and change than a lengthy nationwide inquiry can provide.”
Ms Cooper asked police forces to reopen so-called “cold cases” linked to grooming gangs and child sexual abuse.
In a major statement to MPs in Parliament, the Home Secretary revealed 29 police forces across the country are investigating grooming gangs in 127 "major" probes.
There were 717 cases of abuse linked to grooming gangs in 2023.
She told MPs last week: "The Child Sexual Exploitation Police Taskforce led by the National Police Chief’s Council has estimated that out of the 115,000 Child Sexual Abuse offences recorded by the police in 2023, around 4,000 involved more than one perpetrator.
"Of those, around 1100 involved abuse within the family, and over 300 involved abuse in institutions. And they identified 717 reported cases of group or gang related child sexual exploitation.
"But we know the vast majority of abuse goes unreported, so we expect all these figures to be a significant underestimate.
"The Taskforce reports that there are currently 127 major police operations underway on child sexual exploitation and gang grooming across 29 different police forces.
"Many major investigations have involved Pakistani heritage gangs and the Police Taskforce evidence also shows exploitation and abuse taking place across many different communities and ethnicities.
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"But the data on ethnicity of both perpetrators and victims is still inadequate. We will overhaul the data we expect local areas to collect as part of a new performance management framework.
"But I have also asked the Child Sexual Exploitation Taskforce to immediately expand the ethnicity data it collects and publishes - gathering data from the end of the investigation when a fuller picture is available, not just from the beginning when suspects may not yet have been identified.
"In order to go much further, I have asked Baroness Louise Casey to oversee a rapid audit of the current scale and nature of gang-based exploitation across the country and to make recommendations on the further work that is needed."