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UK government admits disproportionate role of Pakistani-heritage men, asylum seekers in grooming gangs, launches crackdown
TSG On WeekdaysUK government admits disproportionate role of Pakistani-heritage men, asylum seekers in grooming gangs, launches crackdown
Britain’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, addressing the House of Commons on Monday, 16 June, unveiled a far-reaching crackdown on grooming gangs following the publication of Baroness Louise Casey’s national audit into group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse.
Cooper acknowledged for the first time in Parliament that men of Pakistani heritage were disproportionately involved in some of the country’s worst child abuse cases, and condemned what she called a “collective failure” by public institutions to protect vulnerable children.
Her statement came just three days after a jury convicted seven men in Rochdale for the systematic rape and exploitation of teenage girls between 2000 and 2006. The men—taxi drivers and market traders of Pakistani heritage—repeatedly raped their victims in alleyways, warehouses, and derelict flats.
“They should never have been let down for so long,” Cooper told MPs, commending the courage of the women who had fought for justice for nearly two decades.
Baroness Casey’s audit, completed in just four months, painted a bleak picture of institutional denial and dysfunction. It found that girls as young as ten—often in care or living with disabilities—had been singled out precisely because of their vulnerability.
Local authorities and police repeatedly failed to act, share intelligence, or intervene. “At its heart, she identifies a deep-rooted failure to treat children as children,” Cooper said. “Too many victims have been let down, too many perpetrators have walked free.”
Cooper confirmed that in the three police jurisdictions reviewed—Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, and South Yorkshire—men of Asian and particularly Pakistani heritage were “disproportionately represented” among group-based child sex abuse suspects.
However, she said the national data remains deeply flawed, with ethnicity missing in two-thirds of cases. “Frankly, it is ridiculous that this basic information is not collected,” she said. “It helps no one—not victims, not police, not communities.”
She criticised institutions for dodging the issue: “There have been examples of organisations avoiding the topic altogether for fear of appearing racist or raising community tensions. That cannot continue.”
The government, Cooper said, will now make it mandatory for police and agencies to record both ethnicity and nationality in all child sexual exploitation cases.
A new national police operation, led by the National Crime Agency, will treat grooming gangs as serious and organised crime. Over 800 previously closed cases that were marked “no further action” have already been reopened; that number is expected to surpass 1,000 in the coming weeks.
A major legal reform will ensure that any adult who engages in penetrative sex with a child under 16 is automatically charged with rape. Cooper said too many prosecutions had failed or been diluted because victims were wrongly said to have consented or been “in love” with their abusers. “That must never happen again,” she said. The government will also quash historic convictions of victims who were criminalised under old prostitution laws while their abusers went unpunished.
The forthcoming Crime and Policing Bill will introduce a mandatory reporting duty for professionals working with children and create aggravated offences for grooming. “I called for this more than ten years ago,” Cooper said. “We are now delivering it.”
A new statutory inquiry will also be launched designed to be time-limited, with the power to direct local investigations and demand accountability from public bodies. “We have lost more than a decade. That must end now,” Cooper said.
To fix structural failings, the government will enforce mandatory data sharing across agencies and implement unique child identifiers to improve case tracking.
The Transport Secretary will move swiftly to close loopholes in taxi licensing—an industry repeatedly linked to grooming gang logistics—while the Health Secretary will expand trauma training for mental health staff in schools.
The report also underscored the changing nature of abuse. Grooming is now increasingly embedded in street gangs, drug networks, and modern slavery cases. More alarmingly, online exploitation is on the rise. One police expert told the audit: “If Rotherham were to happen again today, it would start online.” Cooper warned: “We are passing world-leading laws to go after online groomers, but we will need to go further.”
In one of the most politically charged moments of her speech, Cooper confirmed that some grooming suspects identified by Baroness Casey were asylum seekers. The Home Office is now working with Immigration Enforcement and local police to initiate removals. “Those who groom children or commit sexual offences will not be granted asylum in the UK. We will do everything in our power to remove them,” she said.
The asylum context is significant. In the year ending March 2025, more than 11,000 Pakistani nationals sought asylum in the UK—over 10% of all claimants. The year before, they accounted for nearly a quarter of all asylum applications. Pakistani nationals have been the largest nationality group among UK asylum seekers for two consecutive years.
Cooper stressed that this does not implicate entire communities: “The vast majority of people in our British Asian and Pakistani heritage communities continue to be appalled by these terrible crimes. But we must never let fear or political correctness stop us from confronting the truth.”