Downing Street has denied using dog-whistle generalisations to launch a crackdown on grooming gangs, after the NSPCC and experts warned that framing the issue as one based on ethnicity could hamper efforts to tackle it.
After Suella Braverman said “almost all” members of such gangs were British Pakistani men who held attitudes incompatible with British values, critics pointed to a 2020 Home Office report that concluded it was impossible to say if any particular ethnic group was disproportionately represented in such offending.
On a visit to Rochdale, the site of a long-running case of the sexual abuse of girls by gangs, Rishi Sunak said victims had previously been ignored by police and social workers.
“The reason they were ignored was due to cultural sensitivity and political correctness,” the prime minister told broadcasters. “That is not right.”
Asked about Braverman’s characterisation of the wider issue as one almost exclusively linked to British Pakistani men, Sunak’s official spokesperson said the home secretary had merely been arguing that this was the case for “some of these gangs”.
Asked if Braverman, who in a newspaper article and TV interviews on Sunday did not always caveat her views in this way, was engaging in dog-whistle politics, the spokesperson said: “No, I think the prime minister thinks it’s right to be clear-eyed and to take an evidence-based approach and to not allow fear of political correctness to hold back taking action in this area.”
Asked whether ministers should be careful with how they addressed the issue, he said: “Certainly it’s always right to use correct tone when talking about sensitive topics. Equally, the prime minister has been very clear that we must not shy away from calling out any type of harm to children wherever and whenever it occurs.”
A Home Office report in 2020 on group-based child sexual exploitation found that the majority of offenders were young white men, and said it was not possible to conclude whether any particular ethnic group was disproportionately represented.
Sir Peter Wanless, the chief executive the NSPCC, said the children’s charity welcomed the planned creation of a grooming gang taskforce, formally unveiled by Sunak and Braverman on Monday, but said this “must be backed up with funding for services to help child victims recover and support for a justice system that is struggling to cope”.
He said: “It’s also vital we remember that any child can be a victim of child sexual exploitation and adult perpetrators do not just come from one background. Sexual predators will target the most vulnerable and accessible children in society and there must be a focus on more than just race so we do not create new blindspots that prevent victims from being identified.”
Keir Starmer, who was director of public prosecutions when the Rochdale gangs were prosecuted, said that while he agreed that “political correctness should not get in the way” of tackling the issue, it was also vital to rely on facts.
“The vast majority of sexual abuse cases do not involve those of ethnic minorities,” he told LBC Radio. “And so I’m all for clamping down on any kind of case. But if we’re going to be serious, we’ve got to be honest about what the overlook is.”
Dr Ella Cockbain, an associate professor of crime science at University College London who researches child sexual abuse and trafficking, said that while a better response on grooming gangs was needed, the Home Office report showed there was no evidence that one ethnic group was over-represented as offenders.
Braverman was “ignoring her department’s own evidence and the broader research base, and she’s choosing instead to mainstream hard-right talking points and to push discredited stereotypes,” Cockbain told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “That’s really dangerous and reductive and it deflects attention away from the government’s own failings – it’s been systematically defunding core services that deal with child sexual abuse.”
Sabah Kaiser, who served as ethnic minority ambassador for the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse led by Alexis Jay, which reported last year, said it was “very, very dangerous for the government to turn child sexual abuse into a matter of colour”.
She told Today: “It is really important that we do not turn this very, very important issue into an issue about colour. Because let’s be frank, let’s be serious: that grabs headlines, but that is not helpful for this topic.”
