Labour’s failure to tackle the small-boats crisis risks fuelling further grooming gang cases, the Conservatives warned yesterday.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said there are growing concerns that foreign criminals are using the border chaos to slip into Britain illegally.
He said the grooming gangs scandal was becoming a ‘border security issue’ – and pointed to a warning in Louise Casey’s official report this week, which found that a ‘significant proportion’ of suspects in currently live cases are asylum seekers or foreign nationals.
Speaking at a press conference in London, Mr Philp said: ‘The Government has no idea who the people are coming in, what their previous records are… The fact that Louise Casey in her report identifies that ‘significant numbers’ of perpetrators are asylum seekers or non-UK nationals, shows that the lack of control at the border is fuelling the risk here.’
Baroness Casey’s ‘audit’ was commissioned by the Government to establish whether a national inquiry is needed into the grooming gangs scandal.
The report found public bodies covered up evidence about Asian grooming gangs for years ‘for fear of appearing racist’.
It said police data on the ethnicity of offenders was too poor to draw firm conclusions nationally.
But it found that in three areas where better data had been collected – Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire and Rotherham – Asian men were over-represented among suspects.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp (pictured) said there are growing concerns that foreign criminals are using the border chaos to slip into Britain illegally
An inflatable dinghy carrying migrants makes its way towards England in the English Channel in August last year (file photo)
The report also examined a dozen major live police operations into grooming gangs and found a ‘significant proportion’ of suspects are asylum seekers or were born abroad.
A Home Office source said there was insufficient data to draw a clear link between small-boat arrivals and grooming gang offences.
Maggie Oliver, a former detective who sounded the alarm about rape gangs operating in Rochdale, warned about the risk that record levels of illegal immigration could trigger a new wave of child grooming.
She told the Daily T podcast: ‘If we do not get a grip on this, we are just going to see it explode even more.’
Kemi Badenoch said Baroness Casey was right to link the grooming gangs scandal to the surge in illegal migration.
She told GB News: ‘In some instances, it was asylum seekers – people who sought sanctuary in our country – who actually were committing these crimes.
‘This is why I say that Britain is being mugged. People are exploiting our kindness and we need to put a stop to it.’
Baroness Casey said there was a culture of ‘denial’ among many public bodies about the ethnicity of many offenders. Yesterday she revealed that she examined the case of one child’s file and found the word Pakistani ‘Tippexed out’.
Baroness Louise Casey (pictured) will lead the Government’s national inquiry into grooming gangs
Migrants arrive at Dover Port after being picked up by a Border Force vessel in the English Channel on September 21 (file photo)
Mr Philp called for the prosecution of those in public bodies who helped cover up the grooming gangs scandal for years.
He said the worst offenders should be charged with misconduct in public office and ‘sent to prison’.
Giving evidence to MPs yesterday, Baroness Casey said the authorities are not looking hard enough to find victims of grooming gangs. She said: ‘I think people don’t necessarily look hard enough to find these children.’
Baroness Casey added that, while there was an over-representation of Asian men in cases of child sexual exploitation, this was not the case for child abuse, saying: ‘If you look at the data for child abuse… it is white men.’
