Issue of grooming 'much more prevalent than people care to admit', Keir Starmer says

Speaking to the Yorkshire Post Sir Keir, who worked on tackling grooming gangs during his tenure as Director of Public Prosecutions, said although steps had been taken there was still much more focus needed on the cases.

It comes after Rotherham MP Sarah Champion, who repeatedly warned about Pakistani men raping and abusing young girls, was asked by Home Secretary Priti Patel last month to join a review panel looking at Home Office research into the characteristics of perpetrators of abuse, including whether ethnicity is a factor.

Labour’s Ms Champion quit her frontbench job in 2017 over an article she wrote for The Sun on the issue where she said Britain has “a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls”.

Many in Rotherham’s sizeable Pakistani community felt let down by the comments, and Ms Champion apologised for her “poor choice of words”.

But Labour’s new leader, with his direct experience of the crimes, said: “Some of those cases in Rotherham and other places across the UK were really important in my determination that we should change our approach because so much needed changing and so much still needs changing.

“This is something we need to constantly attend to, but for those that are subjected to domestic and sexual violence just having the confidence to come forward is a major, major step.”

Sir Keir said: “I felt quite strongly that even asking people to go to a police station to report what's happened to them was completely the wrong approach, that's why I championed sexual assault referral clinics and things like that where people could go in different environments.”

He said assumptions were made about how victims might react.

“One of them was you tell the police, actually wrong, that's the one thing that people don't generally do,” he said.

“That people wouldn't go back to the person that was abusing them when particularly in certain kinds of relationship that was a very familiar pattern and therefore, that that was being treated as an indication that people weren't telling the truth when in fact, it should be the other way around.

“And I tried to change some of that when I was DPP.

“I was also very conscious of the fact that the services available for people weren't consistent and of the quality they should have been.

“It's a nagging thing that we just have to keep coming back to. Domestic and sexual violence and abuse is pernicious, and it's real, and it's much more prevalent than people care to admit.

“We can never give up on the fight to make our response better than it is. I still feel as passionately now about it, as I did as DPP.”

Then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid announced a review into grooming gangs in 2018, saying at the time: “I will not let cultural or political sensitivities get in the way of understanding the problem and doing something about it.”

But earlier this year the Government refused to release the report when asked by The Independent claiming it was not in the “public interest”.

Last month the Government changed its mind and Ms Patel said the review would be published later this year, with a group of experts - including Ms Champion - to review the research before publication.

Ms Champion told The Times: “We’ve had two big reports into Rotherham which both identify Pakistani heritage as being a common denominator.

“I understand the nervousness people have around race. This is about child protection and crimes against children. You should follow the evidence regardless of who they are.”

She added: “We need to put this issue to bed for once and for all. Ethnicity might not be a determining factor but the issue needs to be investigated and the research made public.”