Child Rape Gangs Debate

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Department: Home Office

Child Rape Gangs

Gregor Poynton Excerpts
Monday 28th April 2025

(6 days, 2 hours ago)

Commons Chamber
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Jess Phillips Portrait Jess Phillips
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Of course I agree. I want the perpetrators to be held accountable. What I can say without any doubt is that, as local inquiries have told us, people have covered things up, whether asked to or not, for seemingly multicultural reasons. That cannot stand. That said, we will always follow the facts to ensure that we completely and utterly deal with it.

Gregor Poynton Portrait Gregor Poynton (Livingston) (Lab)
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I strongly welcome the Home Secretary’s commissioning of Baroness Casey to conduct the national audit. Further to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington), can the Minister confirm whether the growing prevalence of online group-based sexual exploitation of children will form part of the report, and will she provide an update on the Home Office response to that growing crime?

Jess Phillips Portrait Jess Phillips
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Group-based grooming, which includes some terrible examples of British children being groomed from abroad and vice versa, is something that we are acutely aware of. Whether it forms part of what Baroness Casey finds, I will leave to her to say. I will say, however, that it absolutely forms part of the strategy of work that the Government have laid out for preventing child sexual abuse.