Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, published on 20 October 2022, whether (a) police forces and (b) local authorities are recording the ethnicity of people arrested on suspicion of child sexual exploitation.

We recognise the significant work of the Inquiry over its 7 years of investigation on these important issues. We owe it to the victims and survivors to give the Inquiry’s final recommendations proper time, consideration, and attention.

The Government continues to carefully consider all of the findings and each of the recommendations of the Final Report and will respond in the coming weeks.

The Government has already taken key steps to drive up data quality in policing by funding regional child sexual abuse analysts in every policing region. This includes making it mandatory from April 2022 for police forces to record demographic information, including the ethnicity of those arrested and held in custody as a result of their suspected involvement in grooming gangs.