Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Williams of Trafford on 15 January (HL4538), whether they will now answer the specific questions asked, namely (1) whether they have made any assessment of the finding of the report by Quilliam, Group Based Child Sexual Exploitation – Dissecting Grooming Gangs, published in December 2017, that 84 per cent of child sexual exploitation offenders who operate in gangs or groups are Asian, most of whom are men “of Pakistani (Muslim) origin”, (2) what is their estimate of that percentage, and (3) if different, on what statistics and records they have based their estimate; and if they will not answer those questions, why not.

Improving our understanding of the scale and nature of all forms of child sexual exploitation and abuse, including that involving gangs and groups, as highlighted by the Quilliam Foundation, is a priority for this Government. As referred to in the previous answer we have invested a significant amount of funding in a new independent Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse which is drawing on government, academic, law enforcement and civil society sources of information to assess the scale and nature of CSEA.

With enhanced understanding of the nature and demographics of offending, we will further improve our response. We have not assessed the Quilliam report assessment. We will ensure that the work of the Centre of Expertise, bringing in other partners, considers the wide range of information available, including the Quilliam report.