Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Sharpe of Epsom on 2 May (HL7140), which states that the Home Secretary’s comments reported in the Daily Mail on 1 April about sexual abuse of females by perpetrators described as “almost all British-Pakistani, who hold cultural attitudes completely incompatible with British values”, related only to the findings of local reviews into child sexual exploitation cases in Rotherham, Telford and Rochdale, whether they will ask the Daily Mail to publish this clarification.

The Government is clear that child sexual exploitation is not exclusive to any single culture, community, race or religion. The Home Secretary’s comments relate to the findings of local reviews into child sexual exploitation cases in Rotherham, Telford and Rochdale, which showed that perpetrators in those cases were overwhelmingly British-Pakistani men, and the victims were white girls. However, of course child sexual abuse offenders come from every walk of life, every ethnicity, and every background – as do their victims.

The Home Secretary has made her comments clear, including through the Written Answer mentioned and through her publication in The Spectator on 22 April 2023.