Sexual Offences

Lord Pearson of Rannoch Excerpts

Monday 22nd October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is absolutely right to bring up the issue of county lines, because that encompasses everything we have been talking about in response to the Question of the noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece, as well as to this one. There is definitely a link between gangs, guns, drugs and exploitation, and at the heart of it—always—is exploited children.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)]

My Lords, do the Government accept that if we extrapolate nationally the Jay report on Rotherham and other reports from Telford and Oxford, there appear to have been upwards of 250,000 young white girls raped in this century, very largely by Muslim men, usually several times a day for years? What is the Government’s answer to the chief constable of Northumbria Police, who has just said that there is every likelihood that these grooming gangs are operating in every one of our major cities? What are the Government doing to prosecute those in authority who turned a blind eye to all this because they were afraid of being called Islamophobic and so on? What are they doing to compensate and help these victims mentally?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I refute the charge that those in authority are turning a blind eye to this. Noble Lords from across the House have outlined various child sexual abuse perpetrations in various parts of the country. One thing we can say above all else is that what these people target is vulnerability. It is not specific to race, creed or colour—it is vulnerability.