Grooming Gangs: Independent Inquiry

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the Father of the House.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

The Home Secretary knows that I admire her personally. She is a devout Muslim lady, and I share many of her values. I think she is uniquely well placed to comment on this, explain and give us confidence. What is it about these Muslim men that meant that they felt that they could behave in this way, and can she explain that this is—if it is—a very small minority? Can she see what I am trying to get at? She can approach this, and explain this, in a way that some of us cannot, because nobody can ever accuse her of being racist, and nobody can ever accuse her of not wanting to get to the truth.

[Shabana Mahmood]

It is difficult to find oneself the spokesperson for billions of people around the world, but let me respond to the right hon. Gentleman from my personal perspective, based on my constituency experience, and the experience of my family and friends, and of the community I belong to back home in Birmingham. There is nothing Muslim or Islamic about the acts that these evil men have perpetrated. It is not behaviour that any of us would accept or tolerate. All these things are crimes, and I do not know anybody who does not believe that these people should be locked up for a very, very long time.

I also know about the anxiety and fear that members of the particular faith minority community that I belong to feel when these are the stories in the news. They feel that a collective view is taken of the whole community. That is why I made the point about making sure that we go after the perpetrators of these evil crimes, and not allowing the behaviour of this minority to affect the way that we relate to the rest of the law-abiding citizens of this community in our country. We are very lucky to live in a very diverse country, and we largely do a good job of holding all the different peoples of our country together.

We should always pursue justice without fear or favour, because in the end, that is the only way to maintain confidence in our system of justice and ensure that we do not inadvertently harm community relations, which is what I think has happened because of the actions of those who looked the other way when the crimes were being committed.