Child Sexual Offender Data

Samantha Niblett Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Reform)]

I thank the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) and the lead petitioner, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe), for helping to organise the debate.

Thousands of young girls had their childhoods stolen from them in the most evil way imaginable. These are obscene crimes, and it is hard to think of more depraved acts than those committed by the men involved. I have struggled at times, as many have, to read the court transcripts that have been put into the public domain. Every time, my mind has turned to my own girls, as I have thought about them and what could have happened to any of the children we know and love. It is truly hard to comprehend. This is also not in the past tense; it is almost certainly still happening in communities across our country.

I would like to praise, thank and honour those girls—those women—who have chosen to speak out as whistleblowers and to campaign, and who have done so to this very day. They will never get their childhoods back, and the scars will never fully heal, if at all, but their bravery is truly extraordinary.

I would like to pay tribute to those Members of Parliament who have raised this issue. Many would say it is too few, and many would say it is too late, but there have been Members of Parliament on all sides of the House who have done so—including the hon. Members for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) and for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), as well as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Fareham and Waterlooville (Suella Braverman), who was here a few moments ago. In each of those cases, they were often attacked, insulted, denigrated and accused of being xenophobic or racist, when they were actually right. They were doing what is our duty as Members of Parliament: shining a light on the great social injustices facing our country.

I would like to pay tribute to Adam Wren, who is the director of Open Justice. He is campaigning for transparency in our legal system, and his work to uncover and publish court transcripts propelled this issue back into the national conversation last year. It was only when many people read extracts from those court transcripts that they really understood what had actually happened, and that “grooming gangs” was a euphemism that did not come close to capturing what was really going on and the appalling crimes that were happening.

Of course, I would like to thank all those who signed the petition, including those in my Newark constituency. That has led to this debate and, given the unanimous view expressed by Members in the House today, I hope it leads to action by the Government, which would be supported by everybody across this Chamber.

In March 2024, I tabled new clause 39 to the Criminal Justice Bill, which would have mandated that an annual report be laid before Parliament on the nationality and visa or asylum status of every offender convicted in England and Wales in the previous 12 months. It attracted cross-party support, but the then Conservative Government opposed it. Last year, I tabled a similar provision, again with cross-party support, but it too failed, this time because of opposition from the present Government. I hope that this petition can be the catalyst to make it third time lucky, and that we ensure that this issue is settled once and for all. The statutory requirement suggested in this instance relates specifically to child sexual offenders and gang-based crime. Naturally, I support it, and I see no good reason why it should not be applied to all crimes.

As the petition argues, once the Government routinely publish the data, it will show offender demographics, which will allow policies that target the right people. It should give people the confidence to talk about these appalling crimes without fearing the backlash from spurious accusations of racism or xenophobia—accusations that so many have faced.

[Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)]

No person of any colour, creed, religion or community, or in any position of power, should be allowed to get away with heinous crimes and using sex as a weapon. When the right hon. Member talks about there being nowhere to hide, does he stretch that out to anyone in a position of power, no matter who they are, not being allowed to get away with these things, and to nobody turning a blind eye to anybody using sex as a weapon?

[Robert Jenrick]

Of course. I want equality before the law. No one, from the most exalted figure in this land to the lowest, should be free from scrutiny, accountability and, ultimately, the full force of the law.

Above all, we should publish this data because it would give the Government of the day incontrovertible evidence and the rationale to make the necessary changes. That would include our immigration system, because, at its heart, our immigration system should have one abiding objective above all others, whether economic or social: it should put the safety of the British people first. If the data shows that men from certain countries are disproportionately likely to commit sexual crimes against young girls here in our country, any responsible Government would suspend visas immediately and design a different system that protects women and girls in this country.

Right now, as we have heard throughout the debate, there is an unwillingness across councils, the police and prosecutions to report and act upon the truth. The facts about crime are covered up because of a toxic combination of bureaucratic inertia and weak leaders who pussyfoot around the truth. They refuse to acknowledge any evidence that contradicts their illusion of Britain as a harmonious, well-integrated country or that confounds their glib statements that diversity is our strength. It is not always the case, as we have seen.

In 2012, an audit by the Children’s Commissioner on grooming found that ethnicity was recorded in 79% of cases. By 2025, Baroness Casey found that ethnicity data was recorded in only a third of cases. More broadly, Ministry of Justice data shows that the police and courts are collecting less data on the ethnicity of criminals, including those who commit child sex abuse, than at any time in the past 15 years, so the problem is getting worse—much worse.

The former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley (Yvette Cooper), ordered officials to publish the nationalities of foreign offenders awaiting deportation. That is obviously welcome, but it is a tiny proportion of the issue, and even that we are still awaiting. The only solution to guarantee transparency is to make public authorities duty-bound by the law of the land to report the truth. So of course we should all support the petition.

But I want to go further. First, we must release the court transcripts—unredacted—and change the entire climate in our criminal justice system, so that court transcripts of any case are easily available to everyone, from journalists to Members of Parliament to campaigners. The current system is unsustainable and completely absurd in an age of AI, when these transcripts could be made available in an affordable way.

Secondly, we need to release every email, memo and record held by central Government, local councils and police forces relating to grooming gangs as soon as possible. How ridiculous that everything being released today—the WhatsApp messages, text messages and so on, which are admittedly about serious errors of judgment and are related to appalling crimes in and of themselves— about the paedophile friend, Peter Mandelson, is attracting this extraordinary furore in the House of Commons Chamber and the media, yet these documents, relating to thousands and thousands of girls in each and every one of our constituencies, are being withheld. Let us get them into the public domain and use transparency to drive change.

Thirdly, we should increase the funding of the National Crime Agency to go after the perpetrators and the public officials who are obviously complicit. Fourthly, we should lock up the perpetrators, with mandatory whole-life sentences. The current sentences handed down to some of these perpetrators are insults to the victims. This is not a new thing, and it is not the fault of this Government; it is a long-standing failure of our criminal justice system. I started, perhaps too late, to pay an interest in this a year or so ago and was stunned at the pathetic short sentences being handed down by judges.

Let me give one example that I came across in Bradford Crown court. A judge handed out a six-and-a-half-year sentence to a man who drugged a 13-year-old girl and then raped her at least twice, queuing up with other men to rape her. The young girl obviously lives with the scars today; in fact, she later became addicted to drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism. Six and a half years for that! Imagine if that was your daughter—or anyone, frankly, in this country. He would probably have been out on licence in four years had the sentence not been increased after I and others referred it to the Attorney General and ultimately the Court of Appeal as unduly lenient. Let us change the law and make these individuals—these vile perpetrators—serve the rest of their lives in prison. That is the least the victims deserve.

Lastly, we should strip citizenship from dual citizens and deport them—deport them far away from these shores. If countries will not take them back, as some do not wish to, why on earth are our constituents paying millions of pounds in foreign aid to those countries? Why on earth is the Home Office issuing thousands of visas to them so that their citizens can come here for business, as students or for pleasure? No! We should use every lever of the British state to get these vile individuals out of our country and protect our women and girls.

None of those things will be enough for the victims, whose childhoods were stolen from them and for whom the scarring will never fade. What possibly could be? But this proposal will move us a step closer to correcting this injustice and, above all, to preventing future ones.

Oral Answers to Questions

Samantha Niblett Excerpts

Monday 9th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips]

The hon. Gentleman makes an incredibly good point. We would save ourselves a lot of time and people a lot of harm if we just got it right in the first place. That is why the Government have invested £13.1 million specifically in a policing centre for tackling violence against women and girls, which seeks to look at all the gaps in the policing system and make nationwide standards against which the police will be held accountable.

[Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)]

In my constituency, I am grateful to Derbyshire Wish, which provides support services to victims of domestic violence and abuse. It uses my offices for free to speak with victims of domestic violence and abuse in a safe and neutral environment. What is the Minister doing to tackle domestic violence and abuse in rural communities, where isolation plays a significant part in it going undetected?

[Jess Phillips]

I pay tribute to the organisation in my hon. Friend’s constituency and to all such organisations across our constituencies, and I pay tribute to her for doing that work in her own surgery. I encourage everybody to do the same—I am sure many do. Rural communities experience domestic abuse the same as those in urban areas, but they have different needs that have to be met. That is why the Government—I invite her and all Members to join me in this—will work with Members from rural areas to consider what specifically needs to be done to make sure that, when police standards are written, that isolation is fully taken into account.

Asylum Policy

Samantha Niblett Excerpts

Monday 17th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

It is this Government who are exiting hotels. We will do so—it is a manifesto commitment —by the end of the Parliament, and I intend to bring that forward as much as possible. Let me say to the hon. Member that we will always fulfil our international obligations, but I make no apology for wanting to privilege safe and legal routes over illegal entry into the country.

[Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)]

Every single day that I campaigned in South Derbyshire while a candidate and since becoming an MP last July, immigration has been the No. 1 issue dividing my communities. They—we are talking about Labour voters—have been pushed either to apathy or towards Reform. I cannot thank the Home Secretary enough for the statement, because finally my constituents feel heard. How frequently can they expect an update, so that they can see that the promises being made today will result in delivery sooner, rather than later?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank my hon. Friend for her comments and her question. Let me assure her that I know that the way to build public confidence in the new system is not just to announce the reforms here, but to get on with legislating, and with implementing the reforms, so that her constituents and mine, and people across the country, can see the impact. and how we can fix the system. Then public confidence in having an asylum system at all can be retained.

Asylum Seekers: MOD Housing

Samantha Niblett Excerpts

Wednesday 29th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris]

The hon. Member has raised a number of important questions. Of course we want to work with the local authority to ensure that the public are giving the information and the reassurance that they need; as I have said, there is always a great deal of misinformation and disinformation, and I can give that commitment to her. She will have heard what I said about the timeliness of engagement with colleagues, and I reiterate my sadness in that regard. We will do better for her and her colleagues in securing the answers that they need as leaders in the community. Let me also reiterate, to her and her community, that we intend this to have the lightest possible impact on them. It has been proven to be done at Wethersfield and at Napier, and I have no doubt that we can do it again.

[Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)]

The number of boat crossings has risen from 800 in 2018, before we left the European Union, to 40,000 a year because of Brexit. Can the Minister provide some clarity on the measures that he is taking to help solve this immigration crisis at its core, without falling back on yet another fake silver bullet—leaving the European convention on human rights, which some Opposition parties are suggesting—which would get rid of not only the rights of asylum seekers but those of my constituents?

[Alex Norris]

My hon. Friend has made an important point about the global nature of this challenge—[Interruption.] It is like being at a party you were not invited to at the moment, Madam Deputy Speaker.

My hon. Friend, and other Members, will know of the work that we are doing with France, our most immediate neighbour, and the importance of scaling up our returns pilot. She will also know of our engagement on the continent with regard to organised crime. These are highly sophisticated global networks, and a global response is required to break them.

Migration and Border Security

Samantha Niblett Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I agree about the importance of supporting our armed forces, including housing for armed forces families. That will always be important. The number of asylum decisions had dropped by 70% in the space of just six months—a massive drop. That crashing of asylum decisions increased the backlog over the summer. We have now managed to get asylum decisions back up to where they were, and the asylum caseworkers back in place and taking those decisions rapidly. That puts us in a position to be able to get the backlog down so that we can take action on asylum hotels, and we are already saving hundreds of millions of pounds this year compared with the previous Government.

[Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)]

In the run-up to the summer general election, my constituents were hugely concerned about the number of small boats crossing the channel; and little wonder, because the Conservative party left office in the middle of the worst year ever for small boat arrivals—18% higher than in 2023, 5% higher than in 2022 and more than double the level in 2021. The Labour Government came into office just under five months ago, and the number of arrivals is now lower than in 2021, more than a third lower than in 2022, and only 15% higher than 2023, rather than the 19% that we inherited. Does the Home Secretary agree that that all sounds like pretty decent progress?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right. The first six months of the year saw a record high for that season; of course, we know that crossings are seasonal, but it was a record high for the first half of the year. If we had carried on at that record high level—higher than 2023, 2022 and 2021—we would have thousands more people in the asylum system right now, and we would have had to deal with thousands more dangerous boat crossings. When we took office in the middle of the year, some independent projections said that there could have been as many as 50,000 crossings this year, and that has not happened. That is no real consolation, though, because so many lives are still being lost, and so many gangs are still making huge profits, which is why we have to take action on the gangs. We have to strengthen border security and prevent so many lives being put at risk.