Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many woman and girls she estimates have been victims of grooming gangs; and what methodology she uses to calculate that number.

The true scale of group-based child sexual exploitation remains unknown because of under-reporting, under-identification, and variations in data collection and analysis. However, data from the Centre for Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse shows that 15% of girls and 5% of boys are estimated to have been sexually abused before the age of 16.

The Home Office continues to work with policing colleagues to improve data collection and analysis to improve understanding of these crimes and to develop a more accurate understanding of victims and perpetrators.

We continue to support the Office for National Statistics work on the Safety During Childhood Survey, which will improve our understanding of the scale of a range of harms that children and young people experience, including child sexual abuse.