Suspend visas, stop aid: we must do whatever it takes to deport Pakistani child rapists
Qari Rauf and Adil Khan are among two of Britain's worst rape gang offenders. They were the ringleaders of a nine-strong gang of Asian men who sexually assaulted 47 girls – some as young as 12 – after plying them with drink and drugs. They are now out of prison, free to walk the same streets as the victims they terrorise. Convicted, but not properly punished.
It's completely out of order. Why are these Pakistani nationals – who have committed evil crimes – still here, you will be asking. Well, they have exploited a loophole to renounce their Pakistani citizenship and the Pakistani government is refusing to take them back. I have some advice for the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, on how to resolve this problem.
He should pick up the phone to Pakistan's High Commissioner, summon him to the Foreign Office and give them a week to take back these men. If they don't, visas should be immediately suspended for all Pakistanis wanting to come to the UK. If they continue to refuse, aid should be suspended. It's that simple.
That's what a Government motivated by keeping the British public safe would do. But right now we are being walked over and everyone can see it. These two rape gang perpetrators are really just the tip of the iceberg.
Most have gone unpunished, their crimes ignored by authorities paralysed by fear of being called racist. The Telford inquiry found over a thousand girls were raped and abused. Just 10 men have been convicted for their crimes. The Rotherham inquiry found that 1400 girls were raped and abused. Just 60 or so men have gone to prison for their crimes.
The national inquiry Starmer has been forced to announce is a step forward, but this can only be the beginning. Justice demands we punish every single perpetrator for their heinous crimes. The NCA must now pursue the abusers – they are much better placed than local police forces marred by the scandal – and the guilty men need full life sentences.
If they are foreign nationals they must be added to the 18,982 foreign nationals subject to deportation proceedings currently in the community and the 9,800 foreign offenders in prison. All must be removed.
For some foreign criminals the obstacle to their deportation is their home country refusing to cooperate, for others it is human rights obstacles – in many cases caused by the Strasbourg Court stretching the ECHR beyond recognition.
There are some in Westminster who still say we shouldn't deport these people in case they are unfairly punished back in their home country. To that I say: tough luck. I couldn't care less. My sole interest is protecting the British public from dangerous criminals who have committed appalling crimes.
I have long argued that reform of the ECHR is impossible. This week the head of the Council of Europe, Alain Berset, finally confirmed what many else have long suspected. He let the cat out the bag: 'I am not calling for reform of the ECHR… When states face complex challenges, the answer is not to dismantle the legal guardrails they themselves helped build.' There we have it.
So, once David Lammy has finished delivering his ultimatum to the Pakistani government, he can report back to the Prime Minister that his ruse of 'reforming' the ECHR is a pointless charade. Starmer has an obvious choice: remain in a broken convention to appease his legal pals, or leave the convention to protect the British public and manage rights with responsibilities sensibly like America and Australia.
Increasing the deportations of dangerous foreign criminals while we continue to import criminality from high-risk countries is like bailing out a sinking ship with a bucket. Restrictions on migration from high-risk countries – like Eritrea, whose nationals are estimated, based on conviction data from 2021 to 2023, to be twenty times more likely to account for sexual offence convictions than British citizens – are a prerequisite for safer streets.
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