Grooming gang report author Louise Casey appears before MPs after major review of failures
The author of a major review into grooming gangs which found authorities have 'shied away' from the ethnicity of sex offenders has appeared before MPs.
Baroness Louise Casey appeared before the Commons Home Affairs Committee on Tuesday morning, after the Government set out plans to launch a new nationwide inquiry into grooming gangs following her rapid review of the scandal.
During her appearance, she urged people to "keep calm" about drawing conclusions from data on the ethnicity of suspects and offers, warning that any statistical evidence in "incomplete and unreliable".
She said: 'When we asked the good people of Greater Manchester Police to help us look at the data we also collected... if you look at the data on child sexual exploitation, suspects and offenders, it's disproportionately Asian heritage.
"If you look at the data for child abuse, it is not disproportionate, and it is white men.
'So again, just note to everybody, really outside here rather than in here. Let's just keep calm here about how you interrogate data and what you draw from it.'
Baroness Casey said that misusing unreliable data to come to any conclusion was "a different level of public irresponsibility".
As Baroness Casey faced MPs, elsewhere in London Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch held a press conference alongside a number of victims of grooming gangs.
When asked if she owes an apology to survivors of grooming gangs for the Conservatives' lack of action when in office, she said she had already said sorry.
She said: 'We have done that. I have spoken this is not the first time that I'm meeting the survivors. I have spoken to them about this.
'I have apologised, but what I find extraordinary is that more people are interested in prosecuting a government that did some things... rather than looking at what needs to happen right now, what I'm really worried about is that we're spending a lot of time bringing the politics back into this when we want to take the politics out of it.
'I have spoken to survivors, and what they're talking about right now is a full national inquiry.
'No one here has asked me for more apologies. They have heard the apologies. Apologies are easy.
'What we need to see is action. We can sit here and say sorry all day long, but what I actually want to see is an inquiry that gets to the bottom of this.'
On Monday, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper claimed officials have dodged the issue of ethnicity among the groups of sex offenders for fear of being called racist, even though available data showed suspects were disproportionately likely to be Asian men.
She said 'much more robust national data is needed' on the ethnicity of offenders, adding that the authorities 'cannot and must not shy away from these findings'. Doing so would allow 'the criminality and depravity of a minority of men to be used to marginalise whole communities."
Ms Cooper also said the Government would take action 'immediately' on all of Lady Casey's recommendations, which include launching a national inquiry and making it mandatory to record the ethnicity and nationality of all suspects in child sexual abuse cases.
At the committee meeting, Baroness Casey said: 'I listened to what the Home Secretary said in Parliament yesterday, I would like to see quite a significant uplift in the prosecutions, the action, the criminal investigations on child sexual exploitation, both historic and current.'
In the Commons, Ms Cooper 'unequivocally' apologised for the failings which had led to grooming and child sexual abuse.
The Home Secretary also pledged to exclude convicted sex offenders from the asylum system, while the report warned 'a significant proportion' of live investigations into grooming gangs 'appear to involve suspects who are non-UK nationals and/or who are claiming asylum in the UK'.
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