The Westminster Hall debate on collecting data about child sexual offenders revealed deep divisions among MPs, and a continuing reluctance to name the Islamic nature of grooming gangs. Carys Moseley of Christian Concern unpacks what was said, what was avoided, and why the religion data matters.
On Monday 1 June 2026 a debate was held in Westminster Hall on the official data on grooming gangs. Rupert Lowe MP (Restore Britain) had created the petition and given it the title ‘Mandatory collection and publication of certain child sexual offender data’. The nature of the debate tells us a lot about how politicians’ engagement with the issue has changed recently, but also how much there is still to do to effect real change.
Full petition text
Here is the full text of the petition:
“Place a statutory requirement on councils, the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and all other related institutions to collect, record and publish the nationality, ethnicity, immigration status and religion of child sexual offenders, including gang based crime.
To protect children and inform public policy, we believe it is essential to collect, record and publish the nationality, ethnicity, immigration status and religion of all child sexual offenders, including gang based crime. This data will allow for better understanding of offender demographics, ensure transparency, and support targeted safeguarding strategies. Without this information, critical patterns may be missed, weakening efforts to prevent abuse and protect vulnerable children.”
This text shows the real focus is grooming gangs, something that isn’t obvious from the title. In hindsight, one wonders whether this discrepancy was deliberate, as it helped provoke MPs to reveal their ideological differences on the matter. As will become evident below, there’s a lot that can be learnt from this.
Victims not included in petition call for better data
It was only once the debate was well underway that Sarah Champion stood up and queried the petition’s silence on the need for data on victims’ characteristics.
“Does the hon. Member share my frustration that the petition did not include victims and survivors? I know from my experience that the vast majority are white British girls, but a particular sect of Sikh girls is also being very aggressively targeted. It would be good to include them so that the police can do more protection work.”
This intervention was important because Islamic sex slavery targets non-Muslims in general, not only one ethnic group. Dr Mark Durie’s report for Christian Concern on grooming gangs explains how Islamic teaching facilitates this at length.
Christian girls of less value than Muslims
Rupert Lowe furnished quotes from alleged survivors of the gangs who had given evidence to his inquiry on the subject. These illustrated the belief held within the gangs that non-Muslims, especially Christian and white girls, are of lower value than Muslims.
“Comments were constantly made suggesting that ‘white girls’ and Christian girls were viewed as having fewer morals or lower value, whereas ‘Muslim girls’ were described by some of the men as having dignity and higher moral standing. These comparisons were used to justify the way I was treated and to further humiliate and control me.”
“She had a baby by him, and his dad was an Imam. His dad knew. And he got his son married and said that he wasn’t allowed to see the child. They look after their own community.”
Shockingly, one witness had claimed more girls were abused during Islamic holidays such as Eid.
“Things would escalate around Eid and holidays. Parties got bigger, got worse, got more violent. More people involved, more girls involved. The parties were just bigger.”
Another girl who was brought up as a Christian recounted how her tormentors taunted her, saying God had abandoned her.
“The main clash that I kind of had with the religion side of it was, I grew up a Christian. I would wear my cross because it was something really, really special to me. It was just used as a way to break me down. They said, ‘Where is your God now? Why has your God forsaken you?’”
These snippets of evidence are important because most of the media reporting, court transcripts and survivors’ memoirs so far barely mention the targeting of Christian girls.
The need to acknowledge the Islamic nature of the gangs
Despite this, nobody in the debate took steps to argue that the gangs are Islamic by nature. Conservative MP Joy Morrissey did ask politicians to look into this.
“It would be remiss of us not to do everything in our power to uphold the rule of law and ensure that any ethnic or religious groups that were targeting those girls are brought to justice. If this was a Catholic rape gang, or a Protestant rape gang, or something like that, we would be shouting from the rooftops that something needed to be done. We need to be honest about what is happening, where and why these abuses are taking place, and what ethnic and religious groups are targeting our young women.”
In other words, a two-tier mentality afflicts officialdom when it comes to deciding on tackling these gangs properly.
No promises on collecting data on offenders’ religion
Conservative MP Esther McVey spoke at length on the need to collect data on gang members’ religion. She reminded colleagues that the public is outraged that the government is still avoiding the issue of the religion of the gangs. She was particularly critical of Baroness Casey for only recommending mandatory collection of data on ethnicity and nationality of all child sexual abuse suspects, yet omitting religion and immigration status. She illustrated the elementary need for this data.
“If we had complete and consistent data, we would be able to answer more questions with greater accuracy. Are certain types of exploitation increasing? How are offenders operating? Are those from certain ethnic backgrounds more likely than others to commit certain sorts of crimes? If we understand what patterns exist, we can improve policing, bring more survivors the justice they deserve and stop these horrendous crimes happening again.”
By contrast, Natalie Fleet announced that the government will collect data on the ethnicity of offenders. Indeed it will legislate to do so. This was set out in its white paper on police reform in England and Wales, published in January this year.
Running scared of accusations of Islamophobia
This huge discrepancy in data collection cannot simply be hidden behind technicalities. Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman (Reform UK) claimed she had been attacked by fellow Conservatives at the time for being Islamophobic and far-right, for raising the issues, though this also came from the charity sector.
Now recently 26 Labour MPs and one independent MP wrote to the Equality and Human Rights Commission accusing Reform politicians of being Islamophobic, singling out Suella Braverman among others. The letter presents as a generalised attack on Reform UK. A list of examples of alleged Islamophobia was attached with it but not published. It’s realistic to assume that this letter could be weaponised against those who want the Islamic dimension of these gangs exposed properly. Interestingly, none of those MPs who signed the letter turned up to the 1 June debate, perhaps because grooming gangs have not been a major issue in most of their constituencies. This illustrates the wide gulf between politicians who actually care about the issues and those who indulge in armchair moralising from afar. Politicians who do care should not cave in to such grandstanding.
Can’t we just be reasonable?
Cameron Thomas (Liberal Democrat) argued that there is a stark choice between a reasonable approach, and a racist, white supremacist one.
“The reasonable among us must not avoid these uncomfortable societal issues. We must never leave the floor open and unchallenged to racists and white supremacists who unfairly denigrate demographics at large for the crimes of a few. In the absence of reasonable voices, this issue has been weaponised by the far right and deployed by its propagandists to sow racial, cultural and religious division.”
It really won’t do for an MP to pretend that nobody speaking out on grooming gangs has been reasonable. Plenty of people have been trying to draw attention to the problem of these gangs for a long time now. I suspect that ‘reasonable’ really means ‘rationalist’ and secularist, rather than leaning on a Christian worldview that does not shy away from calling out the Islamic drivers of this criminality. This would explain the coded reference to sowing ‘religious division’. For contrasting Islam unfavourably with Christianity is bound to reveal a real division in society that can’t be ignored.
Green MP claims debate is dominated by men
Hannah Spencer, the new Green MP for Gorton and Denton, said that a constituent told her discussion of grooming gangs is “all too often…dominated by men.”
“As has been raised, why were those women and girls never believed? I have a constituent whose sister was a victim of grooming gangs and tragically died from HIV contracted as a result of that abuse. Another constituent wanted me to be here today because all too often this conversation is dominated by men. The women who were sexually abused and exploited as children by grooming gangs deserve to have their voices heard.”
In fact, many female survivors have published autobiographical accounts in recent years, and have been interviewed in the press. Survivors have also been deeply involved in the battle for a public inquiry. Besides, it’s a bit rich for a Green MP to talk as if women aren’t really being heard, when the Greens can’t even acknowledge who is a woman in the first place.
Reform UK narrows the focus
The approach of Reform UK’s politicians represented an improvement on that of the progressive parties. Nigel Farage characterised the gangs as representing a ‘unique evil’. He asked for all files to be released, and for court transcripts to be made available at an affordable price. Robert Jenrick said that data on offenders’ immigration status was required.
Particularly disturbing was Jenrick’s claim that data quality had actually declined since 2012.
“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.”
I think the question here is whether this has happened due to a deliberate coverup, given that the gangs will have given both Islamic teachings and specific ethnic Islamic subcultures a bad name.
Growing consensus on need for court transcripts to be affordable
One area where the debate has been moving on is with regards to access to the transcripts of the court cases. Adam Wren from Open Justice UK has been crowdfunding to pay the astronomical fees for these transcripts. Robert Jenrick paid tribute to him for this during the debate. However, as can be seen from the published transcripts, there are scattered though very limited references to Islam in them. There may be a deeper problem within the criminal justice system here. It is surely relevant that a whole section on Islamophobia as ‘anti-Muslim racism’ was first included in the 2018 edition of the Equal Treatment Bench Book for judges.
In light of this it was curious that Jonathan Brash (Labour) also wanted more transcripts published, thinking they will show only a minority of child sex offenders are Muslims. Ironically this shows reluctance to focus on unique nature of grooming gangs. It also simply isn’t the right attitude to official information. We cannot be having disclosure of information only if it suits one point of view, as this undermines the attitude of impartiality required for running the courts.
How the parties have changed on grooming gangs
The very fact that Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green MPs were now jumping into the debate rather than shying away from it or trying to censor it is a sign of how much influence public anger has had on politicians. In January 2025, all 72 Liberal Democrat MPs abstained from a vote on a Conservative amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing Bill on holding a national inquiry into grooming gangs.
This may have been because in their constituencies the problems had not really surfaced. They may have felt out of their depth. Labour MPs all voted against it, however. It is clear therefore that it is public anger that has put pressure on the UK Labour government to hold an inquiry.
Silence on Islamic jihadist nature of grooming gangs
The Islamic and jihadist nature of the grooming gangs was not acknowledged in the debate. There are several sources to this problem. The poor quality or missing official data on religion and ethnicity of perpetrators, the absence of mention of victims from the petition, and the facile and misleading deflection and polarisation by Liberal Democrats, Greens and Labour.
By contrast, Mark Durie’s report on the Islamic nature of the gangs, published last year by Christian Concern, does acknowledge this clearly. As such it should be required reading for all politicians and professionals dealing with the issue. The local investigation phase, expected to begin around 13 July when the Inquiry must publish its selection criteria, are bound to yield evidence that simply can’t be ignored in this respect. In addition, Rupert Lowe has promised to release the report from his independent inquiry very soon. The case for recording the religion of both offenders and victims is urgent and important in understanding the ideologies of these gangs.