26-06-2025
Press watchdog ‘must apologise' for ruling against Asian grooming claims
Suella Braverman has demanded an apology from the press regulator over a 'demonstrably incorrect' criticism of comments she made about Pakistani grooming gangs when she was home secretary.
The Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) ordered a newspaper to publish a correction after she wrote an opinion piece in 2023, over what it termed 'misleading' claims that child grooming gangs were 'almost all' British-Pakistani men.
Now, after this month's Casey report into grooming gangs found 'disproportionate numbers' of men from Asian and Pakistani backgrounds among the perpetrators, Mrs Braverman has written to Ipso to ask for a retraction.
She has also asked the organisation to apologise to the victims of grooming gangs, 'whose voices were further marginalised as a result of institutional error'.
Mrs Braverman wrote an opinion piece for the Mail on Sunday in April 2023 in which she referred to the 'systematic rape, abuse and exploitation of young girls by organised gangs of older men'.
In the wake of the Rotherham abuse scandal, she said the criminals responsible for the 'grooming gangs phenomenon' were 'groups of men, almost all British-Pakistani, who hold cultural attitudes completely incompatible with British values'.
She added: 'They have been left mostly unchallenged, both within their communities and by wider society, despite their activities being an open secret.'
Ipso received a complaint from the Centre for Media Monitoring, part of the Muslim Council of Britain, and the independent regulator ruled that it had been 'misleading' to make a 'direct link between the identified ethnic group and a particular form of offending' where this did not specifically refer to abuse cases in Rotherham, Rochdale and Telford.
In her report published this month, Dame Louise Casey found that police and council leaders covered up the scale of Asian grooming gangs since concerns were first raised in 2009 because they feared being called racist.
Ahead of the release of the report, Sir Keir Starmer was forced to announce a national inquiry into the scandal in an embarrassing policy reversal. He has also ordered the National Crime Agency to carry out a nationwide investigation.
Mrs Braverman said in her letter to Ipso that the Casey review had shown its previous ruling against her to be 'demonstrably incorrect'.
She told Ipso chairman Lord Faulks: 'The truth cannot be racist. Where cultural attitudes have enabled criminality, we must be willing to name them. Where disproportionate patterns exist, we must have the courage to examine them. Anything less is a betrayal of the very standards Ipso is meant to uphold.'
Ipso has faced a series of controversies in recent months. In April senior MPs expressed concern that free speech was being undermined by the regulator, after it issued a reprimand over a report that quoted remarks made in Parliament.
In the same month Ipso was criticised for ruling that Palestinian prisoners in Israel could be called 'hostages', even though the BBC, which is covered by a different regulator, was forced to make a correction when it used the same phrase.
