Sadiq Khan's denial isn't good enough, rape gangs inquiry must expose London grooming - Rakib Ehsan

Soaring thefts and robberies risk driving down tourist visitors to the city, undermining its international status.

Khan has all too often trivialised the impact of crime in London, but there is one area where this stretches to outright denial: the grooming gangs.

Consistently, the Mayor of London, who is the capital’s police and crime commissioner, and the Metropolitan Police Service, of which he is the co-governor, have claimed that there are no reports or evidence of the grooming gang activity in London - the kinds of which we have seen take place over decades in towns stretching from Rotherham in South Yorkshire to Telford in Shropshire.

However, a joint investigation by My London and The Daily Express found details of six potential victims, after inspecting four reports published by His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMIC).

After being presented with these public records, former Greater Manchester Police detective Margaret Oliver said that she was certain three of the cases could be described as reports of grooming gang activity.

Mrs Oliver is a highly respected authority in the field, having worked on Operation Augusta - before it was prematurely closed by Greater Manchester Police with the support of Manchester City Council.

With the Labour Government reluctantly committing to a national statutory inquiry into the grooming gangs – only doing so after being cornered by a recommendation made by Baroness Louise Casey – it is vital that the probe explores the true scale of grooming gang activity in London.

There are reasons why such heinous sexual crimes are relatively concentrated in towns such as Rotherham, Telford, Rochdale, and Oldham.

One possibility is that the ‘prey pool’ of vulnerable, white-British, working-class girls for predatory networks – disproportionately originating from Azad Kashmir in Pakistan - is larger in such towns when compared to London boroughs which have notable Pakistani-origin communities - such as Redbridge and Waltham Forest.

Some have argued that London’s Pakistani-heritage population tends to originate from more advanced parts of Pakistan, meaning they are relatively more educated, liberal, and integrated than co-ethnic communities in these towns.

Another perspective is that due to the hyper-diverse nature of London and the comparative lack of mill town-style segregation, there is less potential for such grooming gangs to dominate and flourish.

The point is that all of this should be thoroughly investigated through a national public inquiry with statutory powers.

What are the cultural, social, and economic drivers of group-localised child sexual exploitation (GLCSE)?

Why does it appear to be more of a problem in some parts of the country?

And how much of this has taken place in our capital city, along with other under-investigated cities such as Bradford?

These are all important questions which must be answered if we care about protecting the most vulnerable members of society and identifying where such risks lie in modern Britain.

While Sir Sadiq Khan may be more interested in preserving his own reputation, we must have a moment of reckoning when it comes to the grooming gangs – the dark underbelly of multicultural Britain.