Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has confirmed Labour will accept all 12 of the recommendations made in Baroness Casey's rape gangs review.
Cooper confirmed Sir Keir Starmer's Government will also set up a national inquiry into grooming gangs.
She added that rape laws should be tightened up and many girls convicted of child prostitution should now be cleared.
Addressing MPs in the House of Commons, Cooper said: "We have lost more than a decade. That must end now."
The Home Secretary added: “This will mark the biggest programme of work ever pursued to root out the grooming gangs.
“Those vile perpetrators who have grown used to the authorities looking the other way must have no place to hide.”
Cooper also revealed that more than 800 rape gang cases were uncovered in Baroness Casey's "damning" review.
She later admitted that the number of cases could rise above 1,000, revealing: "Children as young as 10 plied with drugs and alcohol, brutally raped by gangs of men [had been] disgracefully let down again and again by the authorities who were meant to protect them and keep them safe."
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Yvette Cooper outlines 12 'damning' findings of grooming gangs report
GB NEWS
Following Baroness Casey's recommendations, Cooper announced:
- New laws to protect children and support victims
- New major police operations
- A national inquiry to direct local probes and hold institutions to account for failures
- New ethnicity data and research
- New action across children's services to identify young people at risk
- Further action to support child victims and tackle new forms of exploitation online
- Change the law to ensure that adults who engage in penetrative sex with a child under the age of 16 will be charged with rape
Sir Keir Starmer
PA
Baroness Casey's report found there were "disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds" among suspects of group-based child sexual exploitation.
It revealed: "Despite reviews, reports and inquiries raising questions about men from Asian or Pakistani backgrounds grooming and sexually exploiting young White girls, the system has consistently failed to fully acknowledge this or collect accurate data so it can be examined effectively.
"Instead, flawed data is used repeatedly to dismiss claims about ‘Asian grooming gangs’ as sensationalised, biased or untrue.
"This does a disservice to victims and indeed all law-abiding people in Asian communities and plays into the hands of those who want to exploit it to sow division."
Baroness Louise Casey answering question from the London Assembly police and crime committee at City Hall
PA
However, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch accused the Prime Minister of an "extraordinary failure of leadership" over his handling of the grooming gangs scandal.
In a heated exchange with Cooper, Badenoch said: “His judgement has once again been found wanting… he accused those of us demanding justice for the victims of this scandal as ‘jumping on a far-right bandwagon’.”
Badenoch also took aim at Labour MPs for voting three times against efforts to force a national grooming gangs inquiry.
She added: “The Prime Minister has waited months for someone to take this decision for him. This is the kind of dithering and delay that the survivors complained about.
Kemi Badenoch
GB NEWS
“We need answers to the following questions. The House deserves to know, what changed the Prime Minister’s mind, from thinking this was dog whistle far-right politics, to something he must do? When exactly did Baroness Casey submit her findings to Downing Street, and did the Government request any changes to her report?
“Does she agree that anyone in authority who deliberately covered up these disgusting crimes should be prosecuted for misconduct in public office, and those prosecutions should happen alongside, not after, the inquiry?”
Firing back, the Home Secretary replied: "I have to say to the Leader of the Opposition, I don't think she cannot have read the report and the seriousness of its conclusions.
"It sets out a timeline of failure from 2009 to 2025. Repeated reports and recommendations that were not acted on - on child protection, on police investigations, on ethnicity data, on data sharing, on support for victims.
"For 14 of those 16 years, her party was in Government, including years when she was the Minister for Children & Families and then the Minister for Equalities, covering race and ethnicity issues and violence against women and girls, and I didn't hear her covering any of these issues until January this year."
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