Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman has written to Ipso to demand that its "demonstrably incorrect" ruling on an article she wrote about grooming gangs is retracted.
Braverman wrote for The Mail on Sunday in April 2023 as the Government launched its CSE Taskforce as part of the grooming gangs crackdown.
She claimed that: "The perpetrators are groups of men, almost all British-Pakistani, who hold cultural attitudes completely incompatible with British values."
However, in September 2023, the press watchdog ruled that her claim was misleading.
The regulator instructed the paper to issue a correction after a complaint was lodged by the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM), which is part of the Muslim Council of Britain.
Writing to Ipso chairman Lord Faulks, Braverman said: "My statement was based on my experience and knowledge as Home Secretary and data from police forces.
"While the publication issued a clarification, Ipso concluded that my statement was 'significantly misleading'.
"In paragraph 16 of your ruling, it was concluded that: '...the article suggested a direct link between the identified ethnic group and a particular form of offending - this was misleading…'
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Suella Braverman
PA"And further, at paragraph 18: '...given the nature of the subject matter and the historical context of the claims made, linking the identified ethnic group and a particular form of offending was significantly misleading and, as such, required prompt and prominent correction…'"
The Fareham & Waterlooville MP said that these conclusions "are demonstrably incorrect" after Baroness Casey published her audit into group-based child sexual exploitation last week.
The Tory firebrand said that the audit "directly interrogates the very Home Office report of 2020 upon which Ipso based its assessment," referring to a report that concluded that the majority of offenders were white, despite a lack of data.
In her report, Baroness Casey said her team "find it hard to understand how the Home Office reached the conclusion in their paper that the ethnicity of group-based child sexual exploitation offenders is likely to be in line with child sexual abuse more generally and with the general population i.e. 'with the majority of offenders being White.".
A copy of Suella Braverman's letter
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Braverman also said that "the Casey Review identifies clear evidence from police data in three separate forces showing a disproportionate number of suspects from Asian, specifically Pakistani-heritage, backgrounds," noting that Home Secretary Yvette Cooper reaffirmed these findings.
Saying that Ipso's ruling had now been "publicly discredited," Braverman added: "Baroness Casey’s report confirms that the assertions that I made in the article were true."
She continued: "To allow this ruling to stand in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence is, respectfully, a miscarriage of both editorial judgment and institutional responsibility.
"It is not merely a matter of reputational concern to me as the author, but more importantly, a question of justice for the many victims whose experiences were minimised, misrepresented, or ignored due to flawed interpretations of the data."
Suella Braverman
PA
Braverman has demanded Lord Faulkes retracts the ruling, issues a statement acknowledging the "erroneous basis of the original decision", and apologises "to the victims whose voices were further marginalised as a result of institutional error".
Concluding her letter, the ex-Home Secretary said: "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."
While Baroness Casey's report admitted that data around ethnicity remains limited, a case study of multi-victim and multi-offender child sexual exploitation investigations in Greater Manchester found that 52 per cent of perpetrators were from Asian backgrounds.
Ipso chair Lord Faulks
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Data from West Yorkshire painted another disproportionate picture, with a plurality (35 per cent) coming from the Asian community.
South Yorkshire Police's Operation Stovewood also found that 64 per cent of the perpetrators in 323 designated as historical cases of child sexual abuse and exploitation were from Rotherham's Pakistani ethnic population.
British perpetrators made up around 22 per cent of the offenders, with other groups representing nine per cent.
GB News has approached Ipso for comment.
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