Robert Jenrick calls for grooming gang crackdown with mandatory life sentences

has called for mandatory life sentences for grooming gang predators.

The Tory leadership hopeful set out plans for a crackdown including automatic deportations of any non-British citizens who participate in grooming gangs.

He also wants criminal penalties for police officers and social workers who fail to report such crimes and a "blacklist" preventing them from working in the public sector again.

Mr Jenrick said: "Some of the reforms that Suella Braverman brought forward as Home Secretary during the last Government have worked well.

"The dedicated grooming gangs task force led to the arrest of over 550 suspects in a single year.

"This is a good start but the truth is that we need to go much further. Anyone who thinks these crimes are no longer happening is delusional.

"That view, sadly widespread across the most powerful people in Britain, is condemning more working-class girls to these savage and life-ruining crimes."

Referring to the 2022 Telford child sex exploitation inquiry and the 2014 report by Professor Alexis Jay, he added: "The Telford report is clear that this exploitation 'still exists today, and is prevalent across the country as a whole'.

"Every second this atrocity continues is a stain on our nation's moral conscience.

"That is why I am calling for mandatory whole life sentences for any grooming gang member.

"Anyone who has read the Jay report would support locking up these disgusting predators for life.

"Any non-Brit who has committed one of these crimes should be immediately deported and banned from ever returning here.

"We also must end the endemic complacency across our public sector. The 1,400 children abused in Rotherham and 1,000 abused in Telford were horrifically let down by the local authorities - who, because of political correctness, turned a blind eye to what was going on.

"Officials who do not report abuse they know to be happening should be prosecuted and banned from ever working in any part of the public sector again."

Mr Jenrick also called for the permanent tagging of grooming gang criminals when they are released from prison and lifetime injunctions preventing them from living or going near their victims.

He has also proposed a monument a discussion with the victims of grooming gangs about a monument to them in Rotherham, where an estimated 1,400 children were targeted between 1997 and 2013.

The maximum sentence is currently 14 years for offences related to facilitating the sexual exploitation of a child and life for rape, but Mr Jenrick would change the penalties to a minimum whole life sentence.