Foreign nationals convicted of quarter of sex assaults on women
Foreign nationals are responsible for more than a quarter of sex assaults on women successfully prosecuted in Britain, official figures have revealed.
Data from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), obtained under freedom of information laws, showed that 26 per cent of the 1,453 sex assault convictions women last year were accounted for by foreign nationals.
A further 8 per cent were committed by offenders of 'unknown' nationalities, a category which will include some foreign nationals, meaning the overall proportion could be higher.
The data was drawn from the Police National Computer by the MoJ.
It comes a day after Baroness Casey's review accused governments, police and councils of covering up the fact that a disproportionate number of Asian men were responsible for child sex grooming gangs, for fear of being called racist.
The review also revealed that asylum seekers and foreign nationals were involved in a 'significant proportion' of 12 active police investigations into grooming gangs.
The new data will fuel demands for the Government to publish figures on the nationality, asylum status and visa routes of all convicted offenders, or risk fresh allegations of a cover-up.
Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, has pledged to publish data on the crimes and nationalities of foreign offenders facing deportation, and accepted Baroness Casey's recommendation for mandatory collection of ethnicity and nationality data for all child sex abuse suspects. Foreign sex offenders will be banned from claiming asylum.
It came as victims and campaigners shared a platform with Kemi Badenoch on Tuesday and accused Sir Keir Starmer's grooming gangs inquiry of not going far enough. They said an inquiry would be insufficient without survivor-led education in schools and that some prosecutions would be missed.
Speaking from the G7 summit in Canada, Sir Keir accused Mrs Badenoch of staying silent on the issue of grooming gangs when she was in government. He said she did not once speak about grooming gangs in the Commons when she was minister for equalities.
The data on sex crimes, obtained by Centre for Migration Control think tank, showed that Indian nationals accounted for the highest number of sex assaults on women in 2024 by foreign nationality, with 38. They were followed by Romanians (27), Poles (27), Pakistanis (20) and Afghans (19).
The figures show that foreign nationals were more than twice as likely as the rest of the population to be responsible for sex assaults. While they accounted for 26 per cent of the assaults, foreign nationals represented 10.9 per cent of the population.
The research also showed that foreign nationals accounted for more than a fifth of all rape convictions last year. Of the 720 convictions for 'rape of a female aged 16 or over', 155 were of foreign nationals and a further 42 were of an 'unknown' nationality.
Some 523 were attributed to individuals whose nationality was listed as either 'United Kingdom', 'England', 'Scotland' or 'Wales' (72.6 per cent). If the 5.8 per cent of an 'unknown' nationality are excluded, then 21.5 per cent of rape convictions involved foreign nationals.
Pakistanis, Nigerians and Romanians were the foreign nationalities responsible for the largest number of rape convictions, each numbering 10. They were followed by Sudanese (nine), Afghans (eight) and Indians (seven).
Overall, there were 7,874 sexual offence convictions last year, of which 1,118, or one in seven (14.2 per cent) involved known foreign nationals. A further 614 (7.8 per cent) were an 'unknown' nationality. The majority were by people who declared themselves to be UK nationals.
The data is based on people declaring their 'primary' nationality, which does not preclude the possibility that they could be dual nationals with British citizenship. It also covers convictions, which means that some of the offences could have been committed by the same individual.
'We are importing crime'
Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, said: 'This data proves what the public have long suspected – we are importing crime. If the Government is serious about tackling violence against women and girls, it should apply much tougher immigration restrictions to migrants from high-risk countries.
'The Government has the migrant crime stats – they just refuse to publish them as they are institutionally pro-migration and don't trust the public with the truth. I will keep pushing to force the facts out and Starmer to act to protect the public.'
Rob Bates, the research director of the Centre for Migration Control, said: 'The failure to properly tackle grooming gangs has shown that we should not hide from facts and that data such as this should be placed at the very heart of public policy.
'This information should be routinely published by the Government, giving the British public a transparent picture of what is happening in their country. Failure to introduce a proper migrant crime will only heighten concerns that the political class is concealing from us yet another scandal.'
Asylum system addressed
A government spokesman said: 'We have already taken action to ban foreign nationals who groom children or commit sexual offences from being granted asylum, and will do everything in our power to pursue deportation from the UK.
'More than 800 cases involving grooming and child sexual exploitation allegations have also been identified for formal review, so that these vile criminals are off our streets and paying the price for crimes.'
Sir Keir claimed Mrs Badenoch did not raise grooming when in power, 'not once'.
He said: 'I mean, the question of Kemi Badenoch is why on Earth didn't you – you were in power, you had all the tools at your disposal. I was calling even then for mandatory reporting. Why didn't you do it? Why didn't you say one word about it?'
But Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said grooming had now become a border security issue as well as a criminal justice problem.
He said it had been the worst year to date for illegal Channel crossings, adding: 'The lack of control at the border is fuelling the risk here.'
Mrs Badenoch said: 'I think this does go into borders, beyond criminal justice.'
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