PA MediaNigel Farage has accused the mayor of London and the Metropolitan Police of “denying” the existence of grooming gangs in the capital.
The Reform UK leader said the “last great grooming scandal to be uncovered” could be in London.
Scotland Yard announced on Saturday that 9,000 cases of child sexual exploitation are being reviewed by officers following a national review into group-based child sexual exploitation which found it was more widespread, organised, and underreported than previously acknowledged.
A spokesperson for Sir Sadiq Khan said the mayor regarded gangs that exploit children for sex as “utterly abhorrent” and he wanted justice for “every single victim”.
Speaking at a press conference in Westminster, where he called for a parliament-led committee into the national grooming gangs scandal, Farage said the mayor had “failed grooming gang victims”.
“He has been denying that there’s grooming going on in London. The Met have been denying that grooming is going on in London,” Farage said.
He said identifying such groups in the capital was more complex than in smaller towns and cities.
“Maybe London is the last great grooming scandal to be uncovered and it looks like we’re very close to that,” Farage added.
PA MediaThe mayor’s spokesperson said that the Met would “leave no stone unturned” in investigating child sexual exploitation.
“Sadiq wants justice for every single victim of these horrific crimes, which is why the Met have increased the numbers of arrests of vile perpetrators and are also now reassessing historic cases of child sexual exploitation in London,” they said.
The spokesperson added that the mayor had consistently pressed the Met to increase arrests and reassess historic cases of child sexual exploitation in London.
A Metropolitan Police spokesperson said: “Since 2022, we have significantly improved how we identify and investigate group-based offending – including training for 11,000 frontline officers and the expansion of our child exploitation teams.
“In the last year, this has seen us solve three times more cases of child sexual exploitation – representing 134 more suspects charged.
“Our commitment to safeguarding all victims of such terrible offences and bringing those responsible to justice is absolute.”
In a statement on Saturday confirming the review, the Met said it was reinvestigating the cases which involve “intra-familial, peer-on-peer and in institutional settings, along with those which do not fit the common understanding of a ‘grooming gang'”.
The force said it took all “allegations or concerns about child sexual exploitation and child criminal exploitation incredibly seriously”.
Sir Sadiq has faced repeated questions over City Hall and the Met’s handling of the issue at the London assembly.
At a committee meeting in January, Conservative group leader Susan Hall asked him several times whether how many grooming gangs existed in London.
The mayor said the situation in the capital was “different to other parts of the country” and that young people were being groomed for “county lines”, asking Hall several times to define what she meant by the term “grooming gangs”.
Met commissioner Sir Mark Rowley told an assembly committee last week that the force receives a “steady flow” of sexual exploitation cases involving multiple offenders.
He said: “What we see at the moment is there is a focus on some towns, and a focus on Pakistani heritage groups being involved with it, but what we see in London with our current case load is gangs of different heritages that are more varied and more reflective of the variety of heritages in London.”
