The prime minister may regret an investigation that could add to tensions without delivering

By recommending a national inquiry into grooming gangs, Louise Casey has forced Keir Starmer's hand on an issue that has long haunted the Labour party.

- Rajeev Syal

The failings of UK institutions to protect young girls from abuse by gangs of men will now remain high on the political agenda for another three years.

Lady Casey's 197-page report calls for wholesale changes to rape laws; the quashing of convictions applied to abuse victims; and for five existing local inquiries into grooming gangs to be coordinated by an independent commission with statutory inquiry powers.

But it is the ethnicity of the perpetrators that will be the most explosive political issue arising from its pages. Casey could find data from only three forces, but, using publicly available material, concluded that the suspects were disproportionately likely to be Asian men.

The impression remains that Casey's conclusion - that a three-year, time-limited inquiry must be launched - has caught the prime minister on the hop. Once again, he was forced into what appears to be a damaging U-turn.

Some Labour MPs have said a prime minister more attuned to his "red wall" backbenchers would have ordered an inquiry as soon as he took office in July, and claimed credit for grasping an issue that the Tories ignored for years.