RISHI VOWS TO JAIL CHILD GROOMERS FOR LIFE

Leadership contender lashes out at political correctness that left men to abuse freely | ‘I’m not going to let political correctness stop me tackling this horrific crime’

- David Williamson and Jon Austin

CONSERVATIVE leadership candidate Rishi Sunak has pledged to crack down on child grooming gangs by locking up offenders for life.

The former chancellor blamed “political correctness” for the country’s failure to get to grips with the crime.

Mr Sunak, a father of two daughters, promised to introduce a “brand new life sentence” for those involved in child grooming with “very limited options for parole”. He said: “I’m not going to let political correctness stand in the way of tackling this absolutely horrific crime.

“I want to call it out for what it is and I want to tackle it properly. I have two young girls and I feel this very personally.”

His comments come amid concerns that in recent decades racial and ethnic sensitivities have been an obstacle to the detection and prosecution of sex crimes against children.

Mr Sunak said that authorities are “scared of calling out the fact” that there is a “particular group of people who are perpetuating these crimes”.

Pledging a new approach, he told GB News: “It’s a horrific crime. It’s far more pervasive across the country than actually we all realise. And we all know the reason that people don’t focus on it. It’s because of political correctness and they’re scared of calling out the fact.

“There’s a particular group of people who are perpetuating these crimes, and I think that’s wrong and I want to change that as prime minister.