Failure to pressure Islamabad into accepting groomers shows Westminster’s soft touch

What should Pakistan face for refusing to accept one of its nationals convicted of grooming gang abuse and subjected to a deportation order?

What should our ministers say when they describe political pressure to deport a grooming rapist, born in Gujrat but later raised in Britain, as “colonial”?

For most of you reading this, I’m sure the answer is simple: they should face stern diplomatic statements backed up with even harsher action.

But what has Britain given officials in Islamabad after they effectively laughed in the face of every victim of Shabir Ahmed, the Rochdale rape gang ringleader, by claiming that he was not their problem? £153million.

That is the aid that ministers confirmed would go to Pakistan yesterday, despite Islamabad refusing to take back Ahmed.

On parliament’s last day before the summer recess, the Foreign Office sneaked out the report.

It’s a number that shames Britain and a Government that claims it has done more than any other to tackle this country’s grooming gangs scandal.

Even now, Downing Street insists that it is doing “everything possible” to remove Ahmed.

On Monday, Shabana Mahmood, in what could be her final week as Home Secretary, proposed an amendment to the 1971 Immigration Act so that he could no longer benefit from a legal loophole.

But that has never been the main blockage to Shabir's ejection from the country.

The problem is Pakistan. They don’t want him and their officials have said that the British Government’s call for him to go back is “colonial”.

In many ways, Labour is inheriting the mindset of the Conservative Party. Even as recently as 2024, Tory ministers were hesitant when I asked them if they should use powers they introduced in 2021 to limit visas or foreign aid on countries that resist the deportation of abusers.

Labour is just continuing its tradition of jettisoning responsibility and authority.

A day after Mahmood changed the law, Yvette Cooper suggested that Labour could impose visa sanctions on Pakistan.

She told the foreign affairs committee that the government would consider “all possible levers” when asked how she could secure Ahmed’s deportation.

Mahmood has previously threatened sanctions on the Democratic Republic of Congo, Namibia and Angola to take back foreign criminals and failed asylum seekers. It worked.

Donald Trump showed last year just how effective hard power can be when dealing with an unwilling negotiator. Colombia would not allow two military planes laden with deportees to land. Trump threatened tariffs. They backed down immediately.

By contrast, when British officials have tried to deport grooming gang abusers with Pakistani nationality, the offenders have racked up millions in legal aid fighting their cases through the ECHR while Pakistan makes increasingly delirious demands in exchange for their removal.

Last year, GB News revealed that Interior Ministry officials told British ministers that they would only take back two notorious rapists if we agreed to allow their national airline (suspended at the time for its poor safety record) to return to Britain. They then demanded the removal of some political dissidents.

While ignoring their demands, Britain has continued to pay Pakistan the aid — which has cost taxpayers billions in the last two decades — and provided Pakistanis with tens of thousands of visas every year. Islamabad laughs in the face of our laws and ministers reward them with opportunities to work, study and visit Britain, with bags full of cash on the side.

No10 has insisted that none of the money will go to the Pakistani government and that the cash would make Pakistan a "safer" and "more resilient" country. I can think of far better ways of spending that money to generate a safer and more resilient Britain. Jet fuel and chartered jets can be very expensive these days.

Despite launching a national inquiry — now in the promising hands of Baroness Longfield and her panellists who vow truth and action — there are still signs that the Government doesn’t get it.

A simple clue is found in their statements about the horror. They say that the grooming gangs horror “was” one of the worst scandals in the country’s history. Their use of the past tense betrays a belief that this is all a moment of history, not a scandal that is still unfolding.

Even now, there are still murmurs of “you can’t go there” whenever GB News broaches this subject. For too many parliamentarians and other respectables in polite society, this national tragedy is filled with one too many tricky truths that they would prefer to ignore.

I fear that this mentality is part of the reason why political pressure for ministers to drag Islamabad to the negotiation table has not worked.

Former Labour minister Graham Stringer recently said that Britain cannot claim to be a civilised country while Ahmed remains in the country.

We should go further than that: this government cannot claim to truly believe in the protection and safety of Britain’s thousands of grooming victims while they refuse to publicly state that it is willing to put proper pressure on Pakistan to take back grooming gang offenders.

It is uncivilised, it is dangerous, and it cannot stand. They have the powers, now they need to find the moral courage to use them.