A SUELLA Braverman claim about the ethnicity of child grooming gangs has been ruled false by the press regulator, Ipso.
The Home Secretary claimed in a Mail on Sunday article published in April that child grooming gangs in the UK were “almost all British-Pakistani”.
Now, Ipso has forced the Mail on Sunday to issue an apology and correction to Braverman’s piece.
The regulator noted that the Home Office’s own research had concluded offenders were mainly from white backgrounds, which meant that Braverman choosing to link British Pakistanis was “significantly misleading”.
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Braverman’s advisers later said the article singled-out British-Pakistanis because of several high-profile examples of British-Pakistanis involved in grooming gangs, despite research into the larger picture finding offenders are “most commonly white”.
The Mail on Sunday argued in its defence that, before publishing the article, advisers to both Braverman and the Prime Minister confirmed they had “no concern” about this line and were happy for it to be published.
The regulator concluded that the Mail on Sunday had published an inaccurate statement as fact.
The complaint was brought by the Centre for Media Monitoring, which is run by the Muslim Council of Britain.
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