Stourbridge MP Margot James slams Labour Party over treatment of campaigning MP Sarah Champion over Asian sex gangs article
The Labour Party has been criticised after a campaigning MP was forced to resign after writing a newspaper article condemning predatory Asian sex gangs.
Stourbridge Conservative MP Margot James said she was left 'enraged' after Rotherham MP Sarah Champion was forced to step down from the shadow front bench following an article in The Sun.
It came in response to the convictions of a gang of paedophiles in Newcastle who were mainly of Pakistani origin.
Ms James said: "The leadership of the Labour Party's treatment of Sarah Champion, MP for Rotherham and former Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities, has enraged me utterly.
"Her comments in The Sun newspaper, on the numbers of rape gangs, near 99 per cent of which involve perpetrators of Pakistani origin, might have been hard hitting, but that doesn't make them any less true.
"Her comments were also born of years of cover up and obfuscation, driven by an over concern for racial sensibilities and an under concern for the wellbeing of large numbers of young girls, many of whom faced very difficult lives in the first place.
"Of course rape and sexual violence know no boundaries when it comes to ethnicity or anything else. But there is no getting away from the fact that these particular crimes, committed by large groups of men who have preyed on vulnerable white girls, groomed, drugged, raped and intimidated them over many years, are inextricably linked to Britain's Pakistani community.
"There needs to be a discussion about how we overcome the cultural attitudes towards women that have contributed to these crimes; and to the ways in which they were covered up for so long. There has been a disgraceful history of shouting down brave Labour women MPs who have stood up to community pressures in Northern cities like Keighley and Rotherham in exposing these crimes, of which the appalling treatment of Sarah Champion is yet another chapter.
"There is so much evidence of totally unacceptable attitudes leading to violence, whether it be forced marriage, so-called 'honour' killings in respect of Asian girls or the sexual abuse and rape in respect of white girls. We need to call out the ethnic and cultural common denominator behind this criminality if we are serious about bringing it to an end. And we must be serious. There needs to be zero tolerance, and no hiding place, for this sort of violence and misogyny."
Ms Champion was hounded by Labour activists on Twitter after the article was published.
