Shabana Mahmood unveils £100m to sort out ‘monster’ grooming gangs ‘We will monitor down these vile rapists’
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood vowed ‘predatory monsters’ would have nowhere to hide, with police forces given new resources including AI tools to identify offenders
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has warned ‘predatory monsters’ will have nowhere to hide(Image: PA)
Shabana Mahmood has announced a £100million drive to bring evil grooming gangs to justice, with extra funding to tackle historic cases.
The Home Secretary vowed to ensure vile rapists are put behind bars as she warned “predatory monsters” will have nowhere to hide. It came as the chair of the independent grooming gang inquiry said anyone who can tackle sickening abuse of children has a legal and moral duty to do so.
Police forces will use AI-tools to help track down sick sex offenders as thousands of previously closed cases are reopened, it has been announced. Ms Mahmood said: “The grooming gangs scandal is one of the darkest moments in our country’s history – where the most vulnerable people were abused and exploited at the hands of evil child rapists.
“There will be no hiding place for the predatory monsters who committed unimaginable crimes of child sexual abuse and exploitation. We will track down these vile rapists and put them behind bars.”
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The funding includes £38million for the National Crime Agency (NCA) to carry out more investigations, and Operation Beaconport – which is focusing on prosecuting offenders who thought they had escaped justice – will get a tenfold increase.
Appearing before MPs, Baroness Anne Longfield – chair of the Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs – said she and her team will be demanding full transparency. “This is one of the biggest scandals in our country of our time,” she told the cross-party Home Affairs Committee.
“And it’s gone on for three decades. We all want the end of it. And anyone who can actually help that process, I think, has not only a legal duty but a moral duty to that.”
The inquiry was set up to root out past failures, and will explicitly examine the role of ethnicity, religion and culture of the offenders, as well as the response of public services. It has the legal power to force witnesses to give evidence and to require organisations to hand over documents.
Baroness Longfield said the inquiry – set to last up to three years – will be looking at complacency, denial and hiding by people and authorities that could have helped victim-survivors. She said: “We’re very clear. If anyone thinks it’s okay not to be proactive to protect children and step in, we disagree.”
She said that tech firms will also be called in to give evidence. “We know 40% of grooming now involves online,” she said. “And all the victim-survivors have said to us what used to be the park is now the screen.
“So we intend to hold some public hearings in the new year with tech companies… According to the NSPCC, 48% of it’s on a Snapchat platform. There’s an account to be held there, if you like.”
The Home Office said as part of the latest crackdown, police forces in England and Wales will also have greater access to pioneering AI technology to identify and prosecute predators faster. The Tackling Organised Exploitation Programme, led by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), will receive £9.3 million this year.
Officers will be better equipped to analyse large datasets, translate foreign-language material in seconds, and identify patterns and relationships between suspects. A further £11.7m will be allocated to the Undercover Child Abuse Online Network – targeting sex offenders online and stopping abuse before it happens.
The network’s work led to 1,797 arrests between April 2024 and 2025, the Home Office said. Last year police carried out 10,693 prosecutions and secured 8,681 convictions for child sexual offences.
Chief Constable Becky Riggs, the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s lead for child protection and abuse investigation, said: “Protecting children and young people and supporting all victims and survivors of abuse and exploitation must be at the heart of everything we do. This investment is a significant step forward in ensuring that anyone who has experienced these crimes is met with a response that is compassionate, consistent and trauma informed.”
