is wrong to label demands for a national inquiry into the child rape gangs scandal as a "Right-wing bandwagon". Politically-correct fears the issue would be exploited by so-called right-wing groups is exactly why at the time to save many vulnerable girls from the most appalling abuse.

Left-leaning social services, police and politicians clearly feared revelations about largely Pakistani-heritage sex gangs would cause a backlash. And that is why we are in such a mess today with thousands of victims, many of whom have been written off without a fair hearing or any tangible form of justice.

White, often working-class and vulnerable, many from broken homes or foster care, these young women were tragically considered expendable, second-class citizens in the cause of ongoing community relations.

But the fact is that it was not just centre-right politicians who have drawn attention to this scandal, although they have led the charge, but also those from the such as Sarah Champion, the MP for Rotherham who bravely refused to back down. She did so despite receiving death threats and being forced to resign as shadow equalities minister by the left-wing of her own party.

While there have already been inquiries into the scandal, as the PM insists, these have been limited in their scope, when the reality is this sexual exploitation has been going on for decades in many parts of our country. It is correct also that many recommendations from 2022 Report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse were ignored by the Tories and must now be implemented.

But there is a much wider cultural and political issue here that cannot be ignored and deserves further investigation into why justice was delayed or not delivered, nor individuals protected, despite hundreds of individual prosecutions; namely the unwillingness of the authorities to accept the profoundly uncomfortable fact a majority of abusers came from ethnic communities and were Muslim. Or that there might be a cultural issue where young white women were considered fair game for predation.

Many local government agencies and politicians clearly considered such knowledge a threat to social cohesion and the very ideas of multiculturalism - always rolled out as cause for celebration over our enormous levels of immigration. Attack any one aspect and the whole unravels, seems to have been their concern, not the pain and suffering of the victims. So there were undoubtedly political reasons for a widespread reluctance in central and local government to seek or tell this truth.

Tellingly, neither was it easy for the Centre for Migration Control to obtain figures revealing that foreign nationals are 3.5 times more likely to be arrested for sex offences. Rather than this data being collected centrally, as in other countries, researchers had to go from police force to police force to piece it together. The shocking figures reveal that more than a quarter of criminals arrested for sexual offences last year were foreign nationals, and the majority came from predominantly Muslim countries like Albania, Afghanistan, Iraq and Algeria.

In many of these cultures, female emancipation is not widely accepted and there are high levels of sexual offences against women. So it should not come as any great surprise that we have imported attitudes and behaviour that run contrary to our modern Western liberal democracy. And in the case of the rape gangs, it is young women who have paid the price.

How this happened, and how we can prevent it happening in the future, must form part of a wider debate on the value of continued uncontrolled migration and the response of the authorities to these kind of crimes.

That is the very least we can do now to try and make things right for victims and their families. If we are not utterly transparent, we face a future in which claims will be exploited for nefarious purposes. Justice must be seen to be done. It cannot be subordinate to wider immigration policy (or lack of) or voting intentions among individual communities.

at the heart of this current storm, won her Birmingham Yardley constituency last year by only 693 votes while enduring intimidation and bullying from pro-Gaza supporters.

Faced with such animosity it's not surprising many MPs and local politicians prefer not to put their heads above the parapet and challenge the prevailing cultures in their constituencies. But this only will perpetuate a problem that is causing outrage across the entire country. And it is heartening to see many Muslim community leaders would welcome a national inquiry.

It is only by depoliticising this debate and not labelling it a "right-wing bandwagon" that we can hope to more easily integrate large immigrant communities with different cultural values. The alternative is too terrible to imagine, and offers little hope to the vulnerable women who are the victims of all this.