They claim that migrants are not disproportionately responsible for sex crimes in Britain, but just in case, the government is publishing a new booklet telling them not to rape anyone or forcibly marry a child.
Unbelievably, some rights groups have called the booklet racist and demanded that it be withdrawn.
Liberals have claimed that the UK’s Pakistani grooming gangs were a myth designed by the right to vilify migrants.
However, the existence of these gangs, as well as incidents of rape and child marriage linked to migrants from Muslim countries, has been well documented.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told Parliament in January 2025 that multiple major grooming-gang investigations “involved Pakistani heritage gangs.”
The subsequent National Audit report, led by Baroness Louise Casey and published in June 2025, found that Pakistanis were disproportionately represented among suspects in local datasets.
The government has since ordered mandatory recording of ethnicity and nationality in child sexual exploitation cases, and a full statutory inquiry chaired by Baroness Anne Longfield began work on April 13, 2026.
However, even when British jurisdictions record perpetrators’ national origins, many use the terms “Asian” or “South Asian,” obscuring the fact that the perpetrators are Pakistani.
Many also record perpetrators by citizenship rather than ethnicity, meaning Pakistanis or other Muslims born in the UK who commit these crimes are counted as British in official statistics.
This is similar to how the U.S. media consistently referred to Kilmar Abrego Garcia as a “Maryland man” who was inexplicably and viciously deported to El Salvador, rather than as an El Salvadoran citizen who was in the United States illegally, had a final order of deportation, and was deported to his country of citizenship.
Recent conviction records in the UK support claims that grooming gangs exist and are linked to migrants.
In Kirklees, West Yorkshire, 20 men, predominantly Pakistani, were sentenced to a combined 277 years after a trial that concluded in September 2024. They were convicted of raping and drugging girls as young as 12.
In the landmark 2012 Rochdale case, eight of the nine convicted gang members were of Pakistani origin.
At least three, Adil Khan, Qari Abdul Rauf, and Abdul Aziz, were Pakistan-born migrants who had acquired British citizenship through naturalization.
All three were later stripped of that citizenship and ordered deported, though prolonged legal appeals have kept them in the UK.
The broader scandal was also marked by reporting restrictions and delayed disclosure.
Ringleader Shabir Ahmed, who was also born in Pakistan, remains in Britain following his release from prison because Pakistan has so far refused to accept him.
This prompted the UK government to introduce legislation in 2026 specifically intended to enable his removal.
In a more recent Rochdale investigation, seven men were sentenced in October 2025 to terms ranging from 12 to 35 years for systematically abusing two 13-year-old girls between 2001 and 2006.
More than 75 men have been charged and 53 convicted in the Rochdale investigation since it began in 2010. A retrial of six additional defendants opened in Manchester in January 2026.
In a separate case, eight men were sentenced across two trials in 2023 and 2024 for a series of rapes. Two defendants were sentenced in absentia and remain at large.
Individual sexual-offense cases involving asylum seekers have also become a recurring feature of UK crime reporting since 2023.
In Epping, Essex, Ethiopian asylum seeker Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu was convicted in 2025 of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman days after arriving in the UK by small boat; he received the maximum 12-month sentence a magistrates’ court can impose, was then mistakenly released early, and triggered a manhunt that Prime Minister Keir Starmer called “totally unacceptable.”
In London, an Egyptian asylum seeker who entered the UK illegally in 2023 was convicted of raping a woman in Hyde Park, with the sentencing judge noting he showed no belief that he had done anything wrong.
A failed Egyptian asylum seeker, Moustafa Elbohy, was convicted of raping a woman twice near Charing Cross station, and Pakistani national Kamran Khan was charged with raping and sexually assaulting an eight-year-old girl on two occasions between September 2024 and July 2025.
An analysis of Ministry of Justice data drawn from the Police National Computer by the Centre for Migration Control found that convictions of foreign nationals for sexual offences rose by 62 percent between 2021 and 2024, from 687 to 1,114.
By percentage increase, the five nationalities with the sharpest rises were Indian, up 257 percent; Nigerian, up 166 percent; Iraqi, up 160 percent; Sudanese, up 117 percent; and Afghan, up 115 percent.
Pakistani and Bangladeshi nationals, the groups most associated with earlier grooming-gang cases, ranked eleventh and sixth, respectively.
A related Telegraph headline, citing data from the same think tank, claimed that foreign nationals accounted for a “quarter” of all UK sex crimes. The headline was the subject of an upheld complaint to the press regulator IPSO.
The regulator found that the underlying data definitively showed only that foreign nationals accounted for 15 percent of convictions between 2021 and 2023.
The nationality of offenders was unknown in an additional 8 percent of cases, which the paper assumed involved foreign nationals to reach the higher figure.
IPSO ruled that the headline was “significantly misleading” and required a correction, after which the paper changed the wording to “up to a quarter.”
On child and forced marriage, the UK raised the legal marriage age to 18 in England and Wales under the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Act of 2022, closing a loophole that had allowed 16- and 17-year-olds to marry with parental consent.
Despite the change, the government’s own Forced Marriage Unit statistics for 2025 recorded 406 cases requiring tailored assistance, a 69 percent increase from 2024. Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and Afghanistan were consistently listed as the leading focus countries.
The data also show a rising share of cases with no overseas element, meaning the marriage was arranged entirely within the UK. The number increased from eight cases, or 3 percent, in 2022 to 15 cases, or 6 percent, in 2024.
It is against this backdrop of a well-documented pattern of migrant-linked sex crimes that the Home Office published a nine-page booklet for asylum seekers titled “Understanding Behaviours and Expectations in the UK.”
The booklet was released on August 19, 2026, and covers gender equality, domestic abuse, sex and consent, and respect in public.
On consent, it states that both parties must agree to any sexual act, that a sleeping, intoxicated, or unresponsive person cannot consent, and that consent can be withdrawn at any time, including during marriage.
It defines nonconsensual sex plainly as rape, a serious crime that can lead to imprisonment, loss of asylum support and accommodation, and damage to an asylum claim.
The guide also states that anyone under 16 cannot legally consent to sexual activity and identifies child abuse and female genital mutilation as serious crimes.
A section on public conduct warns against making sexual comments, whistling, making kissing sounds, following people, or blocking their path.
Education Secretary Lucy Powell defended the booklet’s distribution, telling LBC that some migrants come from “different cultures” and that new arrivals must understand the expectations and the consequences of breaking the law. Prime Minister Andy Burnham also backed its release.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp countered that the need for such a document shows that the government has lost control of the border.
Separately, a coalition of women’s rights and migrant-support organizations, including the Latin American Women’s Rights Service, the End Violence Against Women Coalition, and Southall Black Sisters, issued a joint statement calling the guide harmful.
The groups argued that it would fuel suspicion and division rather than protect women and urged the Home Office to withdraw and replace it with guidance developed in consultation with specialist services.
The new booklet was accompanied by a set of standalone posters and leaflets published on the same day covering the same subjects: age of consent, child abuse, consent, domestic abuse, gender equality, harassment, and photography and filming. Separate booklets were also published on keeping children safe and choosing where to stay.
This is not the Home Office’s first such publication. For years, asylum seekers arriving in the UK have been issued a Home Office guide to rights and expectations in the UK. It covers British culture, values, and law, along with health, welfare, and safety information. It was distributed with a companion guide to living in initial accommodation, which explains housing and support services.
Based on their published contents, neither earlier guide addressed consent, rape, or sexual harassment in the direct terms used in the 2026 booklet.
Their scope was largely administrative, covering accommodation providers and introducing asylum seekers to British institutions rather than providing explicit instruction on sexual conduct or laws concerning gender-based violence.
Apparently, the UK government believes that publishing this booklet and the accompanying posters will help keep British women and children safe. Finally!
Politicians who care enough about the people to take a stand. Now, they should publish posters and booklets about other forms of crimes and bring the crime rate down to zero.
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