If you want to understand why voters have lost faith in the mainstream parties, “one name will suffice”, said Stephen Pollard in The Spectator: Shabir Ahmed. He was the ringleader of a Rochdale grooming gang that subjected girls as young as 12 to unspeakable horrors between 2008 and 2010. Ahmed alone was convicted of multiple child rape offences in 2012 and sentenced to 22 years in jail.
The dual British-Pakistani was stripped of his British citizenship at that time, and his victims were led to believe that he’d be deported after completing his sentence. But last week, Ahmed walked free from prison, having served just 14 years; and it turns out that he can’t be deported owing to a provision in the 1971 Immigration Act that prevents Commonwealth citizens who entered Britain before 1973 being removed. How pathetic. “The law could be changed in a day if there was the political will to do so.”
‘All very difficult’
Andy Burnham is among those demanding action, said John Rentoul in The Independent. The presumptive prime minister said he would ask the Home and Foreign Secretaries to review “all possible options” to remove this “vile criminal” from Britain, and the Government has indicated that it is open to changing the law.
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Even if the law is changed, though, ministers would likely still face a challenge under the European Convention on Human Rights; and Pakistan would need to agree to take Ahmed back, which it has refused to do. The Home Office could try to force Pakistan’s hand by, say, threatening to restrict its citizens’ access to visas, but that would be quite a big step. Chances are, Burnham’s team, like Keir Starmer’s before it, will review the options in Ahmed’s case before “concluding that it is all very difficult”.
The real scandal
Officials in Pakistan insist that Ahmed, who arrived in the UK as a child, is our problem, not theirs, said Dominic Lawson in The Sunday Times – and they’re right. The real scandal is not that we can’t deport him, but that he was released after serving just two-thirds of his sentence.
As of 2020, such early release is automatic for the most serious offenders (other than those given life sentences), to help free up space in our overcrowded prisons (other offenders are typically released on licence at the halfway point). It didn’t matter that parole officers had, as recently as 2024, deemed Ahmed to be unrepentant and unsafe to be released. Ahmed should have been given a life sentence. Then at least he could have been let out only after satisfying a parole board that he no longer presented an unmanageable risk.
