The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)

My Lords, I apologise for the confusion—it is one of those days. First, I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, to her new role. I wish her every success in holding the Government to account and raising those issues. I hope that she enjoys the new role and does it as successfully as possible. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, for her report and for her continued interest and comments on this. The central point that the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, has raised is around the ethnicity and nationality of grooming gang offenders. She is right that we have not yet got a reliable picture, because the underlying data has been incomplete and inconsistent. That is why the former Home Secretary, my right honourable friend Yvette Cooper, the Member for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley, has written to all chief constables setting clear expectation that suspect ethnicity data must be recorded. But the noble Baroness is right that we need to do more, and that is why we will legislate to mandate collection as soon as possible. The police reform White Paper that we published in January said that we would set out our intention to create a framework to mandate data, and this will be taken forward through the upcoming police reform Bill. I cannot give an introduction date for the police reform Bill, but when it comes—it has been announced for this Session of Parliament—that will be done as part of the Bill’s proposals.