LABOUR MPs QUEUED IN THEIR HUNDREDS TO VOTE DOWN PROTECTION FROM MEN LIKE SHABIR AHMED. NOW THEY'RE OUTRAGED

The speeches made headlines. The voting record tells a different story. When Parliament had the chance to keep child rapists behind bars, Labour MPs from the grooming towns voted it down, then passed the very law they're now protesting about. I've got their names. Is your MP on the list?

On 2 July, Shabir Ahmed walked out of prison. Fourteen years of a twenty-two year sentence for raping children across Rochdale, Oldham and Middleton. He's 73 now. Stripped of his British citizenship years ago and still we can't deport him, because a law written half a century ago says men who arrived before 1973 get to stay. He was spitting contempt at his own jury in 2012 and nothing about him has changed since.

And here's the detail that should shame everyone involved. Only the women whose cases reached court get an official warning when a man comes out. With these gangs, most never did. Jim McMahon MP himself confirmed it, victims whose cases never made it to court were not contacted by any part of the system. So the women Ahmed abused found out he was coming home the same way you did. On social media.

The local MPs were straight out of the blocks. Jim McMahon called him a very dangerous individual posing a real, present danger. Demanded the law be changed so child rapists can never again be let out early. On 9 July he signed a letter to the Justice Secretary with Elsie Blundell and Paul Waugh, complaining that the new law will release serious sex offenders halfway through their sentences and asking the government to think again about early release for men who abuse children. Strong words. Exactly what a frightened town wants to hear from its MP.

I went and checked what these people did when the words actually cost something.

THE PROTECTION THEY DEMAND ALREADY EXISTED. THEY KILLED IT.

Last October, MPs got a straight choice. A change to the law was put in front of them that would have stopped rapists, paedophiles and groomers being let out of prison early. The burglars and shoplifters could still go. Just not them. And before they voted, the stakes were spelled out on the floor of the House.

Most men in prison for rape would qualify for early release without this protection. For the men who groom children, more than nine out of ten.

In my view, this was the vote to keep the next Shabir Ahmed behind the door, and every MP heard the numbers before walking through the lobby.

Paul Waugh, Rochdale. The town Ahmed hunted in. Voted to kill it. Elsie Blundell, Heywood and Middleton, where those girls were passed around like property. Voted to kill it. Jim McMahon, Oldham West. My town. Voted to kill it. Naz Shah in Bradford, same.

Debbie Abrahams, Oldham East, no vote recorded. Sarah Champion built a national reputation on the backs of fourteen hundred Rotherham victims, and when the vote came to protect the next fourteen hundred, no vote recorded.

It fell, 307 votes to 182, with Labour supplying almost every one of those 307. Out of the whole parliamentary party, exactly one Labour MP voted for the protection. Kate Osborne, Jarrow. One.

Eight days later came the final vote on the law itself, after the protection had already been stripped out, in full public view. Waugh, Blundell, McMahon, Champion, Shah, and this time Abrahams too, all voted it through. It's the law of the land now. The first seven hundred offenders walk out in September.

So when Waugh, Blundell and McMahon demand the law be changed to keep child rapists in prison, understand what you're actually hearing. They are demanding the exact protection that was put in front of them last October, argued to their faces, and killed with the help of their votes. All three are writing protest letters about a law all three of them passed, demanding a safeguard all three of them destroyed. And somehow their outrage is louder than anyone's.

McMahon posted the letter on his own Facebook page as proof of how hard he's fighting. He should have read it first. It's a confession dressed as a complaint.

• It objects that the new law draws the line by the type of sentence a man receives rather than the seriousness of what he did, almost line for line the warning MPs were given before they voted.
• It asks the government to revisit early release for serious sexual offenders, particularly against children, which is the protection they killed.
• It even quotes the ministers' assurance that the gravest crimes would face the toughest sentences, as if the three of them had been misled. They weren't misled. They were in the room. They voted for it.
• And the man they sent it to, David Lammy, voted the same way they did, both times.

Three MPs complaining about their own law to the minister who passed it with them.

THEY CANNOT SAY THEY HAD NO CHOICE

The excuse will be the prison crisis. No room, hard choices, something had to give. I might even have some sympathy if their own government hadn't already proven it was rubbish.

September 2024. The crisis at its absolute worst, the country down to its last hundred prison cells. This same Labour government ran an emergency early release scheme, and that scheme had a banned list. Fifty-six types of offence, sex offences at the top. More than 3,000 prisoners went out in two months and the sex offenders stayed behind the door. So freeing up prison space without freeing rapists isn't a theory. They did it. Recently. In far worse conditions. Every MP named above was sitting in Parliament while it ran.

Fourteen months later came the permanent version, and this time there was no banned list protecting against the early release of sex offenders on standard sentences. Their own letter to Lammy admits as much. A prison cell is a prison cell. The prisons are full of burglars, thieves and fraudsters whose release frees up exactly the same beds. There was never anything that required a bed to be emptied by a man who raped children, and their own government had already shown them the alternative.

THE WARNING THEY IGNORED

One more detail, and for me it's the one that turns this from hypocrisy into something colder. They were told this exact moment would come. Before the votes, they were warned that they were being marched into voting for the indefensible, and that the moment a case blew up in public the government would change course and leave every MP who'd obediently defended it stranded. They were told by Kieran Mullan MP it would come back to haunt every single one of them.

This morning, I emailed every single Labour MP the Library briefing note so that they could see it for themselves, regardless of whether they listen to this debate. Ignorance will be no excuse, because today will not be the end of it. I guarantee Members that the harsh reality is that history tells us that some of the criminals whom Labour MPs are being asked to vote to release will almost certainly commit further serious offences, at a time when they would otherwise have been locked up. MPs will then have to explain why they voted for non-emergency changes that let such people out earlier. I would not be surprised if one of these cases is sufficiently serious that the Government amend the Bill's measures in future, in response to a public backlash. There is every chance that they will make Labour MPs go through the Lobby tonight and vote for the indefensible, and then at some point pull the rug from under them

Then Shabir Ahmed came out and gave the whole country a taste of what September looks like. The backlash arrived right on schedule. And look at them now. Jess Phillips on the backbenches demanding protections she voted against. The Greater Manchester MPs signing letters against their own law. Scrambling for distance from their own record, exactly as predicted, almost to the day.

DID YOUR MP VOTE TO RELEASE CHILD RAPISTS EARLY?

Don't take my word for any of it. Parliament publishes every vote with every name attached, and two lists tell you everything about your MP.

The first is the vote that would have kept child rapists behind bars. If your MP is under "Noes", they voted to kill that protection. No vote recorded means they didn't turn up.

The second is the final vote that made early release the law. If your MP is under "Ayes", they voted for it after the protection had been removed.

I've attached the links. Find your MP's name. Screenshot it. Send them an email and ask them to comment.

THEY KNEW. THEY VOTED ANYWAY.

Every statement of concern they've put out since 2 July proves they understood the stakes all along. You don't get to call Shabir Ahmed a real and present danger and then claim you never grasped what releasing men like him means. The numbers were read out in the room, minutes before the vote. They voted with the government anyway, despite the warnings, despite the girls of Rochdale, Heywood, Oldham, Rotherham and Bradford, and despite one of their own colleagues proving in real time that voting the other way was possible. The whip won. The girls lost.

Their outrage at Shabir Ahmed isn't accountability. It's an insult to every survivor who found out from Facebook that he was coming home. What they actually did is on the public record, permanently, waiting for anyone who looks.

They were warned it would haunt them. It is up to you to make sure it does.

I’m Raja Miah MBE. For nearly eight years, I have led a campaign that exposed how senior Labour politicians helped protect Pakistani rape gangs. The people of my town helped force the national inquiry.

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