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Disgraced former Rotherham MP Denis MacShane has admitted that he could have done more to probe allegations of child sex abuse in the town.

On Tuesday, a shock report reveals 1,400 children were sexually exploited in the town over a 16-year period.

MacShane confessed that as a “Guardian reader, and liberal leftie” he backed off from confronting the Muslim community over what was going on.

The ex-Labour minister, who was jailed over his expenses last year, told he BBC: “I think that I should have burrowed into it.

“If you read my prison diaries, I praise a lady, an MP called Anne Cryer who did raise the problem of cousin marriage and patriarchy of the oppression of women within bits of the Muslim community in Britain.

“Perhaps yes, as a true Guardian reader, and liberal leftie, I suppose I didn’t want to raise that too hard.”

(Image: PA)

Mr MacShane insisted: “What I can say was that no single individual, no constituent, no child, no family came to see me.

“I was concerned about it, I raised it quite often, it’s difficult sometimes for an MP to second guess everything that the chief executive of a borough was doing and all the senior officials.

“I was never happy with the rather complacent answers that I got. Certainly I know, and the records will show that this was never, ever brought to my personal attention.”

Were you one of the 1,400 children in Rotherham who suffered abuse? Call us anonymously on 0800 282591 or email mirrornews@mirror.co.uk

MacShane said he had welcomed a newspaper investigation into the abuse when Labour colleagues wanted it to go away.

“I think there was a culture of not wanting to rock the multicultural community boat if I may put it like that,” he said.

“I had a huge row just before I was defenestrated in the town hall with one of my fellow MPs and council grandees because they were complaining about the reporting by Andrew Norfolk of The Times.

“I was saying ‘he’s done this town a huge service, we should be working with him, getting him to investigate all of this,’ but that’s not the message anyone wanted to hear.”

(Image: Google Street View)

He added: “Nobody pursued Jimmy Savile, nobody pursued Rolf Harris, nobody pursued Cecil Smith, nobody pursued Mrs Thatcher’s sidekick we now learn was a depraved predatory monster.

“There is in our country, just a dreadful culture and I wouldn’t pick particular on one ethnic community but it is a real problem, it’s a longer story about the nature of that community, their sexual relations, and the way they treat women in particular within that community, there’s a big problem.

“When I met the Imams and my friends they were always as horrified as I was at any of the newspaper reports.

“These were brutal horrible crimes involving very young vulnerable girls coming from the poorest of poor backgrounds, let down by the society as a whole and a whole raft of very senior officials.

“We’ve got chief executives of towns now, shouldn’t they take some responsibility?”