BRITAIN has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls.

There. I said it. Does that make me a racist? Or am I just prepared to call out this horrifying problem for what it is?

Sex gang from Newcastle - the most recent to be found guilty on a range of child sexual exploitation charges

For too long we have ignored the race of these abusers and, worse, tried to cover it up.

No more. These people are predators and the common denominator is their ethnic heritage.

We have to have grown-up conversations, however unpalatable, or in six months’ time we will be having this same scenario all over again.

The irony of all of this is that, by not dealing with the ethnicity of the abusers as a fact, political correctness has actually made the situation about race.

The perpetrators are criminals and we need to deal with them as such, not shy away from doing the right thing by fearing being called a racist.

I’m writing this as I don’t know what else to do to try and protect our children from grooming and sexual abuse by gangs.

5 Child sex exploitation scandal in 2014

I became the Member of Parliament for Rotherham in November 2012 and, within a month, I heard the abbreviation CSE (child sexual exploitation) for the first time.

Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council had been hauled in front of the Home Affairs Select Committee to justify their failure to protect young girls who were victims of this vile crime.

I sat stunned in the committee room, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

It was shocking. Mainly white pubescent girls were being sexually groomed and exploited by gangs of mainly British Pakistani men.

I had to do something. I would not be another person who turned a blind eye to these crimes.

5 Victim's harrowing account of years of abuse from a gang

Working with the children’s charity Barnardo’s, I launched a cross-party parliamentary inquiry into child sexual exploitation. We found that the judges were not properly supporting the victims in court.

Police weren’t always aware of the crime and the law needed changing so that police could act swiftly to prosecute on the first whiff of sexual grooming.

Most importantly, victims and survivors were not being believed or given the support they needed to rebuild their lives.

This had to change.

Following my inquiry, judges and the police receive better training and are now more aware of the crime. I changed the law on grooming.

However, victims did not — and still do not — get better support.

5 Sickening details of the depraved band of paedos

Jump to August 2014. Professor Alexis Jay releases her report into the failings in Rotherham.

She conservatively estimates that there are 1,400 victims of child sexual exploitation in the town by British Pakistani men. There is international outrage and the Government commissions a report by Dame Louise Casey. She confirms Alexis Jay’s report to be accurate.

February 2015. I spend four hours at 10 Downing Street with David Cameron and his cabinet. I present a simple five-point plan outlining how to prevent child sexual exploitation:

Set up a task force of experts

Give primary school children education on healthy/unhealthy relationships

Launch a national CSE awareness campaign

Supply mandatory training for professionals in the field

Provide support for victims and survivors.

Two-and-a-half years later we have warm words and still no action.

In fact, it is worse as we have less police, cuts to social workers, education, children’s services, courts and the Crown Prosecution Service.

Child abuse is massive in this country. Children’s charities estimate that one in four girls and one in six boys will experience some form of sexual abuse before the age of 18.

5 Victim's testimony to her years of abuse

More than 90 per cent of abused children know their abuser — it is usually someone from within the extended family — and the vast majority of convictions are against white men acting alone.

However, as the latest case in Newcastle proves, we must accept that for gang-related child sexual exploitation, the convictions have largely been against British Pakistani men.

The Government must act now to understand why this is.

We have a large group of men behind bars, let’s do some research and find out why these monsters think it is acceptable to abuse children in this way.

Unless we know why they do, we can’t prevent it.

Our children deserve better.