Sajid Javid has defended his right to highlight the Pakistani Asian background of grooming gangs.

The home secretary said it would be wrong not to investigate why more than 50 per cent of those involved in recent child sexual abuse grooming cases were of Pakistani heritage.

Mr Javid, himself of Pakistani heritage and a Muslim, warned that ignoring the ethnicity of abusers would give “oxygen” to extremists.

He also defended his previous comments in a tweet in October in which he described a Huddersfield gang as “sick Asian paedophiles.”

Speaking on Radio Four’s Today programme on Wednesday, in an interview with guest editor Kamila Shamsie, an author of Pakistani heritage, he said: "I'm very much aware of the need for politicians to be careful with language as well as what they do.”

"When it comes to gang-based child exploitation it is self-evident to anyone who cares to look that if you look at all the recent high-profile cases there is a high proportion of men that are of Pakistani heritage.

“There could be - and I'm not saying there are - some cultural reasons from the community that those men came from that could lead to this type of behaviour.

"For me to rule something out just because it would be considered sensitive would be wrong. If I had ignored it, or been seen to ignore, that is exactly what I think extremists would like to see in this country.