The new London grooming gangs bombshell that heaps more shame on Sadiq Khan

Sadiq Khan has faced questions about his handling of the grooming gangs scandal

While Sir Sadiq Khan’s answers to questions about grooming gangs in his city at a London Assembly meeting on Thursday told us almost nothing, the man to his right, Sir Mark Rowley, made some stunning revelations.

At the top of the list was that the Met has tens of cases, which are “close to what the public understands as grooming gang” cases, it deals with every month.

This figure doesn’t come as a surprise at the Express offices.

We’ve spent months painstakingly examining thousands of pages of documents from death reviews to council reports for evidence of the problem in London.

Our research identified at least 24 grooming gang cases across the capital and we anticipate adding many more to that total as time goes on.

Behind almost every case on the list is a story of tragedy: an 11-year-old girl blamed for “seeking out older men”, and a 16-year-old who took her own life after police failed to act on reports of rape and miscarriage.

Most shocking of all is a gang linked to Levi Bellfield – one of Britain’s worst serial killers – with Bellfield himself accused of abusing girls for a decade, while he and his associates faced so few consequences they came to see themselves as “untouchable”.

Yet up until the Metropolitan Police Commissioner took his seat beside Sadiq Khan we had no clear idea about the current situation for London’s law enforcement on the ground.

Hearing his detailed description of the grooming gang caseload his officers faced was damming, however, because of what preceded it.

Just five months ago, Sadiq Khan told the London assembly there was “no indication” grooming gangs existed in his city.

In January, Sir Mark Rowley said he had “not seen” these groups operating in London.

So where have these tens of live cases come from and why on earth did two of our capital’s most senior leaders make those claims? It simply doesn’t add up.