Labour accused of a 'betrayal of rape gang victims' by stalling new laws for harsher sentences to free up prison space

Published: 08:06 EDT, 7 October 2026 | Updated: 08:11 EDT, 7 October 2026 Labour has been accused of betraying rape gang victims by delaying plans for tougher sentences for child rapists due to prison overcrowding.New legislation passed in April requires men who have sex with children to be automatically charged with rape.This was a key recommendation of Baroness Casey's review into the grooming gang scandal, which identified a 'deep-rooted failure to treat children as children and protect them from rape and sexual violence'.The law change will significantly increase sentences for offenders, from a maximum of 14 years in prison to life imprisonment, but it has yet to be implemented.A Ministry of Justice impact assessment found that the increase would require between 200 and 350 extra prison places, costing around £11.7million a year, at a time when many jails are reaching full capacity. Officials said the law change will still be enacted but were unable to give a specific start date.Tory shadow justice secretary Nick Timothy accused Labour of letting down the victims of grooming gangs. Baroness Casey made the reccomendation in her review into the grooming gang scandal'Delaying laws to toughen punishment for rape would be a disgraceful betrayal of the victims of the vile rape gangs,' he said.'As we saw with their reckless early-release scheme, Labour is ideologically anti-prison and would rather let people out than do the hard work required to keep them in.'Only the Conservatives have a plan to fix our prison estate by building 50,000 new places, ending early release for good and ensuring we can send violent and serious repeat offenders to prison.'It comes after more than 700 offenders were released early from prison on Thursday, with many thanking Andy Burnham for their freedom.In a mammoth expansion of Labour's previous early-release initiative, those being freed will, from December, include violent criminals handed sentences of more than four years' imprisonment.In her report into grooming gangs, published last year, Baroness Casey said imposing mandatory rape charges for anyone who had sex with a child under 16 would fix a 'legal grey area'.She said that cases of child sexual exploitation had frequently been dropped or downgraded due to the assumption that a child had been 'in love with' or 'had consented to' sex with the perpetrator.The crossbench peer noted that bringing in mandatory rape charges would mirror the approach taken in France.The Government accepted her recommendation, writing that the law 'must never provide protection for adult abusers rather than child victims of these despicable crimes'. The charge of rape will replace offences of sexual activity with a child. These carry a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison but typically result in sentences ranging from non-custodial community orders to 10 years in jail.Other measures in the Crime and Policing Act 2026, including criminalising the taking of intimate images of people without their consent and encouraging others to self-harm, are also yet to be implemented.They will require an extra 25 prison places, according to the MoJ impact assessment - first revealed by Inside Time. A Government spokesman said: 'We want to see the perpetrators who commit child sex offences locked up for longer, and we are changing the law to give judges the power to hand out tougher sentences.'This is on top of our unprecedented action to bring more abusers and grooming gang offenders to justice, backing police with record funding to reopen closed cases and introducing mandatory reporting of abuse.'We are also pulling every lever possible to fix the prisons crisis, building 14,000 new places to keep the worst offenders behind bars.'Officials said that even without the new offences, which it was committed to commencing, criminals who sexually abused children still face long sentences, preventative orders and being placed on the sex offenders' register.