Robert Jenrick has called for mandatory life sentences for gang predators.

Conservative leadership candidates have outlined crackdown plans including the automatic deportation of any non-British citizen who takes part in grooming gangs.

He also wants criminal sanctions for police officers and social workers who fail to report such crimes, as well as a “blacklist” preventing them from working in the public sector again.

Mr Jenrick said: “Some of the reforms Suella Braverman proposed as Home Secretary in the last government worked well.

“The dedicated grooming gang task force has led to the arrest of more than 550 suspects in a single year.

“This is a good start, but the truth is that we need to go much further. Anyone who thinks that these crimes no longer take place is delusional.

“This view, sadly common among Britain’s most powerful people, condemns more working-class girls to these savage and life-destroying crimes.”

Referring to the 2022 inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Telford and the 2014 report by Professor Alexis Jay, he added: “The Telford report makes clear that this exploitation “still exists today and is widespread throughout the country.”

“Every second that these atrocities continue is a stain on the moral conscience of our nation.

“That’s why I’m calling for mandatory life sentences for any member of a grooming gang.

“Anyone who has read the Jay Report would support locking up these disgusting predators for life.

“Any non-British who commits any of these crimes should be immediately deported and banned from returning here.

“We must also end the endemic complacency in our public sector. The 1,400 children abused in Rotherham and the 1,000 abused in Telford were horribly abandoned by the local authorities – who, for the sake of political correctness, turned a blind eye to what was happening.

“Public servants who fail to report abuse they know is happening should be prosecuted and banned from working in the public sector again.”

Mr Jenrick also called for permanent marking of grooming gang criminals when they leave prison and life injunctions preventing them from living with or going near their victims.

He also proposed a monument and a discussion with victims of grooming gangs about a monument to them in Rotherham, where around 1,400 children were targeted between 1997 and 2013.

The maximum sentence is currently 14 years for offenses relating to facilitating the sexual exploitation of a child and life for rape, but Mr Jenrick would change the sentences to a minimum life sentence.