UK to Amend 1971 Immigration Act to Enable Deportation of Convicted Grooming Gang Leader

The home secretary will change the law so the freed ringleader of a Rochdale grooming gang can be deported, the BBC has been told. As first reported by the Telegraph, the home secretary is expected to set out on Monday how she plans to amend the 1971 Immigration Act which currently stops the man being removed from the UK.

The man, 73, was jailed for 22 years in August 2012 for a number of child sexual offences including rape. He was released on licence last week. Known to his victims as "Daddy", the man had dual British-Pakistani citizenship but was stripped of the former following his 2012 conviction.

It is not known how long it would take to change the law but one government source suggested it could potentially be up to a year. At the time of his release, his victims were told he could not be deported to Pakistan due to the 55-year-old Immigration Act, which bars the removal of any Commonwealth citizen who arrived in the UK before 1973 and had been in the country for five years.

After leaving prison, the man was sent to 24-hour staffed accommodation and fitted with a GPS electronically monitored tag. He is subject to strict licence conditions following his release, the Home Office said, including exclusion zones, an electronically monitored curfew and the requirements of the sex offenders register.

Some of his victims said they were "frightened" by his release, and they felt "unsafe". While he is in the UK, the government has said any breach of the man's strict licence conditions would result in him being immediately returned to prison. The man was one of nine men from Rochdale and Oldham who were found guilty of exploiting girls as young as 13 at two takeaway restaurants in the Heywood area of Rochdale.