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Labour’s response to tackling Asian grooming gangs has not “been good enough”, the leader of a major report into the scandal has warned. Louise Casey published a damning audit of the authorities’ failure to deal with grooming gangs last year, saying that the findings of previous reports had been ignored.

Ministers accepted all 20 of her recommendations at the time. But 18 months on, she said progress on implementing her findings “has not been what I would like it to be”. She said ministers had still not acted on calls to collect vital data on the ethnicity of offenders.

Ms Casey said her patience on the issue had “worn very, very thin” after discovering how little progress had been made since she first reported on grooming gang activity in Rotherham in 2015.

She told BBC Radio Four’s Today programme: “I would like more momentum on the changes needed, both in the police and the Home Office on the way we collect data.

“We are still not prepared to collect data in terms of religion and ethnicity – all the things that get us into hot water where we do not have the right evidence to analyse what is going on in terms of abuse of children and grooming gangs and how they operate.

“I’m impatient for change and I don’t think the momentum has been good enough.”

Downing Street refused to say whether it would legislate for the report’s recommendation to make having sex with a child aged 13, 14 or 15 a statutory rape offence, as it is for younger children.

Baroness Casey’s report criticised an “appalling lack of data on ethnicity”, saying the issue had been ‘dodged for years’ in an apparent effort to avoid highlighting the predominance of cases involving gangs of Asian men.

Andy Burnham’s official spokesman said police forces had been asked to review all previous grooming gang cases to see if previously closed ones could be reopened.

The spokesman said forces would be required to collect ethnicity data but could not say when this would happen.

But shadow home secretary Chris Philp said: “Baroness Casey is right. Ten years after Rotherham, the girls who were raped and abused by these gangs are still being let down.

“Labour voted against a national inquiry and only gave in when they were forced to. Labour are still too scared to collect the data on ethnicity and religion that Baroness Casey says we need to understand what happened.”

Police whistle-blower Maggie Oliver said Baroness Casey was “absolutely right”.