A CITY community leader has agreed with a Government minister who said grooming gangs could not use cultural differences as a defence for their crimes.

Police minister Damian Green said he was not prepared to accept mitigation that some child abuse would be regarded as acceptable in other parts of the world.

The Tory’s comments come nearly a month after seven Oxford men were convicted of grooming, drugging, and raping young white girls in the city. Five of the men were of Pakistani origin.

Mr Green said: “The age of consent may be puberty in other parts of the world, but it is not in this country. And in this country it is not acceptable to regard anyone else as being in some way less then human because they may not share your religious views or your race.

“We are all equal under the law. If you are abusing children sexually then that’s criminality and I am not prepared to accept, as a plea in mitigation, the argument that in some parts of the world this would be regarded as acceptable. It’s not acceptable in Britain in 2013.”

Abdul Rouf, chairman of the Bangladesh Welfare Association in Oxford, said: “Culture and race has got nothing to do with it. Those people are not Muslim, they have no religion.

“The Muslim culture does not allow grooming.”

But he said Mr Green was wrong to assume the men’s cultural heritage had anything to do with their crimes and said the men had grown up within English culture and law.

He said: “Those men were born in England. We are living in England we have to obey the law in England.”