Go on, have at it.

Last week, the long-awaited Home Office report into child grooming was finally published. Commissioned by former Home Secretary Sajid Javid, it was supposed to put the official spotlight on to one of the greatest scandals in British history – the systemic abuse of white working-class girls by Asian men.

Instead, it was a whitewash. Literally. The sole definitive conclusion, cast amid a jumble of Civil Service sophistry, was that 'research has found that group-based CSE [child sexual exploitation] offenders are most commonly white'.

The study had actually found no such thing. As Priti Patel pointedly acknowledged in her foreword: 'Some studies have indicated an over-representation of Asian and black offenders.

'However, it is difficult to draw conclusions about the ethnicity of offenders as existing research is limited and data collection is poor. This is disappointing because community and cultural factors are clearly relevant to understanding and tackling offending.'

It's not 'disappointing' – it's another appalling abdication of responsibility by officials and a system that has again failed the countless victims of Britain's Asian grooming gangs.

And instead of exposing the abuse and the abusers, the grooming report has provided a case study in the way the British Establishment continues to thwart any attempt to finally get a grip on an issue that shames our nation.

When Javid first announced an investigation to 'establish the particular characteristics and contexts associated with this type of offending', it created controversy. Especially when, a few weeks later, he greeted the conviction of a 20-strong Huddersfield grooming gang with the words: 'These sick Asian paedophiles are finally facing justice. I want to commend the bravery of the victims. For too long, they were ignored. Not on my watch.'

Javid's liberal critics accused him of stoking prejudice, while some Conservative colleagues claimed he was simply posturing for a forthcoming Tory leadership election.