00726-25 Cullen v The Daily Telegraph

Summary of Complaint

1. Jane Cullen complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation that The Daily Telegraph breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice in an article headlined “JD Vance's courageous lecture on migration has shamed our gutless elites”, published on 19 February 2025.

2. The article – which appeared on page 7, under the name and picture of its author – reported on a recent speech by Vice-President JD Vance, and the UK’s current immigration policy.

3. The article said:

“Talking of which, for this week’s Planet Normal podcast I interviewed [a named individual], Talk TV presenter, former Brexit Party member of the European Parliament and now supporter of Reform UK. [The presenter] has made a powerfully provocative documentary, Heresies: Britain’s Silent Rape Explosion, which points out that rapes in England and Wales have quadrupled since 2015.

“Although it is hard to get a breakdown of the ethnicity of the rapists, [the presenter] finally managed to elicit from the police the fact that migrants are three-and-a-half times more likely to be arrested for serious sexual crimes than British citizens, with Muslim men among the main culprits. It is, she says, part of a ‘harrowing trend’ across Europe.”

4. The article also appeared online, in substantially the same format. This version of the article was published on 18 February. The online copy also reported: “In France, in 2022 alone, 77 per cent of solved rape cases were committed by men who didn’t have French passports”.

5. During the course of IPSO’s investigation, it was supplied the video documentary to which the article referred. The video included the following quotes:

“We finally got data, from collated police evidence, showing foreign men, mostly from Albania, Afghanistan, Iraq and Algeria, were over three times more likely to be arrested for sex offences than British citizens”.

[…]

“In 2013, there were over 16,000 incidents of reported rapes in the United Kingdom. By 2022, this increased to over 69,000. Less than a decade on.”

6. The complainant said that the article was inaccurate, in breach of Clause 1, to report that rape offences in England and Wales has “quadrupled since 2015” – she said this was contrary to data from the Office of National Statistics [ONS], and supplied a webpage titled: “Sexual offences in England and Wales overview: year ending March 2022” to support her position.

7. On this webpage, under the title “Crime Survey for England and Wales”, and the heading “Sexual assault prevalence has not changed significantly compared with the year before the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic”, was a graph titled: “Prevalence of sexual assault in the last year, among adults aged 16 to 59 years, England and Wales”. The graph showed that the “percentage of adults that were victims once or more” of “rape or penetration” was 0.4% in 2015 – and had risen to 0.6% in 2022. The graph was captioned: “Crime Survey for England and Wales from the Office for National Statistics”.

8. The complainant also stated it was not clear that there was evidence to support the article’s claims regarding the “ethnicities” of offenders.

9. On 28 February, IPSO made the publication aware that the complaint raised a possible breach of the Editors’ Code.

10. On 5 March, the publication contacted the complainant via email. In this email, it accepted that the article was inaccurate to refer to rapes having “quadrupled since 2015” – it said this should have read “since 2013”. It amended the online article to read: “[The presenter…] points out that recorded rapes in England and Wales have quadrupled since 2013”. It also amended the reference to France, so that it instead referred to Paris and the year 2023, and published the following as a footnote correction:

“CORRECTION: A previous version of this article referred to the increase in recorded rapes in England and Wales since 2015. This was inaccurate and should have read 2013. It also referred to the percentage of solved rapes by foreign nationals in France in 2022, which ought to have read in Paris in 2023. We are happy to correct the record.”

11. On the same day, it published the following correction in its online Corrections and Clarifications column:

“An article ‘JD Vance’s courageous lecture on migration has shamed our gutless elites’ (Feb,18) referred to the increase in recorded rapes in England and Wales since 2015. This was inaccurate and should have read 2013. It also referred to the percentage of solved rapes by foreign nationals in France in 2022, which ought to have read in Paris in 2023. We are happy to correct the record.”

12. It also, on the next day, published the following correction in print in its Corrections and Clarifications column:

“An article ‘JD Vance’s courageous lecture on migration has shamed our gutless elites’ (Feb 19) referred to the increase in recorded rapes in England and Wales since 2015. This was inaccurate and should have read 2013. It also referred to the percentage of solved rapes by foreign nationals in France in 2022, which ought to have read in Paris in 2023. We are happy to correct the record.”

13. In response, the complainant commented that the word “recorded” had been introduced to the article without acknowledgement – so that it referenced “recorded rapes since 2013” rather than just “rapes” - and that the original omission of the word was significant. She later added that an increase in reported rapes did not represent an increase in crimes being committed – rather, it could represent an increase in the willingness of women to report such offences. The complainant also said that – despite the introduction of the word “recorded” – the sentence was still misleading; she considered that it implied there had been a significant change in the number of rapes in the United Kingdom, rather than the number reported to the police.

14. The complainant also noted that the ONS data – which she had previously provided, and which she believed to be the data utilised for the claim made in the Youtube documentary – was accompanied by the following disclaimer: “Sexual offences recorded by the police do not provide a reliable measure of trends. Improvements in police recording practices and increased reporting by victims have contributed to increases in recent years”. She said it was “clearly unacceptable” for the claim to be replicated in the article without reference to the warning regarding its reliability.

15. The complainant also commented that – in her view – the original video documentary was unreliable. She considered the author of the video had a “clear vested interest” in the topic of immigration – she also raised a number of concerns with the accuracy of the documentary.

16. The complainant also reiterated that the article made claims about the “nationalities or ethnicities of offenders” based on the video documentary – where the article was, in her view, based on the video, she again questioned the article’s accuracy on these points. She also disputed the accuracy of the claim that “migrants are three-and-a-half times more likely to be arrested for serious sexual offences”, and questioned on what basis the newspaper had reported this claim. She later added that the line “with Muslim men among the main culprits” would lead readers to assume that Muslims are disproportionately represented amongst those arrested for serious sexual offences – she considered this to be misleading, and unsupported by the evidence.

17. In response, the publication noted that that the complaint did not concern the video – only the article under complaint. It stated that the original omission of the word “recorded” was not significant: the article had always been referring to “recorded rapes”, and this was then clarified in the correction. The publication commented that the fact the ONS may have caveated crime data did not mean that the data had not been accurately reported in its article.

18. IPSO subsequently began an investigation into the complaint. At the outset of this investigation, the publication said it did not accept that the article breached the Editors’ Code.

19. The publication noted that the article under complaint was a comment piece about a speech given by JD Vance. It said that, in this context, it commented on information originally reported by the video documentary – the article was not a study on crime figures, but rather, an opinion piece based on the content of this video, which was in the public domain.

20. The publication reiterated, where the article referred to “rapes in England and Wales quad[rupling] since 2015”, this had always been referring to police recorded crime data, whereas the complainant was referring to crime survey data. While it did not consider the accuracy of the police recorded crime data to be in dispute, in support of its position, it supplied a further dataset from the ONS. Under the title: “Police recorded crime by offence, year ending March 2003 to year ending March 2025”, the dataset set out that “rape” had increased from 16,374 in April 2012-March 2013; to 29,420 in March 2014-April 2015; to 71,667 in April 2024-March 2025.

21. The publication accepted that errors had arisen regarding the erroneous reference to 2015, as opposed to 2013, but said these were a result of human error, and did not change the substance of the article.

22. Regarding the reported line that “migrants are three-and-a-half times more likely to be arrested for serious sexual crimes than British citizens”, the publication initially stated that police data concerning arrests for sexual crimes had been accurately reported in the article. It added that this claim came from analysis by the Centre for Migration Control [CMC].

23. The publication supplied the CMC’s analysis, and data the CMC had used. A document titled: “First ever migrant crime report reveals scale of crisis facing the UK” included the following extracts:

“Freedom of Information requests sent to all 43 territorial police forces in the UK have allowed the CMC to compile information on the total number of arrests of foreign nationals, the nationalities with the highest arrest rates, and the foreign arrest rate for sexual offences for the first ten months of 2024.”

[…]

“Foreign nationals accounted for over a quarter of sexual offence arrests in this timeframe.

[…]

“In summary, there is an average of roughly 34,745 sexual offence arrests over an eleven-month period in England and Wales.

[…]

“In the first ten months of this year, there have been 9055 foreign national arrests – which accounts for 26.1% of the average number of sexual offence arrests in an eleven-month period.

“We can also see, using the arrest data above, that the sexual offence arrest rate for migrants is 3.5 times higher than for Brits."

24. Further, the publication noted that the phrase “Muslim men among the main culprits” used the word “among”; it did not report that Muslim men were the main culprits, just that they were “among” the culprits. It also considered this to be supported by analysis from the Centre for Migration Control, itself based on data from the Ministry of Justice concerning convictions broken down by nationality. It said that the top 20 nationalities by rate of conviction per 10,000 of the nationality's population living in England and Wales included a number of countries where the majority of the population is Muslim – such as Afghanistan, Chad and Sudan.

25. The publication again supplied analysis from the CMC in support of its position. A document titled: “Over 100,000 migrant convictions in just three years”, including the following:

“Foreign nationals were convicted for sexual offences at 71% the rate of the British population […] [sic]

For sexual offences the top five nationalities were: Afghanistan, Eritrea, Namibia, Chad, and Moldova.

[…]

For instance, foreign nationals commit sexual offences at a rate that is 70% higher than the British public, and this is before we even take account of the shockingly low arrest and conviction rate for such crimes.”

26. In response, the complainant disputed the accuracy of the CMC’s analysis. She commented that there was “very little information” available as to who works for the organisation, or who funds it. She also stated that the publication should not have relied on the CMC’s analysis or data – if it did not have access to original, raw data, directly from the relevant Government body, any evidence it reported remained “unverified”.

27. The complainant stated that the analysis set out above was flawed for a number of reasons. She noted, firstly, that the analysis referred to arrests, not convictions – she said arrests may reflect racism or xenophobia within the police. Further, she said it did not account for “demographic variation” between the groups being compared – she said sexual offences are predominantly committed by young men, and it was probable the migrant population may have a higher proportion of young men that the UK population.

28. The complainant said the analysis referred to population sizes which were outdated, compared to the dates upon which the arrests had been made - she considered this to be inappropriate, given ongoing migrant population increases. The complainant also noted that the analysis did not reference “rape” specifically – rather, it referred to sexual offences – despite the article under complaint raising this issue.

29. The complainant also disputed that the publication could label Muslim individuals as “among the main culprits” on the basis of a number of countries where the majority of the population are Muslim appearing in the countries of the main offenders – she stated there could equally be countries where the majority of the population are Muslim which would have lower rates of sexual offences than UK nationals.

Relevant Clause Provisions

Clause 1 (Accuracy)

i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images, including headlines not supported by the text.

ii) A significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and — where appropriate — an apology published. In cases involving IPSO, due prominence should be as required by the regulator.

iii) A fair opportunity to reply to significant inaccuracies should be given, when reasonably called for.

iv) The Press, while free to editorialise and campaign, must distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact.

Findings of the Committee

30. The Committee was clear, from the outset, that it was only considering the accuracy of the article, and the information reported within it. While the article referred to a video produced by a third party, this was not under complaint and – as it was not under the publication’s editorial control – was not within IPSO’s remit.

31. Equally, the Committee was clear that the publication was not required to have conducted its own statistical analysis, and not doing so did not constitute a breach of the Code in and of itself. Rather, it was required to take care over the accuracy of its reporting – ensuring that the statistics it reported were covered in a manner that was not inaccurate, misleading, or distorted - and to correct any significantly inaccurate, misleading, or distorted information.

32. The Committee began with the original claim – which was removed from the amended article - that “rapes in England and Wales have quadrupled since 2015.” The complainant had disputed this, and supplied crime survey data from the Office of National Statistics in support of her position.

33. The Committee noted that it was not in dispute that the video documentary stated: “In 2013, there were over 16,000 incidents of reported rapes in the United Kingdom. By 2022, this increased to over 69,000”.

34. The publication had accepted that the article was inaccurate to refer to 2015. It had supplied data from the ONS, which supported the claim the publication later stood by, that rapes had quadrupled in the UK since 2013. The data showed that recorded rapes in the United Kingdom had increased from 16,374 in April 2012-March 2013, to 71,667 in April 2024-March 2025. The complainant had not disputed the accuracy of the data supplied by the publication – and the Committee noted that the data was derived from the ONS, which it considered to be a reliable source of information for crime statistics in the UK.

35. In these circumstances, the Committee considered that the sentence published in the original article – saying rapes had quadrupled since 2015, and this was what the YouTube video claimed - constituted a failure to take care. Neither the video documentary, nor the dataset supplied by the publication – both of which it had, seemingly, had access to as part of its editorial process - supported the claim that rapes had quadrupled “since 2015”, specifically. The video referred to 2013, and dataset demonstrated that recorded rapes had increased from 29,420 in March 2014-April 2015; to 71,667 in April 2024-March 2025, which did not amount to a fourfold increase. There was a breach of Clause 1 (i).

36. The Committee then turned to Clause 1 (ii), and the question of whether the inaccurate information was significantly inaccurate. It considered data regarding the number of recorded rapes in the UK to constitute a serious matter of public interest and social concern, which it was important the public was accurately informed on. The inaccuracy was therefore significant, and required correction as per the terms of the Code.

37. Following receipt of the complaint from IPSO, the publication had published an online correction within four working days, and a print correction within five days. The Committee considered that this represented sufficiently prompt action on the publication’s part.

38. Where the online article had been amended to remove the inaccurate information, and this was accompanied by both a footnote correction and a standalone correction in its online Corrections and clarifications column, the Committee considered the online correction to be duly prominent. Turning to the print correction, the Committee also considered that its location was duly prominent – it appeared in the position a reader would expect to find it, in the publication’s regular Corrections and Clarifications column.

39. Finally, the Committee considered that the corrections made clear how the original article was inaccurate and put on record the correct position – they made clear that the article “referred to the increase in recorded rapes in England and Wales since 2015”, and clarified that this should have referred to 2013.

40. In light of this, the Committee was satisfied that the publication had fulfilled its obligations in respect of Clause 1 (ii). There was no further breach of the Code on this point.

41. The Committee also noted that, during the course of the complaint, the publication had corrected an inaccuracy regarding the percentage of solved rapes by foreign nationals in France in 2022, which ought to have referred to Paris in 2023. This was not under complaint, and thus the Committee did not rule on it – nevertheless, it welcomed that the publication had taken prompt action to address an inaccuracy it had identified of its own accord.

42. The Committee then turned to the complainant’s concern that the original article referred to “rapes” rather than “recorded rapes”. She had also said that, when the article was amended to refer to the word “recorded”, it was still misleading – as it did not follow that an increase in reported rapes meant there had been an increase in rapes overall.

43. The Committee did not consider that omitting the word “recorded” rendered the article significantly inaccurate. It considered that references to crimes being committed could, reasonably, refer to crimes that had been reported to and recorded by the police – omitting to clarify that the article was reporting on rapes recorded by the police did not, in the Committee’s view, constitute an inaccuracy.

44. The Committee also considered that the complainant’s position was speculative. While it acknowledged that there may be other contributing factors toward an increase in reported rapes, such as a greater willingness of victims to report offences, as referenced in the warning from the ONS the complainant has pointed to - she was speculating that an increase in recorded rapes did not necessarily mean there had been an increase in incidents of rape, reported or otherwise. The point being made by the article was that data suggested rapes had increased, which the publication had provided a data set, from a reputable source, in support of. As such, the Committee did not consider the original omission of the word “recorded” – nor the updated version of the article which featured it – represented inaccurate or misleading information. There was no further breach of Clause 1 on this point.

45. The Committee then turned to the complainant’s concerns regarding the reported line: “migrants are three-and-a-half times more likely to be arrested for serious sexual crimes than British citizens, with Muslim men among the main culprits.”

46. The Committee again noted that it was not in dispute that the video documentary made part of the reported claim; it had stated: “We finally got data, from collated police evidence, showing foreign men – mostly from Albania, Afghanistan, Iraq and Algeria - were over three times more likely to be arrested for sex offences than British citizens.” The article also attributed the statement to the video documentary, therefore making clear the source of this information.

47. Further, the Committee noted that the analysis which the publication had relied on provided a basis for its reporting. The analysis, conducted by the CMC, had concluded that: “foreign nationals commit sexual offences at a rate that is 70% higher than the British public”. A number of countries where the majority of the population is Muslim also appeared within the countries with the highest rate of convictions.

48. While the complainant said the analysis did not reference “rape” specifically – rather, it referred to sexual offences – the Committee noted that the article reported that “foreign men […] were over three times more likely to arrested for sexual offences”. The claim made by the article on this point therefore tallied with the analysis.

49. Moreover, while the Committee acknowledged the complainant’s concerns regarding the accuracy of the CMC’s analysis, it did not consider this definitively disproved the article’s claims – she had not provided conclusive evidence which contradicted what the article reported. The Committee also had regard for the context of the article – it was not a detailed breakdown of statistical crime data, but rather, an opinion piece focusing on the author’s view on JD Vance’s speech and the topic of migration in the UK.

50. In light of these factors, the Committee did not consider there had been a failure to take care in the publication’s reporting on this point. The article made clear the claim had originally appeared in the video, and the publication had supplied a basis for it during IPSO’s investigation. The Committee also did not consider that the complainant’s concerns demonstrated that the article was significantly inaccurate or misleading on this point. There was no breach of Clause 1.

Conclusions

51. The complaint was partly upheld, under Clause 1 (i).

Remedial action required

52. The published correction put the correct position on record and was published promptly and with due prominence. No further action was required.

Date complaint received: 24/02/2025

Date complaint concluded by IPSO: 30/09/2025

Independent Complaints Reviewer

The complainant complained to the Independent Complaints Reviewer about the process followed by IPSO in handling this complaint. The Independent Complaints Reviewer decided that the process was not flawed and did not uphold the request for review.