Shabana Mahmood is expected to set out on Monday how she intends to amend the Immigration Act 1971 to allow the deportation of Shabir Ahmed, the ringleader of the Rochdale grooming gang BBC. The Telegraph first reported that the Home Secretary would legislate to remove him BBC.

Ahmed, 73, was jailed for 22 years in August 2012 for child sexual offences including rape. He served 14 years before being released on licence in the week before this report Sky News. His victims knew him as "Daddy" BBC.

He held dual British-Pakistani citizenship until the Home Office stripped him of British nationality following his conviction. That leaves him a foreign national subject to deportation in principle, but the 1971 Act's transitional provisions bar removal of any Commonwealth citizen who arrived in the UK before 1973 and had already accrued five years' residence — a category Ahmed falls into BBC. It is this specific clause, drafted more than half a century ago to protect long-settled Commonwealth migrants from summary removal, that ministers now want to amend.

Since release, Ahmed has been housed in 24-hour staffed accommodation and fitted with a GPS-monitored tag. The government has said any breach of his licence conditions would send him straight back to prison BBC. Some of his victims have said the release left them frightened and feeling unsafe BBC.

From constituency pressure to statute

Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, called for Ahmed's deportation as the release date approached Telegraph. By 2 July the BBC was reporting that the government was "looking at every route" to remove him BBC. Officials had by then opened talks with Islamabad on the practicalities of a removal to Pakistan BBC, and the following day the Times of India reported that Whitehall was weighing emergency legislation to that end Times of India.

Parliament had already begun grappling with the question before any bill text emerged. The Commons held a debate titled "Rochdale Grooming Gang: Offender Deportation" on 6 July Hansard, two days before Mahmood's expected statement — an order of events that suggests the government was responding to backbench and public pressure rather than initiating the process on its own timetable.

The politics are not confined to the government benches. Chris Philp, the Shadow Home Secretary, told the BBC on 2 July that he planned to lay his own amendment to strip out certain provisions from whatever bill ministers bring forward BBC BBC. That signals the Conservatives judge the government's approach too narrow, too slow, or both — though the precise target of Philp's amendment has not yet been made public.

For anyone tracking the machinery here, the interesting question is drafting scope. Ministers could table a narrow, near-retrospective clause aimed squarely at Ahmed's case, or a broader rewrite of the 1971 Act's Commonwealth transitional protections that would catch other long-settled citizens stripped of British nationality after serious convictions. The former is faster and harder to challenge on Article 14 discrimination grounds if drawn tightly enough; the latter invites exactly the kind of scrutiny — from the Joint Committee on Human Rights, from the Lords, from immigration lawyers — that could slow passage well past any single case.

There is also the Pakistan side of the equation, which Westminster cannot legislate away. A change to UK law only solves half the problem. Removal still depends on Islamabad's cooperation, on Ahmed's Pakistani citizenship status being uncontested there, and on the practical logistics of an involuntary return of a 73-year-old man under licence conditions. Talks between UK officials and Pakistani counterparts were already under way by early July, but no timetable for their conclusion has been disclosed.

The devolved dimension is worth noting too. Immigration and deportation are reserved matters, so any statutory change from Mahmood applies UK-wide regardless of where Ahmed is ultimately housed or where his offences were committed. Policing of his licence conditions, by contrast, sits with Greater Manchester Police and the Probation Service — which is presumably why Burnham, as a mayor with no formal say over immigration law, has confined his public interventions to demanding deportation rather than proposing his own mechanism for it.

Monday's statement will be the first opportunity to see whether Mahmood's bill matches the urgency of the rhetoric that has preceded it, or whether the amendment turns out to be more modest than the fortnight of briefing has implied.