Former Labour home secretary Jack Straw said on Saturday some young Pakistani men regard white girls as easy targets for sexual abuse, drawing criticism from the Muslim community and other MPs.

In an interview with BBC television Straw said he believed there was a specific problem in some areas of the country, including his own, where Pakistani men were deliberately targeting young white women because they were viewed as morally inferior.

He accused them of treating white girls as “easy meat” ripe for sexual abuse, while women in their own community remained off-limits to them.

“Pakistanis, let's be clear, are not the only people who commit sexual offences, and overwhelmingly the sex offenders' wings of prisons are full of white sex offenders,” he said.

“But there is a specific problem which involves Pakistani heritage men ... who target vulnerable young white girls,” he added, saying there was no point in denying it was an issue and had been for years.

“We need to get the Pakistani community to think much more clearly about why this is going on and to be more open about the problems that are leading to a number of Pakistani heritage men thinking it is okay to target white girls in this way.”