Lord Nazir Ahmed: Former Rotherham Labour peer fails in appeal to overturn child sex abuse convictions

Three appeal judges dismissed an appeal attempt by Lord Nazir Ahmed, aged 66, yesterday. Lord Justice William Davis, Mr Justice Jacobs and Judge Paul Sloan concluded, at a Court of Appeal hearing in London, that Ahmed did not have arguable grounds for staging a full appeal.

Ahmed, a former Labour peer, was convicted in January 2022 of sexually abusing two children. Prosecutors said he abused the children when he was a teenager himself in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, in the early 1970s.

Ahmed denied the offences but a judge handed him a jail term of five years and six months after a trial at Sheffield Crown Court where he was found guilty of crimes dating back some 40 years.

Earlier this year, three appeal judges cut that term to two years and six months

They considered legal issues relating to the “correct approach” to sentencing an adult for an offence committed when they were a child and examined a number of cases concerning sexual offending.

Ahmed, who was convicted of two counts of attempted rape and one of buggery, has now left prison and was in court for Tuesday's appeal hearing.

A woman had told jurors in Ahmed’s trial that he tried to rape her in the early 1970s, when he was about 16 or 17 but she was much younger. Ahmed was also found guilty of a serious sexual assault against a boy under 11, also in the early 1970s.

The UK Parliament website says Ahmed has “retired” from the House of Lords. He was a member of the Lords between August 1998 and November 2020.

Lawyers representing Ahmed on Tuesday asked appeal judges for permission to stage a full appeal.

Imran Khan KC, who led Ahmed's legal team, outlined a number of concerns and argued that the convictions were not safe.

He raised concerns about the strength of evidence relating to one charge, jurors being affected by publicity, evidence relating to entries in a victim's diary, a prosecuting barrister's comment on a witness' evidence and a concern about jurors discussing the case during a break in the trial.

After Ahmed was jailed, Detective Constable Jo Smithson, of South Yorkshire Police, said: “Abuse of this nature stays with victims for a lifetime and every victim has a right to be heard.”