VETERAN politician David Blunkett appeared on Radio 4’s Any Questions programme broadcast from a Bradford mosque last night and told the audience he had never been on a “heavier” show.

He has been appearing on the Friday night sessions, where members of the audience question a panel of politicians and others live on air, for decades.

But after the session ended, he said: “I have never been on a heavier programme”.

The audience asked a series of questions, including several pertinent to Bradford about the issues of grooming and radicalisation.

Any Questions had been invited to the city by the Al Mahdi Mosque, in Rees Way, and they were responsible for inviting the audience of more than 100 people.

Chairman Jonathan Dimbleby said afterwards: “Too often on this programme you get a small proportion of people from ethnic minority communities. Here we had a mixed audience and I think that was fantastic.

“It was a very serious programme, they were very serious issues that the audience quite properly raised,” he said.

Among the panellists was Ratna Lachman, director of JUST West Yorkshire, who spoke on the issues of grooming and radicalisation, which were raised by audience members.

On the issue of grooming, she said the crime did not exist in isolation and that families and others knew about it.

She said it was important to find ways for victims from the Asian community to come forwards so the issue could be addressed.

“What we need is for money and funding for community development workers, youth workers, to go out and create space for these victims to talk about their experience,” she said.

“We need to put some kind of safety net in place. In this era of austerity, there isn’t the money in local authorities.”

She added that “politicians have done us ill” with the way the issue of child sex exploitation had been dealt with historically, though Mr Blunkett said measures had been introduced as a result of then Keighley MP Ann Cryer raising the issue some years ago.

She also spoke of a need to establish why young people were radicalised in this country.

“We really need to start finding out what are the influences of radicalisation. I don’t think we have had an exhaustive study,” she said, but added that many young people from minority backgrounds felt they had few prospects, with many living in poverty.

One question which did not get time to be discussed was the value of spending billions of pounds on HS2 when the fast rail link will not benefit cities like Bradford.