Chair of the Commons Communities and Local Government Committee Clive Betts has welcomed the resignation of South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner Shaun Wright as ‘the right decision’.

Mr Wright, who served as Rotherham MBC’s cabinet member for children’s services between 2005 and 2010 came under intense public and political pressure to step down three weeks agon in the aftermath of Professor Alexis Jay’s independent review into child sexual exploitation in the town – which revealed at least 1,400 children were subject to serous abuse between 1997 and 2013.

Mr Wright said he was stepping down so that ‘important issues’ highlighted in the Jay report could be considered ‘without distraction’.