Early evening summary
Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, has told MPs that Axel Rudakubana, the Southport killer, will be treated as a terrorist in jail because he was convicted for a terrorist offence. (See 2.23pm.)
Jones is now taking questions from journalists.
Q: Will you look at cutting, or freezing, the size of the civil service. Polling shows that is what voters want. It is more popular than benefit cuts?
Jones says he does not see cutting the size of the civil service and cutting the welfare budget as an either/or. He says the idea of a zero-based review is to go back to first principles and see where money should be spent.
Q: You previously voted against a third runway at Heathrow. What do you feel about the fact the chancellor is now in favour?
Jones says that story is “speculation”, and so he won’t comment.
Q: Do you aim to reduce the rate at which sickness benefit spending goes up? Or do you want to actually cut it?
On welfare, Jones says there are two groups people are particularly worried about. There are people who are too ill to work. The government wants them to be in work, and a green paper is coming out soon.
And the other group is people making fraudulent claims, he says. The DWP will get extra powers to tackle organised crime in the system, he says.
Jones says the Passport Office is a good example of how technology can deliver better services. The service was so poor that it just “fell over and everyone had to fix it quickly”. Now it is very effective, he says.
Jones says government will carry out spending reviews every two years
Jones says the government will be holding multi-year spending reviews every two years “because we don’t want to end up in a position like we inherited, where there were just no spending plans in place”.
And he says in the years when no spending review is taking place, the government will examine problem areas for spending.
In the gap between those two-year spending reviews, we will collectively agree at cabinet which areas of spending are causing our colleagues the biggest grief, not just within the department, but between departments, and we’ll use the resources we have outside the spending review work … to really get into the detail about what are the issues, how do we fix them, and how do we improve outcomes for people
Darren Jones says Treasury using AI to help with spending review
At the IfG Darren Jones is now taking questions.
He says the Treasury will be using AI for its spending review.
In the past officials needed to analyse departmental spending using spreadsheets, he says. But he says this time it will be automated.
This is the first time where, at a line by line level, we’re going to get all of this information from across the whole of government. And because we can use large language models and AI tools now that are just available off the shelf, unlike in the past where Treasury Excel spreadsheets have been character-limited, restricting permanent secretaries across every department, I actually want as much information as possible, because we can use [AI to] pull out the information across departments and across programmes much more effectively now than we could in the past.
Updated
In his speech Jones has just mentioned the importance of growth, and he said announcements from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology today were valuable in this regard.
The department says:
Technology will be better used to improve public services and AI will make the civil service more efficient to turbocharge the Prime Minister’s Plan for Change, under a shake up that changes how government experiments with, buys and builds new tech.
A new package of AI tools – nicknamed ‘Humphrey’ – will be available to civil servants in an effort to modernise tech and deliver better public services to set the country on course for a decade of national renewal.
This follows a review which found that the government inherited a dire system which over relies on ways of communicating that should be left in the last century – with HMRC taking 100,000 calls a day and DVLA processing 45,000 letters.
But the press release also includes this line – which suggests government spin doctors might be trying just a bit too hard to crowbar “promoting growth” into every government announcement.
It will do away with insensitive and antiquated processes that have been holding this country back for too long. That means scrapping the need for people to queue at the local council to register the death of a loved one, and doing away with the need to post an advert in your local paper if you want to buy a lorry – getting in the way of growth.
Treasury minister Darren Jones says spending review will bring 'long overdue reckoning with government spending'
Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the Treasury, is currently giving a speech to the Institute for Government. There is a live feed here.
The speech was briefed in advance and Jones has just delivered what was billed as the top line. He said:
We are long overdue a reckoning with government spending, and a realistic appraisal of how we are using taxpayers’ money.
But, just before he started, Jones said he wanted to keep his speech short, because he wanted more time for the Q&A, which he said might be more interesting.
Disciplinary panel confirms Bob Stewart to permanently lose his ex-MP's Commons pass for breaking conduct rules
The former Tory MP Bob Stewart has been stripped of his right to access the parliamentary estate after he lost an appeal against the sanction for his failure to declare his employment by a defence company for two years.
Stewart, the former MP for Beckhenham, will not be able to use his former members’ pass, a privilege all former MPs are given after they stand down, after parliament’s standards commissioner found he had showed a “blatant disregard” in breaching conduct rules was upheld.
His appeal against the committee on standards, which ruled that his privilege should be permanently revoked, was heard by parliament’s independent expert panel.
Stewart had failed to correctly register his employment as a consultant with Ksantex, a defence firm registered in Luxembourg, and owned by Azerbaijan-born French citizen Khagani Bashirov.
He was employed by the company between 2015 and 2017, and paid more than £70,000 which he also did not declare.
In Stewart’s initial defence, he said he registered a role with a company he called VES Consultancy, which was part of “the same group of companies” as Ksantex.
But after examining the commissioner’s findings, the standard’s committee said in December that “for a senior member to commit several breaches, spanning three codes of conduct and a period of 14 years, shows a blatant disregard for the rules”.
Stewart is also said to have failed to “cooperate at all times” with the commissioner’s inquiry which in turn delayed the investigation.
The panel concluded:
The retention of a pass giving access to the parliamentary estate following the end of a career as a member of the House is a significant privilege.
We have no doubt that members of the public, apprised of the serious and longstanding breaches of the codes by Col Stewart, would find it incomprehensible if a lesser sanction than the permanent removal of the pass had been imposed.
Waheed Alli updates political cabinet as he revives fundraising role for Labour ahead of local elections
Labour donor Waheed Alli updated the cabinet on the party’s fundraising plans ahead of the May local elections today, his first time back at the centre of power since the controversy over his own donations, the Guardian can reveal.
The Labour peer, who was appointed the party’s general election fundraising chief, has remained in the role despite a damaging row last year over tens of thousands of pounds of gifts he gave to Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner.
Sources said that Alli, who is worth an estimated £200m, told the gathering of the political cabinet in No 10 that the party was “reinvigorating” fundraising, with the coffers still empty even though it was six months since the general election.
They clarified that Lord Alli had not been given a Downing Street pass, but was invited along with Labour’s new general secretary, Hollie Ridley, to give a presentation on party organisation and resourcing.
The Labour donor became embroiled in the row over ‘freebies’ last year after it emerged that he had been given a temporary Downing Street pass, prompting accusations of cronyism given he had donated to the party and the prime minister but did not hold an official government role.
Alli’s allies said that he had never asked for anything in return for his support, and had no ambitions of his own to hold political office. His appearance at political cabinet suggests that No 10 believes the row has blown over sufficiently for him to take on a more prominent role.
One cabinet minister said: “Waheed knows all the people so it makes sense for him to take on the fundraising role again.” Labour declared more donations than all other parties combined during the general election campaign, taking more than £9.5m in total.
Labour insiders said they were “grateful” for Alli’s continued support for party fundraising, with county elections in England just weeks away in which Reform UK is expected to perform well, at the expense of the Tories. The contests in Scotland and Wales next year are regarded internally as the first major electoral test for the prime minister.
Defending Alli’s role, party sources argued that there would be zero public appetite for the alternative to raising funds through donations from wealthy individuals, which would be for the taxpayer to fund the political system.
A Labour party spokesperson said:
The Labour party’s general secretary, Hollie Ridley, updated the political cabinet on party organisation and resourcing. Waheed Alli also spoke in his fundraising role.
The prime minister thanked them both for the work they were doing to ensure the party was in the best possible place for this year’s elections and beyond.
Benjamin Netanyahu urges Starmer to review ban on some arms sales to Israel following ceasefire
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, pressed Keir Starmer to review the ban on some arms export licences for his county in a call between the two leaders today.
The Israel government mentioned this in its readout of the call, although the UK govermnent issued a readout in which weapons export licences were not mentioned.
The UK government suspended 30 arms licences for Israel last year because of the risk the weapons could be used in breach of international humanitarian law. Although the move affected less then a tenth of all arms licences for Israel, the decision infuriated the Israeli government – not so much for its practical impact, but because of its reputational impact.
In a statement about the Starmer/Netanyahu call today, the Israeli government said:
Prime minister Netanyahu raised the issue of the weapons export licences to Israel that have been frozen in the UK.
Prime Minister Starmer said that an evaluation of the issue is being carried out.
The UK government readout did not mention this part of the conversation. It said the two leaders discussed the release of hostages, and the need for “the next stages of the ceasefire deal implemented in full”.
At the Downing Street lobby briefing this afternoon, the No 10 spokesperson could not say why the two accounts of the call were different.
On the frozen arms export licences, the spokesperson said:
We’ve been consistent in saying that we keep these things under review. Clearly, the maintenance of that ceasefire is a priority.
Downing Street could also not say whether the ceasefire may lead to a change in the government’s position on the suspended licences.
A public inquiry will help with the “healing process” for the community in Southport, the council leader has said. Marion Atkinson, leader of Sefton council, said:
The community is still hurting and shocked by what happened last summer but there is a feeling of relief that the guilty plea entered this week means that those affected don’t have to relive what happened in a public trial.
We welcome the government’s announcement of a public inquiry – it’s important that we understand the events that led to this tragedy and we hope this will help as part of the healing process for our community and that lessons can be learned.
Almost two-thirds of voters do not believe this government will be effective at improving their lives, even after four years, a new poll suggests.
According to Deltapoll, only 28% of people think the government will be effective at “improving the lives of people like you” after four years. Some 62% of people say it won’t be effective.
This is just one of several gloomy findings for the government in the poll, commissioned by the Institute for Government. The IfG is having its annual conferecen today and Hannah White, its director, has summed up the findings in a blog on the challenges facing the government. She says:
Only just over a fifth of people think that this government is being effective at improving their lives (22%) compared to 28% who now think the last Conservative government, which voters have just ejected, was effective. And, despite Labour’s efforts to highlight the long-term nature of their aspirations – the need for a decade of renewal – the public is only slightly more optimistic about the government being effective at improving their lives after four years (28%), while less than a quarter (23%) believe the size of economy will grow before the next election. Labour may have overperformed in landing its narrative about its difficult fiscal inheritance – and alongside anaemic growth figures and sticky inflation, the government seems to have convinced key economic actors that the outlook as well as the inheritance is poor.
Heathrow third runway plan labelled ‘desperate’ amid Labour divisions
A plan for Rachel Reeves to back a third runway at Heathrow and an expansion of Gatwick and Luton airports has been labelled “desperate”, as the chancellor faces opposition from within Labour, Helena Horton and Gwyn Topham report.
Here is the text of Yvette Cooper’s statement to MPs on the Southport killings inquiry.
Rupert Lowe (Reform) said the agencies that failed in this case had “blood on their hands”. And he called for a review of all the cases referred to Prevent that have been dropped.
Cooper said that David Anderson is going to review Prevent. (See 9.38am.) As independent Prevent commissioner, he will be able to review cases, she said.
Ben Obese-Jecty (Con) asked Cooper when she and the PM were told that the Southport killer was in possession of ricin and an al-Qaide training manual.
Cooper said the Home Office was told about the ricin in August, and about the manual in October. She said the official opposition was also briefed. But operational matters were for the police, she said.
And she said it was “really sad” that so many opposition MPs were asking about when minsters found out information when they knew its disclosure was covered by the Contempt of Court Act. She said they should instead by focusing on how the attack was allowed to happen.
Richard Tice, the Reform UK deputy leader, asked Cooper if she agreed with Jonathan Hall, the independent reviewer on terrorist legislation (see 1.50pm), on the need to revise sub judice rules, so that more information can be released ahead of trial in cases like this.
His question was notably more restrained than his Sky News comments earlier. (See 11.40am.)
Cooper said the Law Commission is reviewing the Contempt of Court Act. But, in the meantime, MPs should follow the law, she said.
Shockat Adam, the independent MP for Leicester South, asked Cooper in the Commons if she agreed that the “obsession with ideology” set out in the Shawcross review of the Prevent programme may have been a reason why the Southport killer was not treated as a threat.
Cooper said the assessment of risk should be the same, regardless of whether ideology is a factor. But the response to that risk might be different depending on whether the person is driven by ideology or not, she said.
Southport killer will be treated as terrorist in jail because he pleaded guilty to Terrorist Act offence, MPs told
The Labour MP Mike Tapp said that the Southport attacker was a terrorist, because he was charged under the Terrorism Act, but the attack was not labelled as as terrorist attack because of the lack of ideologicial motive. He said the legal framework should change.
Cooper agreed. She said powers should be in place to deal with “acts intended to terrorise”, even if there were no ideological component.
But she said the attacker would be treated as a terrorist offender in jail because he was charged under the Terrorism Act.
Updated
The Reform MP Lee Anderson said Cooper told the Commons that 162 people were referred to Prevent last year over an interest in school massacres.
Cooper said people were referred to Prevent before they have committed a crime. Prevent is meant to stop them going that far, she said. But she said her concern was powers were not strong enough to stop these people committing crimes. She said that is why she wanted to introduce youth diversion orders, to give the police more powers in these cases.
James Cleverly, the Tory former home secretary, said he was struck by the line in the Prevent review that “too much weight was placed on the absence of ideology without considering the vulnerabilities to radicalisation” in this case. (See 1.32pm.) He said the public cannot undersand the distinction between a terrorist and non-terrorist incident. He said it was time “to get rid of this entirely arbitrary distinction with motivation” and focus on risk and actions instead.
Cooper said Cleverly was making an important point. She said the law was set out in the Terrorism Act. She said motivation could be relevant, because it related to how the authorities try to deter people from terrorism. But she said Cleverly was right to say the threat could be just as high regardless of whether someone fitted the definition of terrorism.
David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, told Cooper that Keir Stamer should have been making this statement. He said Starmer was wrong to claim that lone attacks were a new development. David Amess was killed by a lone attacker, he said. And he said in that case the police called it a terrorist incident on the same day, even without ricin being a factor, three Prevent references, or the presence of an al-Qaida manual.
Cooper said it was for the police to decide whether to describe something as a terrorist incident.
And she said that the PM’s argument was that the definition of terrorism needed to be widened to cover cases like this, where there was a clear intention to terrorise, even if terrorist ideology was not a factor.
But she said she disagreed with Davis’s claim that this was not a new phenomenon. She said in recent years there has been a “big increase in youth violence and extremism on a really disturbing scale”.
Updated
Southport MP Patrick Hurley condemns public figures 'who should know better' for spreading 'lies' about attack
Patrick Hurley, the Labour MP for Southport, condemned people who were spreading “downlight lies” about the Southport attack last summer in a way that might have prejudiced a trial. He said:
The trial could have collapsed because of that speculation, because it wasn’t just speculation but also in some respect downright lies – and downright lies that were being circulated in the interests of gaining political gain for themselves, with the interests of justice a distant second.
Will the home secretary agree with me that the next stage of achieving justice for my community and the families impacted so desperately by the crime back in July, the public inquiry should also be allowed to undertake its work and make its recommendations free of the ridiculous nonsense and lies that we’ve seen from public figures who should know better circulating purely for their own interests?
Cooper says Tory calls for release of more information pre-trial 'substantial shift' from policy they adopted in government
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, responded to Cooper’s statement. He welcomed the announcement of an inquiry, but he said it should also “the government, police and CPS response to the murders, and especially the handling of public communications and the appalling riots that followed”.
And he questioned whether Keir Starmer was right in what he said this morning about how sub judice rules limited what could be said about the killer before the trial. He quoted what Jonathan Hall, the independent reviewer of terrorist legislation, said on this topic last year. Hall said:
I also think that the government has to be aware, and will be aware, that if there is an information gap, particularly in the mainstream media, then there are other voices, particularly in social media, who will try and fill it.
I would always say to the government – and do say to the government, as I say to the police – if there is information that you can give, put it in the public domain, and be really careful that you don’t fall into the trap of saying ‘we can only say zilch because there are criminal proceedings’.
Quite often, there’s a fair amount of information that can be put into the public domain, and I think I detect that the police are trying to do that. They realise now that just saying ‘there’s a charge, we can’t say any more’, is not going to cut it these days.
Philp said in this case the lack of information led to misinformation spreading, and this contributed to the riots. The release of more information would have helped, he said.
In response, Cooper said the government was constrained by the Contempt of Court Act. And she said Philp’s comment’s showed that “a substantial shift in position” from the Tories from the policy they adopted in government.
When the Tories were in power, they did not release prejudicial information about suspects ahead of trials, she said – for example, in the case of the person who killed the Tory MP David Amess.
And she said in the case of the person who murdered Tom Roberts, the last government did not reveal there had been a Prevent referral before the trial. In fact, it did not even say that after the trial. That only came out at the inquest, she said. And Cooper said that the minister who refused to answer questions she asked about whether the government knew the killer was wanted for the murder of two people in Serbia when he was allowed to enter the country was Robert Jenrick, the current shadow justice secretary.
Updated
Cooper says it was 'total disgrace' Southport killer could buy knife from Amazon aged 17
Cooper said, after the sentencing, the government will publish the findings of its review of what Prevent did in this case. She said the review found that the cases should not have been closed, and that Rudakubana should have been referred to Channel.
She went on:
[The review] concludes that too much weight was placed on the absence of ideology without considering the vulnerabilities to radicalisation, or taking account of whether he was obsessed with massacre or extreme violence, and the cumulative significance of those three repeat referrals was not properly considered.
Cooper said some changes had already been made to the Prevent programme.
And she said David Anderson was appointed before Christmas to review how it is operating.
His first task will be to conduct a thorough review of the Prevent history in this case, to identify what changes are needed to make sure serious cases are not missed …
I have also tasked my department to conduct an end to end review of Prevent thresholds, including on Islamist extremism, where referrals have previously been too low, and we are looking at cases where mental ill health or neurodivergence is a factor, and developing new arrangements with other agencies which may not meet the threshold for Channel counter extremism support, but where violent behavior urgently must be addressed.
Cooper also said Rudakubana was able to buy a knife on Amazon at the age of 17. That was “a total disgrace”, she says. She says the crime and policing bill would tighten the law covering this.
She said Keir Starmer argued this morning that the definition of terrorism needed to be widened to cover cases like this. She said the government’s independent reviewer on terrorist legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, will examine the law in this area in the light of these concerns.
And she ended her statement defending the contempt of court laws that limited what ministers could say about this case before it went to court.
Updated
Cooper says the prosecution will give more detail about the information accessed online by Rudakubana on Thursday.
But she says the government is this week contacting tech companies to ask them to remove the dangerous material he accessed.
Companies should not be profiting from hosting content that puts children’s lives at risk.
Cooper says inquiry will cover wider threat posed by youth violence and extremism
Cooper says the inquiry into the Southport attack will start as a non-statutory inquiry, “so that it can move quickly into action”. But statutory powers will be added later, as required, she says.
And she says, as well as considering what went wrong in this case, it will consider the wider threat posed by extremism.
I am also asking the inquiry to consider the wider challenge of rising youth violence and extremism, because I have been deeply disturbed at the number of cases involving teenagers drawn into extremism, serious violence and terrorism, including Islamist extremism, far-right extremism, mixed and confused ideology and obsession with violence and gore.
There has been a threefold increase in under-18s investigated for involvement in terrorism in just three years. 162 people were referred to Prevent last year for concerns relating to school massacres. The Met commissioner has warned about young men who are fixated on violence, grazing across extremist and terrorist content online.
Updated
Cooper says multiple agencies failed to identify 'terrible danger' posed by Southport killer
Cooper starts her statement by describing how horrific the attack was.
She says the details will be set out when Axel Rudakubana is sentenced on Thursday.
She says the government has been constrained in what it can say until now. She goes on:
But now we can start to lay out that background.
Multiple different agencies were in contact with Rudakubana and knew about his history of violence.
He was referred three times to Prevent between December 2019 and April 2021. When aged 13 and 14, between October 2019 and May 2022, Lancashire police responded to five points in his home address about his behaviour.
He was referred repeatedly to the multi-agency safeguarding hub. He had contact with child and adolescent mental health services.
He was convicted of a violent assault against another child at school and was referred to the youth offending team. He was excluded from one school. He had long periods of absence from another.
All those agencies had contact with him, yet between them they completely failed to identify the terrible danger that he posed.
How did he fall through so many gaps? It is just unbearable to think that something more could and should have been done. There are grave questions about how this network of agencies failed to identify and act on the risks. There were so many signs of how dangerous he had become yet, the action against him was far too weak. Families need the truth about why the system failed to tackle his violence for so many years.
Updated
Yvette Cooper makes statement to MPs about inquiry into Southport attack
Before Yvette Cooper delivers her statement on the Southport attack, Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, tells MPs that he knows it has been frustrating for them not being able to discuss the attack in detail because of the sub judice rule.
He says technically it should still apply, because the accused has not been sentenced, but because he has pleaded guilty it will not apply in these proceedings.
And he says he is going to review how the sub judice rule is applied in the Commons.
Jay complains about 'weaponisation' of demands for new inquiry into grooming gangs
At the home affairs committee Prof Alexis Jay, chair of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA), criticised the “weaponisation” of child sexual abuse recently.
Without referring to anyone by name, she told MPs:
I really felt very concerned at the weaponisation, if you like, of child sexual abuse that has gone on.
I declined to make – and I won’t make – any comment about the various actors involved in that – I wouldn’t give them the oxygen of publicity.
But just, it was such a relief (the news of a plan to implement recommendations), by whatever means – we wouldn’t have chosen it necessarily to have come about in this way – but we just need to get on with it.
Minister defends government's plan to shelve Michael Gove's anti-extremism policy
In the Commons Alex Norris, a minister in the housing department, is responding to the urgent question about definitions of extremist organisatons. He gives a very general answer about extremism policy.
David Simmonds, the shadow housing minister, says he is particularly interested in the definition of extremism used by the housing department. He says when Michael Gove was secretary of state, he announced new definitions. He says the Gove policy on non-engagement with certain groups has now been ditched.
Does the department still stick to the Gove definition of Islamism, he asks. And is there a definition of non-violent extremism.
In response, Norris says having a different government will mean a different approach to policy.
He says he accepts that the last government wanted to combat extremism. But he says Labour is doing the same thing in a different way.
He says, when Gove was secretary of state, he tried to assume a “lot of responsibility” over government policy dealing with extremism. He says the current government does not think that is appropriate. He says it is more appropriate for the Home Office to take the lead on policy on extremism, because it has more access to confidential information.
He also says that, although Gove announced an extremism definition, and named some groups that would be covered by this, there was no follow-up to this.
No 10 declines to criticise Trump's decision to pull out of Paris climate agreement, saying it won't give 'running commentary'
Downing Street has refused to criticised President Trump for his decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.
At the morning lobby briefing, asked about Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organisation, the PM’s spokersperson confrmed that the UK remained committed to both. But he would not go beyond that, saying he would not be offering a “running commentary” on the Trump administration.
Asked about Elon Musk giving a fascist-style salute at an inauguration event yesterday (or Roman-style salute, if you read the Telegraph), the spokesperson claimed he had not seen it.
At 12.30pm a minister from the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government will respond to an urgent question from David Simmonds, the shadow housing minister, on changes to the department’s “community engagement principles and definitions of extremist organisations”.
After that, at about 1.15pm, Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, will make a statement about the inquiry into the Southport attack.
Fiona Hamilton, chief reporter at the Times, says she is not convinced by Keir Starmer’s argument that lone attackers like the Southport killer represent a new threat.
Having covered multiple fatal and attempted terror attacks involving young men radicalised online, and with counter-terror police having warned of this issue for well over a decade, I’m pretty astounded that the PM has described Southport as “a new threat”.
Updated
In a post on Bluesky, David Anderson says that the terms of reference of his review of counter-terrorism strategy (see 9.38am) will be published in due course and that he won’t be giving interviews about it at this point.
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has also accused Starmer of being engaged in a cover up, claiming that what Starmer said about sub judice law preventing the release of prejudical information ahead of a potential trial (see 8.41am) was not correct.
Cover up Keir is convincing no one. pic.twitter.com/qHqIiS6Po8
— Nigel Farage MP (@Nigel_Farage) January 21, 2025
Farage does not explain why what Starmer was saying was untrue – probably for the very good reason that it wasn’t.
Dan Hodges, the Mail on Sunday columnist and not someone normally very supportive of Keir Starmer, has posted a message on social media criticising people like Farage who make this argument.
I get the conspiracy theorists peddling their crazy Southport lines. It’s their grift. But what’s unforgivable is politicians - and even some journalists - who know precisely what restrictions are imposed when major cases are pending suddenly pretend to be ignorant of them.
Updated
Reform UK is continuing to accuse Keir Starmer of engaging in a cover-up over the Southport attack. In an interview with Sky News, Richard Tice, the Reform UK deputy leader, claimed Starmer was “continuing to deliberately mislead the British people to continue suiting his own narrative”.
"The Prime Minister is continuing to deliberately mislead the British people to continue suiting his own narrative."
— Sky News (@SkyNews) January 21, 2025
Reform UK Deputy Leader Richard Tice reacts to Keir Starmer's news conference on the Southport inquiry.
https://t.co/YMDrrXmghV
📺 Sky 501 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/P9daYFPd09
Tice listed a series of other lone attacks that were described as terrorist incidents (overlooking the point that it was not the fact that Axel Rudakubana acted alone that led to him not being designated a terrorist, but the lack of terrorist motive). Asked what motive Starmer would have for covering this up, Tice claimed it was “political correctness”.
John O’Brien, secretary to the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, told the Commons home affairs committee that the biggest problem with the public inquiry system is the absence of any mechanism to ensure inquiry recommendations are implemented. He said:
The biggest failure of the whole system is the failure to have any independent oversight, in my view, of the recommendations, because we will shortly be having other inquiries reporting – Post Office, for example.
You’ll just have more and more recommendations requiring, in many cases, primary legislation going into a pot where the government agenda going forward already is taking up a large part of the parliamentary timetable.
We need to have an honest conversation with people about that. We need somebody to honestly say ‘we’re doing these ones first, and this is why’.
Prof Alexis Jay told the home affairs committee the Department for Education was one of the government departments opposed to her call for reporting child abuse to be made mandatory. She said:
Perhaps one example I could give you is mandatory reporting. The Department for Education were not keen on that.
It’s nothing necessarily to do with the intrinsic value of the recommendations, we understood it was a more pragmatic response that teachers wouldn’t stand for it.
We were told of this at the time by officials, that’s not the same as saying it’s a bad thing, it’s just saying it’s too difficult to do or we don’t want to get into a row with trade unions over this, etc etc, there’s a subtle difference there.
Jay says Home Office aide tried to silence her after she criticised government response to recommendations
Prof Alexis Jay also told the home affairs committee that, when Suella Braverman was home secretary, a Home Office special adviser tried to silence her when she complained publicly about the government’s response to the inquiry recommendations.
Jay said that in May 2023 she sent a letter to the Times describing the government’s official reponse to her report as “weak” and “apparently disingenuous”.
She went on:
I was on holiday and I had a call or I had a message that somebody from the Home Office wished to talk to me about how we could take the recommendations forward, and I thought that maybe this was a chance, this was in June.
What then happened, which I thought was improper, was a special adviser came on demanding to know why I had written to The Times complaining.
I was very clear that I was not accountable to this person as an independent chair for any actions at all and I did have ideas about how to take things forward if they were willing to listen.
So, that was not a happy experience either of engaging and trying to push for these recommendations which are much-needed to go forward.
Describing the tone of the conversation as “adversarial”, she said it “led to quite a long silence” from the Home Office until James Cleverly took over as home secretary in November 2023.
Tory government's response to child abuse inquiry recommendations 'awful', says its chair, Alexis Jay
Prof Alexis Jay, chair of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA), has said the response from the last Conservative government to her inquiry’s recommendations was “awful”.
Speaking to the Commons home affairs committee, Jay said the written response to the 20 recommendations – which followed a seven-year inquiry – had been “inconsequential, insubstantial, committed to nothing”.
As PA Media reports, Jay told MPs that while the initial response from home secretary Grant Shapps to the report when first published in October 2022 left her feeling “much encouraged”, that had been “the high point” of the experience with the Conservative government on the issue.
The government’s written response in May 2023 to the report under the next home secretary Suella Braverman was “awful”, Jay said. She said:
It was awful. I cannot tell you how it felt to constantly read the response, when we got the final printed version of the government’s response.
It was inconsequential, insubstantial, committed to nothing. And the wording that was used very often amongst the 20 recommendations was ‘we accept the need for’ whatever it was, but made no specific commitment to delivering it or any timescale whatsoever at that stage.
The reaction of all of us, but mostly victims and survivors, was such huge disappointment and anger at what they had pinned a great deal of hope and anticipation on, that the recommendations we made would be delivered.
This is particularly embarrassing for the Conservatives because the party has spent much of this month campaigning loudly for a new inquiry, into grooming gangs (a subject covered by IICSA).
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Starmer's Southport attack statement and Q&A - snap verdict
Prime ministers are often at their best when they are dealing with a subject they know from their old job and, from what Keir Starmer was saying at his press conference this morning, it sounds as if he spent part of last summer acting as if he were back at the CPS – getting regular updates from the police about their investigation, and having to judge what could and could not be said in the light of the need not to jeopardise a future court case. He is not given to excessive displays of emotion, but he did a good job at channelling the horror that people felt about the attacks, and he fully accepted that, by not stopping Axel Rudakubana, the state failed. There was nothing in what he said to suggest that the inquiry will be any sort of whitewash. Starmer sounded like someone happy for it to be as damning as it needs to be.
His main argument was also informed by his background as DPP (where he will have spent a lot of time dealing with decisions about when terrorism charges were and were not justified). And the argument was: that terrorism law, and strategy, needs to change to deal with people like Rudakubana who act like terrorists, because they are obsessed with extreme violence, but who don’t have terrorist motives, and aren’t under terrorist line management. (See 8.36am, 8.45am, 9.13am and 9.21am.) Again, on this he was compelling – talking seriously, in detail, about a subject to which he has clearly given much thought.
Starmer did not say in detail what he would do to address this, but he clearly wants an overhaul of counter-terrorism strategy, and he hinted terrorism law might need to change too. More intriguingly, he also implied he would like to see greater restrictions on what can be published on line – but in terms of material that might prejudice a court case (see 8.59am) and violent material generally (see 9.21am). This could lead to conflict with Donald Trump’s favourite US tech baron, Elon Musk, whose X social media platform was one of the worst offenders for prejudicial content after the Southport murders.
Starmer also sought to refute the claims that he was engaged in some sort of cover-up last summer. He explained the sub judice rules clearly and convincingly, and fair-minded viewers are likely to have been persuaded. The original cover-up claim was based on an entirely false allegation, circulating on social media just after the attack, that Rudakubana was an asylum seeker who had arrived on a small boat. There was no mention of this today and Starmer ducked invitations to attack the role played by far-right provocateurs (perhaps mindful of the way his reference two weeks ago to the way Musk launched a far-right bandwagon in support of a grooming gangs inquiry led to Tories claiming, wrongly, he was describing everyone in favour of an inquiry as far-right).
Starmer’s critics are now suggesting that, because he knew about the Prevent referrals, and Rudakubana’s interest in ricin, at a time when the public was being told this was not a terrorist attack, he was not being straight. But it is not a very compelling argument (what would Starmer have to gain from withholding this information?) and, although Starmer will not have silenced these attacks today, he has probably gone a long way to marginalising them.
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Starmer says David Anderson to review counter-terrorism strategy in light of threat posed by people like Southport killer
In his opening statement Keir Starmer announced that David Anderson KC, the crossbench peer and former independent reviewer of terrorist legislation, will carry out a review for the government on how its counter-terrorism strategy might need to change to respond to the threat posed by people like the Southport attacker.
In his statement, and press conference, Starmer talked repeatedly about the need for a new approach. (See 8.36am, 8.45am, 9.13am and 9.21am.)
And this is what he said in the opening statement.
If the law needs to change to recognise this new and dangerous threat, then we will change it – and quickly.
And we will also review our entire counter-extremist system to make sure we have what we need to defeat it.
Now, that work is already underway.
I have tasked Sir David Anderson KC, the new independent Prevent commissioner, to hold this system to account.
To shine a light into its darkest corners, so the British people can have confidence that action will follow words.
Starmer says Southport attack similar to US school shootings, and legal tools need to change to deal with these threats
The final question came from Jason Groves from the Daily Mail.
Q: It sounds like you think this was a terrorist attack. Is that right? And are we going to need further protections in schools?
Starmer repeated the point he made earlier (see 9.13am) about this being extreme violence intended to terrorise.
And my concern is that, because it is different to the sort of behavior we’ve associated with terrorism – al-Qaida, plenty of other examples – which tended to be more organized, in groups with a clear political ideology or motive, because it’s not that, it is a new and different threat, it doesn’t fit as well as it should within our framework, within our toolbox, and that is what we’ve got to change.
That is the urgent question that has to be addressed, and it’s one that has to be addressed before the conclusion of the inquiry.
Starmer said this was similar to the problem of school shootings in America.
I do think it’s new. You’ve seen versions of it in America, with some of the mass shootings in schools. It is not an isolated, ghastly example. It is, in my view, an example of a different kind of threat, and that is why I’m absolutely so determined that we will rise to that challenge and make sure our law, our response, is capable, appropriate, and can deal with that sort of threat.
And he said this would involve, not just looking at terrorism laws, but changing what can be accessed online.
We still have rules in place in this country about what you can see in a cinema, yet online you can access no end of material.
We have to ensure that we can rise to this new challenge and that is what I’m determined to do.
And that was the end of the press conference.
Starmer suggests terrorism definition should be widened to include people like Southport killer
Q: [From Harry Cole from the Sun] Last summer people were repeatedly told this was not terror-related. But then later it emerged the attack was being charged with a terrorist offence. And that information was put in the public domain without the trial collapsing. Did you know about the terror link at the time when people were saying the attack was not terror-related? That is what has upset people.
Starmer says there are two issues in that question.
The first is, on the question of terrorism and what constitutes terrorism, and my concern in this case is that we have clearly got an example of extreme violence, individualised violence, that we have to protect our children from and our citizens from.
And it is a new threat. It’s not what we would have usually thought of as terrorism when definitions were drawn up, when guidelines were put in place, when the framework was put in place.
And we have to recognise that here today, because I think most people would say, looking at the facts of this case, it’s clearly extreme violence, it’s clearly intended to terrorise and I completely accept and understand that, and that is my view.
Therefore, we have to make sure that the law and the framework for responding is appropriate to the new threat that we face. And we will make whatever changes are necessary in the law to deal with it.
This is somewhat similar to the point being made by Jonathan Hall KC, the government’s independent review of terrorist legislation, on the Today programme this morning. (See 8.32am.)
In response to Cole’s second point, Starmer says “of course I was kept up to date with the facts as they were emerging”, but that he had to abide by sub judice rules.
Just like you as a journalist, I had to observe the law of the land. It was not my personal decision to withhold this information, any more than it was a journalist’s personal decision not to print or write about it.
That is the law of the land that is in place for the reasons I’ve set out to protect the integrity of the system, to ensure that the victims and their families get the justice that they deserve.
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Q: [From Christopher Hope from GB News]. Do you now regret blaming the far right for the riots in the summer?
Starmer says “the responsibility for the violence lies with them that perpetrated it.”
He recalls visiting Southport and meeting police officers who dealt with the attack who then subsequently came under attack themselves from rioters.
I don’t think anybody can justify that, nor should they attempt to do so.
Starmer suggests inquiry will need to look at spread of prejudicial information online
Q: [From Paul Brand from ITV News.] I was in Southport last summer and there was a small window when more information could have been disclosed without prejudicing the case.
Starmer says he understands why journalists found it frustrating not being able to reveal information about the attacker.
There was information online not abiding by sub judice rule, he says. He goes on:
That has to be addressed and will be part of what we will be looking at, because that can’t be right.
But in relation to the central thrust of your question, the importance of the rule about not disclosing this information is to ensure that the trial can take place, and that where an individual is guilty, they’re held to account, as has now happened in this case. And that is why the law carefully restricts what can be said by anyone, not just me as prime minister, but anybody in these circumstances.
Starmer confirms he was updated about attacker's background last summer, but says law stopped that being disclosed
Q: [From Beth Rigby from Sky News]. The attacked had been referred to Prevent three times. If this had been known last summer, there might have been further disorder. Did you withhold information to stop that?
Starmer says responsibility for the riots lies with those who rioted.
He says the inquiry will look at everything.
He says he knew the facts as they were emerging. That is normal, he says.
But if the facts about the attacker had deen disclosed, a future trial would have collapsed.
That was not just his choice; it was the law of the land.
And it is why journalists could not disclose those facts either.
He says those rules are there to protect the process of justice. He goes on:
Yes, I was being kept updated, of course.
I did not disclose anything that would collapse the trial and defeat justice in this case, and I don’t think anybody could ever have looked the victims and their families in the eye if they had done that.
Starmer is now taking questions.
Asked if an inquiry is needed, he says it is. But the government will also get on with change in the meantime, he says.
Starmer says Southport attack inquiry must be 'line in sand', with 'nothing off the table'
Starmer says nothing will be off the table in the inquiry.
There are also questions about the accountability of the Whitehall and Westminster system – a system that is far too often driven by circling the institutional wagons, that does not react until justice is either hard won by campaigners, or until appalling tragedies like this [take place].
Time and again we see this pattern, and people are right to be angry about it. I’m angry about it.
Southport must be a line in the sand, but nothing will be off the table in this inquiry – nothing.
Starmer says the Southport attack also highlights the risks posed by the internet.
There are also bigger questions, questions such as how we protect our children from the tidal wave of violence freely available online.
Because you can’t tell me that the material this individual viewed before committing these murders should be accessible on mainstream social media platforms, but with just a few clicks, people can watch video after horrific video – videos that, in some cases, are never taken down,
That cannot be right.
Starmer says UK faces new threat from 'extreme violence perpetrated by loners', and law change may be needed
Starmer says this attack shows Britain faces a new threat. The law might need to change to deal with the danger of “extreme violence perpetrated by loners”.
It is now time for those questions, and the first of those is whether this was a terrorist attack.
The blunt truth here is that this case is a sign Britain now faces a new threat. Terrorism has changed.
In the past the predominant threat was highly organized groups with clear political intent, groups like al-Qaida.
That threat, of course, remains, but now alongside that, we also see acts of extreme violence perpetrated by loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom, accessing all manner of material online, desperate for notoriety, sometimes inspired by traditional terrorist groups, but fixated on that extreme violence, seemingly for its own sake.
Now it may well be that people like this are harder to spot, but we can’t shrug our shoulders and accept that. We can’t have a national security system that fails to tackle people for a danger to our values, our security, our children. We have to be ready to face every threat.
When I look through the details of this case, the extreme nature of the violence, the meticulous plan to attack young children in a place of joy and safety – violence clearly intended to terrorise – then I understand why people wonder what the word terrorism means.
And so if the law needs to change to recognise this new and dangerous threat, then we will change it and quickly, and we will also review our entire counter extremist system to make sure we have what we need to defeat it.
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Starmer says early release of information about attacker might have collapsed trial, which would have been unforgiveable
Starmer says he and other ministers would never have been forgiven if they had released information about the attack last summer that led to the collapse of a future trial.
Throughout this case, to this point, we have only been focused on justice.
If this trial had collapsed because I or anyone else had revealed crucial details while the police were investigating, while the case was being built, while we were awaiting a verdict, then the vile individual who committed these crimes would have walked away a free man – the prospect of justice destroyed for the victims and their families.
I would never do that, and nobody would ever forgive me if I had.
That is why the law of this country forbade me, or anyone else, from disclosing details sooner.
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Starmer says Southport attack illustrates failure by state that 'leaps off the page'
Starmer says the Southport attack illustrates failure by the state that “leaps off the page”.
The responsibility for this barbaric act lies, as it always does, with the vile individual who carried it out. But that is no comfort, and more importantly, it is no excuse.
And so as part of the inquiry launched by the home secretary yesterday, I will not let any institution of the state deflect from their failure – failure which in this case, frankly, leaps off the page.
For example, the perpetrator was referred to the Prevent programme on three separate occasions, in 2019 once, and in 2021 twice.
Yet on each of these occasions, a judgment was made that he did not meet the threshold for intervention – a judgment that was clearly wrong and which failed those families, and I acknowledge that here today.
Starmer says Southport attack must lead to 'fundamental change in how Britian protects citizens and children'
Starmer says in August he said knew would be a time for questions, but first justice had to be done.
He says first we must grieve for the bereaved families.
He goes on to say this moment must be “a line in the sand”.
The tragedy of the Southport killings must be a line in the sand for Britain.
We must make sure the names of those three young girls are not associated with the vile perpetrator, but instead with a fundamental change in how Britain protects its citizens and its children.
In pursuit of that, we must, of course, ask and answer difficult questions, questions that should be far-reaching, unburdened by cultural or institutional sensitivities and driven only by the pursuit of justice.
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Starmer says Southport attack 'devastating moment in our history'
Keir Starmer is speaking now.
He says the Southport attack was “a devastating moment in our history”.
All parents will have thought, ‘It could have been our children.’
Jonathan Hall KC, the government’s independent review of terrorist legislation, told the Today programme this morning the Souhtport attack inquiry should consider which authorities should deal with people obsessed with violence but not driven by ideology. He said:
Prevent will look at individuals who come across their radar, and then counter-terrorism police will be asking themselves, ‘is this the sort of person who we ought to help, given our terrorism remit?’
You’ll sometimes get cases where counter-terrorism police will say, ‘ultimately, we just don’t think we can say this guy’s on the trajectory to becoming a terrorist, and so he’s not for us’.
The question is, who do they then hand the risk over to? And it’s not as if you’ve got lots of other specialist police forces who are there to deal with ultra-violent obsessed people … it doesn’t seem to me a problem for neighbourhood policing, for example.
Hall said that while being obsessed with violence was not an offence in itself, the authorities could sometimes be “quite creative” in finding ways to deal with individuals of concern. He said:
What you’ll often find with people who are obsessed by violence is that they will commit some crimes along the way, so, for example, this man, Axel Rudakubana, in 2021 had this terrorist manual.
That was an offence. If that could have been detected earlier, then that would be a way of what the authorities in my world, in the terrorism world, called disruption.
It may be that he committed some other minor offence, and sometimes authorities are quite creative, once they’ve got their eye on someone and they can say ‘that’s someone we should be really worried about’, picking up other sorts of offences and then arresting and prosecuting in order, perhaps, to get them behind bars to protect the public.
Shadow home secretary suggests ministers should have released more information about Southport attacker last summer
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, has been giving interviews this morning, where he was restated Tory suggestions that ministers wrongly withheld information from the public about the Southport attacker, Axel Rudakubana, last summer. This is what Philp told Times Radio.
I think it’s just important the inquiry looks at all of this, gets to the truth both about what happened beforehand, but critically also the government’s response afterwards, and what they knew when and whether they should have put more information into the public domain.
It appears they withheld information about the perpetrator, potentially, on CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] advice.
William Shawcross [who conducted an inquiry into Prevent, the anti-radicalisation programme] has raised questions over that, saying that if you leave a void, then speculation fills it, and William Shawcross is obviously an expert lawyer, and also says there’s quite a lot you can say about these incidents afterwards.
But clearly in this case, the government, it appears, didn’t share information which they had in their possession.
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Starmer expected to hit back at 'cover-up' claims in press conference on public inquiry into Southport attack
Good morning. Keir Starmer is due to give a statement, and hold a press conference, within the next hour to discuss the government’s decision to hold a public inquiry into the Southport attack.
According to briefing in advance, Starmer is also keen to use the event this morning to refute claims that there was some sort of cover-up last summer because information about the attacker, Axel Rudakubana, was withheld from the public. Reform UK politicians were particularly vocal in amplifying these claims, and they were a factor that led to the rioting that broke out in some parts of northern England, with attacks on hotels housing asylum seekers. The police insisted there was a limit to what they could say about Rudakubana because the release of information about his violent background could prejudice a trial. Starmer is expected to repeat those points this morning, with reference to his background as a former head of the Crown Prosecution Service.
Yesterday Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, was sticking to his claim that there was a “cover-up”. The Conservatives are not going that far, but Kemi Badenoch has suggested ministers were wrongly holding back information from the public. On the Today programme this morning Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, suggested there was a case for loosening sub judice rules to allow the police to say a bit more about a suspect ahead of a trial.
Here is the agenda for the day.
8.30am: Keir Starmer holds a press conference about the decision to hold a public inquiry into the Southport attack.
Morning: Starmer chairs cabinet.
10am: Prof Alexis Jay, chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, gives evidence to the Commons home affairs committee about the implementation of the recommendations in her report published in 2022.
10.30am: Charlie Taylor, chief inspector of prisons, gives evidence to the Lords justice and home affairs committee.
After 12.30pm: Yvette Cooper, the home seceretary, is due to make a statement to MPs about the inquiry into the Southport killings.
3.30pm: Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, gives evidence to a joint session of the Lords’ environment and climate change committee and its science and technology committee.
5.10pm: Darren Jones, chief secretary to the Treasury, gives a speech to the Institute for Government’s annual conference.
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