‘Nothing off the table’ in Southport attack inquiry, says Starmer as he hits back at cover-up claims – UK politics live

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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 to deal with it

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.

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.

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 said in August he said therew would be a time for questions, but first justice had to be done. But first justice had to be served.

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.

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.

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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