Keir Starmer is holding a press conference in Downing Street to make an emergency statement about the Southport stabbings.
The Prime Minister said the “barbaric” murder of three girls last summer was a “devastating moment” in our history. He is addressing the nation to answer “grave questions” about how the children were failed by the state.
He has paid tribute to Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9, Bebe King, 6, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, who were killed in a frenzied attack on a Taylor Swift-themed class on July 29. He spoke of the “unimaginable grief” of their families and said they are owed answers. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood watched the PM’s speech from the front row in Downing Street.
Vile killer Axel Rudakubana yesterday pleaded guilty to murdering the three young girls. Following his guilty plea, and the lifting of legal restrictions, it emerged Rudakubana had been referred to the government’s anti-radicalisation programme, Prevent, on three occasions between December 2019 and April 2021 aged 13 and 14. He was first referred to Prevent when he was just 13 years old, after he reportedly viewed material relating to US school shootings.
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Anadolu via Getty Images)
He had also been in contact with a number of other agencies, including the police, the courts, the Youth Justice system, social services and mental health services. Yet none of the services involved identified the dangerous risk he posed to others.
On Monday Mr Starmer admitted “there are grave questions to answer as to how the state failed in its ultimate duty to protect these young girls”. The PM added: “Britain will rightly demand answers, and we will leave no stone unturned in that pursuit.”
And Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced a public inquiry into the Southport stabbings to examine how state agencies “failed” the victims. She said the probe was to “get to the truth about what happened and what needs to change”.
Jonathan Hall KC, the government’s independent reviewer on terrorism laws, on Tuesday morning said there were questions over which authorities should deal with people obsessed with violence but not driven by ideology. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “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.”
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