Sir Keir Starmer yesterday admitted he did ‘withhold’ information about the terrorist links of Axel Rudakubana from the public – but denied he was part of a cover-up.
Speaking at an emergency press conference, he acknowledged he had been ‘kept up to date with the facts’ by police and prosecutors investigating the Southport murders.
But he said that revealing ‘crucial details’, such as the killer’s fascination with terrorism and massacres, could have prejudiced his trial and broken contempt of court laws.
‘It was not my personal decision to withhold this information. That is the law of the land and it is in place to protect the integrity of the system to ensure the victims and their families get the justice they deserve,’ he said.
Ministers have been accused of trying to ‘cover up’ the facts of the case last summer in a bid to calm public fury about the murder of the girls.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said the failure to be straight with the public created a vacuum in which dangerous misinformation took hold online which ‘fuelled’ last summer’s riots. Mr Philp said there could have been ‘more openness and transparency … without prejudicing the trial’.
Yesterday the Crime Reporters Association complained to the Director of Public Prosecutions about the Crown Prosecution Service seeking to ‘gag’ Merseyside Police and instructing officers to ‘stay silent’ about the case as riots broke out last summer.
The CRA said the CPS had sought to prevent officers revealing details about Rudakubana’s religion, which could have prevented false rumours turning into riots.
The PM told a press conference in Downing Street that people were right to ‘demand answers’ over ‘failings’ in the case of Axel Rudakubana
Yvette Cooper was grilled on why the government was not more transparent over the Axel Rudakubana case as she faced the Commons yesterday
Merseyside Police issued this mugshot of Axel Rudakubana, 18, of Banks, Lancashire, after he pleaded guilty at Liverpool Crown Court to all 16 counts he was charged with
Yvette Cooper insisted she was ‘keen’ to reveal terror links of the Southport killer today amid more claims of a ‘cover-up’.
The Home Secretary was grilled on why the government was not more transparent over the Axel Rudakubana case as she faced the Commons yesterday.
Her Tory shadow Chris Philp warned that stonewalling on the basis there was an investigation going on would no longer ‘cut it’ in an era of social media.
But Ms Cooper said there was no way ministers could ignore the advice they were receiving about contempt of court.
‘We have been keen to publish the information on Prevent referrals from the start, but throughout the advice to us has been clear,’ she said.
‘If we had ignored the advice that we were given about the case that (was) put towards us and about the information that the police and the CPS were working through in order to get justice, and if as a result a killer had walked free, no-one would ever have forgiven the Government or anyone else.’
The clashes in the House came after Keir Starmer told a press conference in Downing Street that people were right to ‘demand answers’ over ‘failings’.
However, he flatly rejected allegations of a ‘cover-up’ of terrorist links in the immediate aftermath of the atrocity in July – which was followed by a wave of rioting across the country.
He confirmed he knew about the details ‘as they were emerging’ – rather than in October when extra terror-related charges were brought – but could not risk the case collapsing and the ‘vile’ perpetrator walking away free.
‘That is why the law of this country forbade me or anybody else from disclosing details sooner,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t be forgiven if I had.’
Sir Keir said it was a ‘devastating moment in our history’ and must be a ‘line in the sand’ for Britain, warning that ‘terrorism has changed’ with the threat of ‘acts of extreme violence carried out by loners, misfits, young men in their bedrooms’.
He stressed that the probe should be ‘unburdened by cultural sensitivities’ and institutions will not be allowed to ‘deflect’ responsibility. ‘I’m angry about it… Nothing will be off the table in this inquiry,’ he said.
Sir Keir said he was under ‘no illusions’ that the lack of ‘trust’ will continue until the state is ‘honest’ about problems and ‘roots them out’.
But he insisted he had been inspired by the response of the Southport community, who rebuilt despite the tragedy being compounded by violence on the streets.
‘Responsibility for the disorder and violence lies with those who perpetrated it,’ he said.
The Tories and Reform said there were still ‘serious questions’ about the transparency of government information in the wake of the killings.
Laying out details of the public inquiry in the Commons, Yvette Cooper said it was ‘unbearable’ that action might have prevented the attack.
Challenged over the timing of information being released, Ms Cooper said: ‘It is not for the government to ignore the rules or the advice that we are given when justice for the families is at stake.’
Ms Cooper revealed that Southport killer Axel Rudakubana was ‘easily able to order a knife on Amazon’, when he was still aged 17 and had been convicted over violence.
She told MPs: ‘That’s a total disgrace and it must change. So, we will bring in stronger measures to tackle knife sales online in the Crime and Policing Bill this spring.’
Gregor Poynton, Labour MP for Livingston, asked what social media and search engine companies could do to stop young people accessing violent content.
The Home Secretary said: ‘The thing about social media companies is they have incredibly sophisticated technology and resources. These are the social media companies that know how to target every single one of us on things that we might be interested in, online, and to use their algorithms in all kinds of sophisticated ways.
‘They have the capability to do far more to identify this dangerous content and to take action on it. And I do believe that they should use those responsibilities rather than rowing back from content moderation, rather than reducing the responsible action they need to take.’
Sir Keir said it was a ‘devastating moment in our history’ and must be a ‘line in the sand’ for Britain, with ‘fundamental change’ in the way citizens are protected
Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood (left) and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper (right) were in No9 to watch the PM’s statement yesterday
Rudakubana pleaded guilty this week to murdering three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in July.
It has emerged he was referred three times to anti-extremism programme Prevent amid concerns over his fixation with violence.
But despite this and contact with other state agencies, the authorities failed to stop the attack which claimed the lives of Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven.
As well as the three murders, Rudakubana admitted 10 counts of attempted murder, possession of a knife, production of a biological toxin, ricin, and possession of information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing to commit acts of terrorism. The charges relating to the possession of ricin and the al Qaida training manual were not made public for three months after the teenager’s arrest.
In the Commons, Mr Philp said: ‘On October 29 Rudakubana was charged with possessing the ricin and the terror manual, that was then made public. So, if it can be made public in October, without risking prejudice of the murder trial, it follows that it could have been made public in August, without prejudicing that same trial.
‘Background facts on other cases over the years have been made public after arrest and before trial without prejudice, and the shields relating to two of those cases are in this chamber. So why did the Prime Minister not make public some of this background information in August when he knew it, when later disclosure of that information in October demonstrated such disclosure could be made without prejudice?’
Ms Cooper said: ‘The British way of justice means that information is presented to the court by the police and CPS with restrictions on what can be said beforehand so the jury does not get partial or prejudicial information in advance, to make sure that the trial is fair and justice is done.
‘Social media puts those long-established rules under strain, especially when partial or inaccurate information appears online, and the Law Commission is reviewing the contempt of court rules in that light.
‘But, let me be clear, where the police, Government and journalists are given clear advice from the CPS about contempt of court or about not publishing information in advance of a trial, if we did not respect that and a killer walked free, we would never be forgiven.’
Sir Keir said earlier: ‘No words come anywhere close to expressing the brutality and horror in this case.
‘Every parent in Britain will have had the same thought. It could have been anywhere, it could have been our children, but it was Southport. It was Bebe, six years old. Elsie, seven. Alice, nine.
‘Back in August, I said there will be a time for questions, but that first, justice had to be done, and that, above all, we must not interfere with the work of the police, the prosecutors and the delivery of that justice.
‘Well, yesterday, thankfully, a measure of justice was done, but it won’t bring those girls back to their families, and it won’t remove the trauma from the lives of those who were injured, their lives will never be the same.
‘So before I turn to the questions that must now be answered for the families and the nation, I first want to recognise their unimaginable grief, because I know the whole country grieves for them.
‘The tragedy of the Southport killings must be a line in the sand for Britain.’
Laying out the new danger the country faces, Sir Keir said: ‘In the past, the predominant threat was highly organised groups with clear political intent. Groups like Al-Qaeda.
‘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.’
Sir Keir said the threat was similar to some of the mass shootings in schools in the US.
‘This is extreme violence, clearly intended to terrorise, and my concern is that because it is different to the sort of behaviour we’ve associated with terrorism – al Qaida, there are plenty of other examples, which tended to be more organised in groups with a clear political ideology and motive – because it is not that, it is a new and different threat, it doesn’t fit as well as it should within our framework,’ he said.
‘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 and it’s why we’ve already done the learning from the Prevent mistakes.
‘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 that our law, our response, is capable, appropriate and can deal with that sort of threat.
‘But that is my concern, that is my thinking that this is a new threat – individualised extreme violence, obsessive, often following online viewing of material from all sorts of different sources.
‘It is not a one-off. It is something that we all need to understand and have a shared undertaking to deal with within our society.
‘That is not just the laws on terrorism, the framework on terrorism, it’s also the laws on what we can access online.
‘We still have rules in place in this country about what you can see at a cinema and 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.’
Directly addressing the cover-up claims, the PM said: ‘Yes I knew the details as they were emerging .
He said: ‘Yes of course I was kept up to date with the facts as they emerged. But just like you as a journalist I had to obey the law of the land.’
Asked if he viewed the killings as an act of terrorism – a label the police have not used – he insisted it was an act of ‘extreme violence clearly intended to terrorise’.
Announcing an inquiry, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the country needed ‘independent answers’ on Prevent and other agencies’ contact with the ‘extremely violent’ Rudakubana and ‘how he came to be so dangerous’.
Following Rudakubana’s guilty pleas, Sir Keir described the 18-year-old as ‘vile and sick’, and said there were ‘grave questions to answer’ on how the state ‘failed’ to protect the three girls.
The PM added: ‘Britain will rightly demand answers, and we will leave no stone unturned in that pursuit.’
As well as the three murders, Rudakubana admitted 10 counts of attempted murder, possession of a knife, production of a biological toxin, ricin, and possession of information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing to commit acts of terrorism.
The terrorism offence relates to a PDF file entitled Military Studies In The Jihad Against The Tyrants, The Al Qaeda Training Manual.
He is also understood to have possessed numerous other documents on violent subjects, including A Concise History Of Nazi Germany, The Myth Of The Remote Controlled Car Bomb and Amerindian Torture And Cultural Violence.
Sources said the material discovered showed an ‘obsession with extreme violence’ but there was no evidence he ascribed to any political or religious ideology or was ‘fighting for a cause’.
A car burns after being overturned during a protest in Middlesbrough on August 4, 2024
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage insisted he was ‘right all along’ when he claimed in the summer that information had been withheld from the public.
But Ms Cooper said the information about Rudakubana’s background could not be made public earlier ‘to avoid jeopardising the legal proceedings or prejudicing the possible jury trial, in line with the normal rules of the British justice system’.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said there were many questions that ‘remain unanswered about what went wrong’.
Welcoming the announcement of a public inquiry, he said: ‘We also need to know who in Government knew what and when, as well as why the authorities may have withheld some information from the public.’
Mr Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘There is quite a lot you can put into the public domain without prejudicing the judicial proceedings.
‘In previous incidents, we’ve seen more information being put out and Jonathan Hall drew attention to the risks of not putting out information, it undermines trust in justice, but it also creates a void.
‘So, I think these are legitimate questions. I think it’s important the inquiry looks at those questions as well as what happened before this appalling incident.’
Asked whether he was confident in the Prevent counter-terrorism programme, he told Times Radio: ‘The Prevent programme is a long-running programme. It deals with about 7,000 referrals per year.
‘There was quite a comprehensive review of Prevent by William Shawcross that was published in February of last year … So, one question I’ll be asking the Government is whether they plan to implement the recommendations in the Shawcross report.
Police officers at Rudakubana’s home on Old School Close in Banks, Lancashire, last October
At 11 years old, Rudakubana appeared dressed as Doctor Who in a television advert for BBC Children In Need, after being recruited through a casting agency, it is understood
‘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 advice.
‘William Shawcross 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.’
