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.
Key events
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”.
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, 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.
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.
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.”
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
— Sky News (@SkyNews) January 21, 2025
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.
