Yvette Cooper has this evening announced that the government will be setting up a public inquiry looking for ‘answers’ on how the Southport attack could have taken place, along with reforms to the Prevent programme. This comes after Axel Rudakubana changed his plea to guilty in his trial for murder and attempted murder. In fact, Cooper has revealed that the government had already commissioned work investigating the failures that allowed the attacker to become so dangerous, but had been unable to publicise it due to the active court proceedings. The Home Secretary’s statement followed Keir Starmer’s promise to ‘leave no stone unturned’ in the pursuit of answers, and includes a list of what the government is now trying to find out, and how.
The reason Starmer made that promise, and the reason Cooper explained in her statement that the government had been ‘constrained in what we were able to say’ during the prosecution, is that an element in the violent unrest over the summer was an accusation that the government was in some way covering up what it knew about the attacker. Getting ahead of that accusation taking off again is clearly a matter of some urgency.
But the fact remains that the attack happened, and Rudakubana was known to a number of agencies. Cooper described that in her statement, saying: ‘The perpetrator was in contact with a range of different state agencies throughout his teenage years. He was referred three times to the Prevent programme between December 2019 and April 2021 aged 13 and 14. He also had contact with the police, the courts, the Youth Justice system, social services and mental health services. Yet between them, those agencies failed to identify the terrible risk and danger to others that he posed.’ She added that there had been an urgent Prevent Learning Review, with the Home Office due to publish further details and reforms to Prevent later in the week. Cooper said ‘more independent answers’ were needed, ‘including through a public inquiry that can get to the truth about what happened and what needs to change’. The inauguration of Donald Trump has dominated today’s news agenda, but how the government examines serious failings within its own agencies should lead the Westminster agenda for a good while to come.
Danny Shaw, former adviser to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, speaks to Katy Balls and James Heale about the case on the latest Coffee House Shots podcast:
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