Government’s response to Couzens report ‘too little, too late’, says Labour – UK politics live

Humza Yousaf says he’s ‘very open’ to calls for inquiry into police failings in Iain Packer case

Libby Brooks

FMQs at Holyrood was dominated by calls across the chamber for a judge-led public inquiry into manifold police failings in the Ian Packers case.

Packers was jailed for 36 years yesterday after he was found guilty of murdering Emma Caldwell in 2005 and a catalogue of sexual violence against 22 other women.

Both Conservative leader Douglas Ross, who described the case as “one of Scotland’s worst policing scandals”, and Scottish Labour’s Anas Sarwar used their questions to demand an inquiry.

Both also stressed that such an inquiry should be led by a judge from outside Scotland.

Humza Yousaf, the first minister, agreed there was a “strong argument” for this and said he was “very open” to calls for an inquiry.

He will meet Caldwell’s mother Margaret in the coming days.

Sarwar also highlighted “the wider culture within Scottish institutions where they fight to protect their reputations rather than protect victims” – noting recent reports into racism and misogyny in Police Scotland.

Ross also raised the “utterly shocking” surveillance of journalists and a police whistleblower after the Sunday Mail named Packer as the likely killer in 2015.

The Home Office is due to publish 13 of the 15 outstanding reports submitted by sacked borders and immigration watchdog David Neal on this afternoon, PA News reports. During his tenure, Neal had repeatedly raised concerns that the department was too slow to publish his reports.

UPDATE: Lizzie Dearden from has a list of the reports we are expecting.

No 10 claims PM ‘reflecting views of public’ when he said ‘mob rule replacing democratic rule’

Peter Walker

Downing Street has defended Rishi Sunak’s claim that “there is a growing consensus that mob rule is replacing democratic rule” (see 9.25am), saying he was “responding to and reflecting the views of members of the public”.

At the morning lobby briefing, asked what evidence there was about a public consensus on mob rule, the PM’s spokesperson slightly avoided the question, pointing to incidents such as MPs being threatened and meetings being disrupted.

Pressed on whether the public believed these amounted to mob rule, he said such events were intimidating politicians and “impacting the way in which the democratic process is being carried out”.

Asked if a country being under mob rule meant Sunak believed there had been a failure of political leadership, the spokesperson replied: “I don’t think he would accept that characterisation.”

He also declined to blame the policy, saying they had “done an excellent job and are working tirelessly to keep the public safe”.

In the Commons Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, is making a statement about the security of MPs.

He says the house brings the nation together. MPs come from all parts of the UK to debate, and to decide laws. All voices should be represented, he says.

Democracy only works if people can choose who they want, and if those MPs can say what they think.

But in recent days those principles have wavered. He says MPs have told him they feel they have to vote a certain way because “a threatening few” have put them in fear for their safety, and the safety of their families. The Commons has even been pressured into changing the way it debates, he says, referring to the way the speaker ignored procedural rules in the Gaza debate last week.

Tugendhat says the demontrators said last week they wanted parliament to lock its doors. That was a threat to democratic values, he says.

He says incidents of antisemitism are on the rise.

All voices should be heard, he says. And MPs should be able to serve without fear. That is why the government has committed £31m to protect them.

Tugendhat says the PM held a meeting with senior police officers. The police have agreed a new defending democracy protocol, he says.

Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons, has commended Lee Anderson for a lengthy newspaper article he has written in which he suggested that his use of the word “Islamist” was problematic.

Anderson did not apologise in his Daily Express article for what he said last week about Sadiq Khan, but he went further than he has done before in accepting that his use of language caused offence. Mordaunt said this was the closest he might get to an apology.

In a GB News interview last week Anderson said:

I don’t actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they’ve got control of [Sadiq] Khan, and they’ve got control of London.

After Anderson refused to apologise, he was suspended from the Conservative party. Asked to explain what was wrong with Anderson’s remark, No 10 said on Tuesday that it was wrong to conflate all Muslims with Islamist extremism.

In his Express article Anderson said:

The point I was trying to make last week was that the mayor of London has lost control of our capital city as the extremists who hide under the Islam banner take over our streets in their attempt to change the course of our democracy.

These extremists are often labelled as Islamists which, on reflection, is totally unfair on Muslims in general and we must make sure that our language reflects this.

These extremists are not welcomed by our Muslim friends as they cast a dark shadow on the millions of decent Muslims in our country who have embraced our way of life.

To be clear when I call out these extremists, I am calling out a minute percentage of a group of people and because of this I have been called racist and Islamophobic …

I do not believe the mayor is an Islamist, I just think he does not care about our beautiful city and people in high places should have more sense than to make these outrageous claims that I am racist or Islamophobic.

During business questions Lucy Powell, the shadow leader of the Commons, asked Mordaunt if she thought Anderson’s original comments were racist or Islamophobic. Mordaunt replied:

I know that she will want to hear one word from the honourable member for Ashfield, but yesterday he did provide us with 1,000.

I read his piece in the Express and it is some distance from the view that he expressed in that interview, and I think that what he wrote in the Express is his genuine view.

Those thousand words, we might have to accept, are the closest we will get to a one-word apology that others seek.

Referring to suggestions that Anderons may join Reform UK, Mordaunt said:

I would rather ask [Anderson], whatever political hue he ends up being, to consider all the good he could do in these particular times with the trust and following that he built up.

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, was responding to Cleverly and she told him that his response was “too weak”, that the government was doing “too little, too late” and that the lack of urgency shown by the Home Office was “unfathomable”

She said she was “sick and tired of nothing changing”. People should not have to wait any longer, she said.

She said Labour wanted the government to introduce a mandatory framework for police vetting.

In response to Cleverly’s announcement that with certain offences, officers would be automatically suspended when charged (see 12.07pm), she said that was not enough. With these offences, officers should be suspended earlier.

She said she could not see why the government was not committing today to accepting the Angiolini recommendations. As an example, she cited recommendation six – that all allegations about indecent exposure or other sexual offences against serving officers – should be now be reviewed.

The first three recommendations cover indent exposure, and Cooper said the Home Office should be able to accept them immediately too.

She said the murder of Sarah Everard should have been a watershed. But it wasn’t, she suggested.

And she urged Cleverly to accept Labour’s proposal for a “Raneem’s law”.

In the Commons James Cleverly, the home secretary, is now making a statement about the report by Dame Elish Angiolini into the murder of Sarah Everard by Wayne Couzens.

The report was published earlier this morning. Vikram Dodd has a report on what it says here.

And the full report is here.

The report only covers part one of the inquiry, and it focuses on how Couzens was ablet to become and remain a police officer, and how red flags that should have shown how dangerous he was were missed.

Cleverly says:

Tragically the report identifies that Couzens was completely unsuitable to serve as a police officer and, worse still, there were multiple occasions where this should, could have been recognised.

Lady Elish found significant and repeated problems in recruitment and vetting throughout Couzens’ career, including overlooking his chaotic financial situation. This meant he was able to serve in a range of privileged roles, including as a firearms officer.

It is appalling that reports of indecent exposure by Couzens were not taken sufficiently seriously by the police and that officers were not adequately trained, equipped or motivated to properly investigate those allegations.

Had fuller inquiries been made in 2015 and 2020, Couzens could, perhaps probably would, have been removed from policing. Evidence of his preference for extreme and violent pornography and alleged sexual offending date back nearly 20 years prior to Sarah Everard’s murder.

And the inquiry found Couzens was adept at hiding his grossly offensive behaviour from most of his colleagues, but that he shared his vile and misogynistic views on a WhatsApp group. The other members of that group are no longer serving officers after a range of disciplinary processes.

Cleverly says the report makes 16 recommendations. The government will carefully consider them and respond in due course. The response will be prompt, he says.

But he says the government has already taken steps to improve vetting for police officers. He says funding has been provided to ensure that police get intelligence more quickly about potential problems with officers, the rules have been changed to ensure officers can be dismissed more easily, and police chiefs have been put back in charge of chairing misconduct panels.

He says there will be a new presumption that officers found to have committed gross misconduct will be sacked.

And he says he can announce today that for certain offences there will be an automatic suspension when people are charged.

He says the Everard murder started a national conversation about violence towards women and girls. He says they routinely feel unsafe. That is unacceptable, and change is needed, he says.

He says this has been made a priority – meaning it should be as important for the police as terrorism.

The Home Office has released a raft of data relating to asylum, immigration and small boats. The Labour party has been going through the figures and it claims the picture they present is damning.

Here are some of the findings it is highlighting.

• Only 2% of people who have arrived in the UK in small boats since 2018 have been returned, the figures show. That amounts to 2,580 people being returned, of whom 1,889 were returned last year.

• Almost 130,000 people are waiting for an asylum decision, the figures show. (See 10.18am.) Here is the table with the table with the figures.

• There are 45,768 asylum seekers in hotel accommodation, the figures show. Labour says Rishi Sunak is committed to ending the use of hotel accommodation. Here is the table with these figures.

• Almost 20,000 asylum seekers seem to have disappeared into the system, because their applications are marked as “implicitly withdrawn”, the figures suggest.

• More than 600,000 work visas were issued in 2023, the figures show. Labour says this is because of skill shortages in the UK.

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said:

These damning statistics show how Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives have lost control of our immigration system and our border security – and have no plan to turn it around.

A year after promising to end their use, almost 46,000 people are still stuck in hotels. The Tories’ failure to clear the backlog and return small boats arrivals has blown a £4bn hole in the Home Office budget, paid at taxpayers’ expense. Meanwhile, work visas are soaring due to their failure to train people here in the UK.