A public inquiry into Southport child-killer Axel Rudakubana has been announced by the Home Secretary.
The Prime Minster said “nothing will be off the table” in the inquiry into the killings of Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine; Bebe King, six; and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven.
At a press conference in Downing Street, the Prime Minister said: “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.”
Failures ‘leap off the page’
The Prime Minister said failures in the case “leap off the page”.
He said: “We must make sure the names of those three young girls are not associated with the vile perpetrator but instead with a fundamental change in how Britain protects its citizens and its children.
“In pursuit of that, we must, of course, ask and answer difficult questions, questions that should be far-reaching, unburdened by cultural or institutional sensitivities and driven only by the pursuit of justice. That is what we owe the families.
“The responsibility for this barbaric act lies, as it always does, with the vile individual who carried it out. But that is no comfort, and more importantly, it is no excuse.
“And so as part of the inquiry launched by the Home Secretary yesterday, I will not let any institution of the state deflect from their failure, failure, which in this case, frankly leaps off the page.
“For example, the perpetrator was referred to the Prevent programme on three separate occasions – in 2019 once and in 2021 twice. Yet on each of these occasions, a judgment was made that he did not meet the threshold for intervention, a judgment that was clearly wrong and which failed those families. And I acknowledge that here today.”
What has been announced for Southport?
The Home Secretary announced on Monday that there will be a public inquiry into how Rudakubana “came to be so dangerous” and why government anti-extremism scheme Prevent “failed to identify the terrible risk” he posed to others.
Yvette Cooper said the case was against a backdrop over a series of years “in which growing numbers of teenagers have been referred to Prevent, investigated by counter-terror police, or referred to other agencies amid concerns around serious violence and extremism”.
The Home Secretary said “we need to face up to why this has been happening and what needs to change”.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said there were “grave questions” to answer about how the state failed the Southport murder victims.
What contact did Rudakubana have with the authorities?
The Home Secretary confirmed the 18-year-old had “contact with a range of different state agencies throughout his teenage years”.
Rudakubana had been referred to Prevent three times before the murders due to concerns about his obsession with violence.
He was first referred to Prevent when he was just 13 years old, after he reportedly viewed material relating to US school shootings.
In her statement, Ms Cooper said: “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.”
What is a public inquiry?
Public inquiries are major investigations that have special powers to summon witnesses to give evidence on oath and to compel the production of documents.
A statutory public inquiry is usually set up and funded by the government but is conducted as an independent body to investigate matters of public concern.
Inquiries have addressed topics as wide-ranging as the UK’s response to Covid, the Grenfell Tower fire, and the Post Office Horizon IT scandal.
Inquiries can last for years, with millions of pounds often spent on retaining legal counsel, office space and a secretariat.
What scope do they have?
Statutory public inquiries operate in line with the provisions of the Inquiries Act 2005 and the Inquiry Rules 2006.
Each public inquiry begins when its terms of reference are set out.
These are specific instructions outlining the questions the inquiry should address, the types of information and feedback that the Government wants, and “often a sense of when the inquiry should issue its report”, according to the Institute for Government.
An inquiry will usually make recommendations to try to prevent what has gone wrong from happening again.
It is for the government to decide whether to accept an inquiry’s recommendations and how to take them forward.
