Parliament has a right to know the truth about Southport
As an elected MP, it is my duty to act in the interests of my constituents. That includes asking difficult questions in order to get to the truth about national issues. When it comes to the Southport attack, however, it has been extremely difficult to do this job. My faith in the ability of lawmakers to scrutinise responsibly has been badly shaken, as a near-blanket ban on discussing the case has been issued.
The Starmer Government has been very effective in using fear to shut down public debate that it considers inconvenient. You only need to think back to the almost unprecedented way the state used rapid and harsh sentencing for those involved in the summer riots – including those who wrote unpleasant things online. The overriding view was that the far-Right, whoever they may be, must be crushed.
But the day after the tragic killings, I could see that certain key information about this atrocity had fallen into a vacuum. This led to unhelpful online speculation. It struck me as vital for the public to know more, not least about the suspect.
That day, I recorded a short video. In it, I expressed my outrage at the attacks and I noted that Sir Keir Starmer was heckled when he visited Southport.
I then pointed out: “It shows you how unhappy the public are with the state of law and order in our country. I have to say there are one or two questions. Was this guy being monitored by the security services? Some reports say he was, others are less sure.
The police say it’s a non-terror incident, just as they said the stabbing of an Army Lieutenant Colonel in uniform on the streets of Kent the other day was a non-terror incident. I just wonder whether the truth is being withheld from us. I don’t know the answer to that, but I think it is a fair and legitimate question.”
My comments led to wholesale condemnation. I can only conclude that this was chiefly for political reasons. Everybody from the Deputy Prime Minister to Tory leadership candidates linked me to the riots. National newspaper editorials and media commentators also claimed that I was to blame.
Supposedly, I had incited the British public. YouGov polling then found that 47 per cent of those asked believed that I held some level of responsibility for the unrest. It’s extremely difficult for me not to regard that alarming statistic as the end result of what amounted to a concerted political smear.
I wondered at the time: what were the media and political class so scared of? Although the name of the accused has been published and, as of this week, although we know that he was in court on new charges of possessing terrorist material and producing the toxin ricin, there is very little that anybody is allowed to say on this issue.
I understand the importance of not prejudicing a future trial, but in the current climate, there appears to be no room to separate the ongoing legal process from the questions I posed over the summer. This is deeply troubling.
In fact, on 15 September, Jonathan Hall KC, the Government’s Terrorism Tsar, and Lord Carlile, a crossbench peer and former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, essentially backed up the comments that I had made. Speaking at a conference organised by the Counter Extremism Group think tank, Hall warned: “One of the problems and the consequences of the Southport attack was that there was an information gap, a vacuum, which was filled with false speculation”.
He added: “I personally think that more information could have been put out safely without comprising potential criminal proceedings” Carlile echoed these words, saying: “I think we should get out more information if we possibly can. We have learned from these events that when somebody is arrested, and there was a potential issue like this arising, the police probably need to tell the media who has been arrested and what their background is.”
My reading of the situation is that the bar as to what now counts as contempt of court has been lowered significantly. It used to be the case that somebody would have to say or do something that would seriously jeopardise a legal case for them to be in contempt. Now, the Contempt of Court Act appears to have been deployed as a tool of suppression.
Despite ricin being found in the accused’s home days after the Southport attack, and despite the claim that he downloaded terrorist material, these allegations are not being linked to the triple child murder charge he faces, or the ten charges of attempted murder for the alleged attacks on eight other children and two adults.
The chief constable of Merseyside police, Serena Kennedy, has said no evidence pointing to a terrorist motive has been discovered. Yet many people will wonder how this conclusion has been reached. How could anybody know what the motive for the killings was?
This week, I asked the Home Secretary two written questions on this subject. The first asked if the suspect had ever been referred to the anti-terrorist Prevent programme; the second asked when she became aware of the discovery of ricin in the accused’s home. The questions will not be answered.
With almost unbelievable timing, my colleague and Deputy Leader of Reform UK, Richard Tice, was lucky in the ballot and was able to ask Keir Starmer a question at PMQs on Wednesday. That morning, he received three panicked emails from the Commons authorities asking what the content of his question might be.
Then, an hour before PMQs began, he received a telephone call in which he was told not to ask anything about the man accused of the Southport attacks. This point was reinforced strenuously by the Speaker in the Commons just before PMQs began. Parliamentary Privilege was effectively withdrawn.
For now, therefore, it seems that nobody is allowed to ask in the proper forum when the Government first knew that the accused was to face the ricin and terror material charges.
Likewise, nobody can know whether this man was known to the authorities in any way. Do we really want to live in a society where such crucial information is kept from the public? Who decided these details should remain secret?
I believe this apparent suppression damages democracy. It certainly shreds public trust, leading me to ask myself: what is the point of being a public representative if even we are not allowed to ask what would previously have been considered reasonable questions? It is impossible to infer anything other than that the apparatus of state is being used to manage this situation.
A criminal trial is planned for January. I hope that the full truth will come out then. I know a lot more than I’ve been prepared to say already, but I suppose two-tier Keir and his heavy-handed justice system have caused us all to think twice. But the wider point is that our society is in a serious predicament.
If Keir Starmer really thinks that by kicking the can down the road he will emerge from this situation with an enhanced reputation, he is in for a huge shock.