Prime Minister’s Questions today was a weighty affair, with Keir Starmer focusing on the murder of Sarah Everard following the Angiolini Report into the failings of the police that allowed Wayne Couzens to continue in his role and to abduct his victim. The Labour leader asked how it could be the case that there was ‘nothing to stop another Couzens operating in plain sight’ three years on from Everard’s death. Sunak replied that the government had taken action ‘quickly’ to ‘strengthen police vetting, strengthen the rules for rooting out officers who are not there to serve and conducted the largest-ever screening of all serving officers and staff’. He added that ‘we will thoroughly consider all of the report’s recommendations’.

Starmer continued to push on this, saying his party had been arguing for a mandatory national vetting standard, so why wasn’t that already in place. Sunak didn’t answer that initially, so the Labour leader came back again, snapping ‘I’m obviously very familiar with codes in criminal justice systems’ – which prompted a number of ‘ooohs’ from the Tory benches. He added that there was a ‘world of difference between a code and binding mandatory standards which don’t have legal effect’. He asked for an assurance from the Prime Minister that there would be an immediate review of all indecent exposure allegations against serving officers in order to identify, investigate and remove those officers from service. Sunak’s response was: ‘Indecent exposure, just like any other kind of sexually motivated crime, is abhorrent. We expect police chiefs to take it extremely seriously. And we fully expect police chiefs to suspend an officers charged with any kind of sexually motivated crime’. Starmer replied that he thought the recommendation should be implemented urgently ‘because every day that goes past when it isn’t implemented carries risk for victims in these cases’.

QOSHE - Starmer accuses Sunak of inaction post-Everard murder - Isabel Hardman
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Starmer accuses Sunak of inaction post-Everard murder

5 1
06.03.2024

Prime Minister’s Questions today was a weighty affair, with Keir Starmer focusing on the murder of Sarah Everard following the Angiolini Report into the failings of the police that allowed Wayne Couzens to continue in his role and to abduct his victim. The Labour leader asked how it could be the case that there was ‘nothing to stop another Couzens operating in plain sight’ three years on from Everard’s death. Sunak replied that the government had taken action ‘quickly’ to........

© The Spectator


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