Emily Spurrell: Obviously today has been a really difficult day for the families. You know, they’ve been giving their evidence, their statements in court. And so my hearts remain with them in terms of what they are now moving on to in terms of that next stage of the recovery. But them and I know the public and many others in our community, they have questions and they want to have answers to those questions around what interaction, you know, he had with other agencies. Is there anything that could have been done differently to prevent this? Is the system working as it should do?
And so I welcome the inquiry because I think hopefully it will give us those answers to those questions that we need in an independent way. But obviously, crucially, as you point out, it’s not just about getting the answers, it’s actually working out what can be done differently. So any actions and recommendations, making sure that they’re actually delivered. And that’s what I will aim to do, where that will be relevant.
Alex Thomson: Yes, you mentioned all that. But what people will be wondering tonight, for instance, is why do we need a public inquiry to tell us that accessing extremely violent material on the open internet, not the dark web, as this man did, as many others no doubt are doing tonight, that’s a problem. Why is that allowed? We don’t need a public inquiry to answer that, do we?
Emily Spurrell: The public inquiry, my understanding is it’s going to be very focussed on the different agencies, the interaction that they had with Rudakubana. You’re absolutely right. We know there is material online that is being viewed by vulnerable people and that is absolutely, you know, fuelling some of this violence and this radicalisation that we’re seeing.
We have already heard commitments from the prime minister and the home secretary to take action on that, you know, very quickly. They are not waiting for the inquiry to say we need to see stronger, more robust, action from our social media companies. And obviously the inquiry will then be the next phase of that in terms of the wider agency involvement.
Alex Thomson: We also, again, do we not need as of the near future to see much greater communication between the multiple agencies involved in this case. Once again, familiar tale, lots of agencies working hard, but they were in silos. The communication was lamentable between them. That’s the problem. We can fix that now to some degree, can’t we?
Emily Spurrell: We know obviously communication, you know, engagement between different agencies is obviously crucial when you’re dealing with individuals like this, with vulnerable people. I don’t yet have the detail in terms of whether there was a breakdown in communication. I don’t yet know where things could have been done better in that regard. And we need that independent inquiry to look at this in a completely independent way and get us some of those answers.
Alex Thomson: Should the police, looking back on it, have had perhaps more powers, exceptional powers, to be able to put out more material to the public to quench the riots which took place immediately after, which were based on nonsense from the internet? They could have said more. They wanted to say more. They couldn’t because of the laws of contempt. Should that be looked at?
Emily Spurrell: I think we need to be very clear that the people to blame for the riots that took place are the people who took part in those riots, you know. And I understood that people were angry. I understood that people had questions and maybe wanted clarity around what was going on. But the answer was not to throw bricks at police officers or attack local mosques or harm people’s homes and community. So I think we need to be very clear that they are the ones to blame for that activity.
But in relation to the question about transparency of information, I know the police will always try and put out as much information as they could, but their focus was around getting justice for the families, which is what we’ve seen this week, making sure that this individual was locked up for a very long time, which is what we’ve heard today. And so the advice and the guidance they took from the CPS, and they were guided very strongly by the CPS, was around trying to make sure that any information they put into the public domain didn’t undermine that fact. And so that is what they tried to do. Everything they focussed on was getting justice for the families and they would happily release as much information as they were allowed to do in order to make sure that was the goal.