7m
23 Jan 2025

‘Missed opportunities’ to catch Southport attacker, says MP

Chief Correspondent

In the wake of today’s sentencing, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch called for law changes so that people under 18 can be sentenced to whole-life sentences for the most serious crimes.

She also called on the Prime Minister to ensure that those who come to Britain share, what she described, as “our values”.

We spoke to Patrick Hurley, the Labour MP for Southport, and began by asking him how members of the local community were impacted by that terrible day.

Patrick Hurley: We’re not used to the world’s media and the glare of the media, but the way the community rose up in sympathy and solidarity and extending the arm of love around the families impacted, it was beautiful to see.

Alex Thomson: We have a public inquiry. A lot of critics would say that’s just going to kick it all into very long and very expensive grass for years. They have a point, don’t they?

Patrick Hurley: No, I think the public inquiry is 100% needed. There were multiple opportunities as far as people can tell to have stopped Rudakubana committing the atrocities that he did in July of last year. And there were multiple opportunities missed. This is going back all the way to 2019. And we do need to get to grips and get to the bottom of why the state failed so catastrophically.

Alex Thomson: There’s a lot of what looks like multi agencies, frankly, living in silos, no doubt all doing their best, but very little communication.

Patrick Hurley: People blame levels of immigration or they blame funding cuts and each of these are maybe pieces of the jigsaw. But we need to figure out what the other pieces of the jigsaw are. Here in Southport, the local authority, its budget in 2025 is £250 million a year less than it was in 2010. And it’s no surprise in those circumstances that things like social services or children’s and adolescent mental health services are feeling the pinch and that those services have been cut into the bone. It is not surprising if that hasn’t had an impact on their ability to cope with extremists like Rudakubana.

Alex Thomson: Kemi Badenoch raising tonight her view, which is that we shouldn’t be focusing, as the government is, on issues like sales of knives. We should be talking frankly and openly about issues of integration.

Patrick Hurley: Yes, integration and community cohesion is precisely what we should be looking at. But we should also be looking at seeing why people under the age of 18 so easily be able to buy knives on online shopping centres and what have you, through Amazon, I believe. I don’t see why she’s setting it up, one in comparison or contravention of the other. Let’s do both.

Alex Thomson: We can buy knives online. This man was definitely heightened in what he wanted to do with highly violent material. This wasn’t the dark web, this was openly accessible.

Patrick Hurley: He almost self-radicalised in his bedroom. What we need to do is find out why the Prevent programme didn’t get to grips with that and didn’t maybe update its terms of reference.

Alex Thomson: Why that material is available online on the open web, not the dark web.

Patrick Hurley: In my view, it shouldn’t be. Maybe 20 years ago people would have joined an organisation like the English Defence League or the National Front and become radicalised that way. Or sometimes we saw reports of people going to Al Qaeda training camps overseas and coming back having been radicalised. In 2025, we’re seeing people radicalise themselves with small but risky social networks.

Alex Thomson: More widely, this, as we all know, led to a rash of riots across the country based in some measure on internet nonsense. The police, desperate in this part of the world to put out some real facts to staunch that, couldn’t because of laws of contempt. One wonders whether those laws of contempt in these extremely rare circumstances need looking at.

Patrick Hurley: Even if more facts could have been put out, it doesn’t follow that people would have decided, these more facts are believable, more believable than the last lot. People will believe nonsense and lies on the internet, and I think that that’s a culture shift that we need to see more of.