Sir Keir Starmer was accused of being part of a “cover-up” of the truth about the Southport murderer as he prepared to address the nation over the state’s failure to stop the attack.
A public inquiry will be held into why the authorities failed in what Sir Keir described as their “ultimate duty” to protect three young girls stabbed to death by Axel Rudakubana as it emerged the killer had been referred three times to the Prevent anti-terrorism programme.
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, said the Government and the police had behaved “abominably”, and suggested the riots that followed the murders last July might not have happened if the public had been told the truth earlier. He said: “There has been a gigantic cover-up from day one.”
Rudakubana, 18, pleaded guilty on Monday to three murders and 10 attempted murders as well as possessing al-Qaeda literature and producing the poison ricin. However, the public has always been told that the murders were not terror-related.
Writing for The Telegraph, Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, said the Prime Minister must come clean by being “open about what he knew and when” or risk permanently damaging trust in the criminal justice system.
Sir Keir’s address to the nation in Downing Street on Tuesday will come six months after he called a press conference in Number 10 to pronounce that the riots were the result of “far-Right thuggery”.
There are fears of further unrest after the truth about Rudakubana’s contact with the authorities emerged following his guilty pleas.
Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, said Rudakubana had been referred three times to Prevent, beginning in Dec 2019 when he was 13, and also had contact with the police, the courts, the youth justice system, social services and mental health services.
Ms Cooper said: “Between them, those agencies failed to identify the terrible risk and danger to others that he posed.”
She continued to insist on Monday that “important information about the perpetrator’s past could not be made public before today to avoid jeopardising the legal proceedings”, even though others, including Jonathan Hall, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said the riots last summer showed that “the scope for saying little or nothing is squeezed out by social media”.
The murders of Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on July 29 last year were followed by riots amid a swirl of misinformation that spread online as the authorities refused to name the suspect – who was 17 at the time – or discuss his background.
Sir Keir admitted: “There are grave questions to answer as to how the state failed in its ultimate duty to protect these young girls.
“Britain will rightly demand answers. We will leave no stone unturned in that pursuit.”
Mr Jenrick said Ms Cooper and Sir Keir needed to start by telling the public what they and the police knew about Rudakubana’s background, while the public was repeatedly being told the murders were not linked to terrorism.
Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Jenrick said:“It is completely understandable that there is a widespread perception that crucial information was withheld from the public…the public could tell they were not being told the whole truth, and that contributed to the anger which spilled into riots.
“In the social media age, sunlight really is the best disinfectant. Left unanswered, the sense of a cover-up will permanently damage trust in the criminal justice system.”
Kemi Badenoch, the Leader of the Opposition, said that after Rudakubana is sentenced on Thursday there must be a “complete account of who in Government knew what and when”.
The Crown Prosecution Service said Rudakubana, 18, had shown a “sickening and sustained interest in death and violence” and had shown no remorse since his arrest. However, Merseyside Police has said that because they could not identify a single ideology behind the attack, it was not treated as terrorism.
Rudakubana’s decision to plead guilty to all 16 counts on which he had been due to be tried surprised even his defence team. The families of the victims were not even in court to hear his guilty pleas.
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As well as the three murders, he pleaded guilty to the attempted murders of eight other children, class instructor Leanne Lucas and businessman John Hayes. He also admitted producing the biological toxin ricin and possessing an al-Qaeda manual.
Rudakubana will not be eligible for a whole life order when he is sentenced on Thursday because he was 17 at the time of the murders. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 extended whole life orders to 18 to 21-year-olds for offences including premeditated child murder.
The judge has indicated that Rudakubana will face the equivalent of a life sentence.
Mr Farage told The Telegraph that he had been told shortly after the murders that Rudakubana had been expelled from school for possessing a knife at the age of 13. This led Mr Farage rightly to suspect that the killer might have been known to the authorities.
He said: “I wanted to ask questions in Parliament about what the authorities knew about this man, but my rights of parliamentary privilege were taken away and I was not allowed to say anything, which is extraordinary.
“I wasn’t even allowed to ask any questions in Parliament, and the suggestion that it was because of ongoing court proceedings is completely wrong. This reflects very badly on the Prime Minister. We have been denied the truth on this by the police and the Government, it is disgraceful.
“There has been a gigantic cover-up from day one. The authorities knew very very quickly about his expulsion from school, the ricin-making and the al-Qaeda material, yet they refused to class the murders as terror-related for fear of the reaction there might have been.
“The public are capable of absorbing the truth about terrorist attacks, we have had them before without them causing riots. The British public should have been told the truth, but the authorities have got this wrong on every level.”
He added: “If Starmer thinks that calling a public inquiry will stop people demanding the truth about the Southport murders, he is wrong.”
Ms Cooper suggested there would have to be reform of the Prevent programme, saying: “We need to face up to why this has been happening and what needs to change.”
It can now be revealed how the authorities missed a string of opportunities to spot Rudakubana’s descent towards extreme violence.
He was first referred to Prevent in 2019 when teachers at his school became concerned about his obsession with school massacres.
Two years later, after lockdown, Rudakubana was flagged to Prevent twice more after it was discovered he had been showing an unhealthy interest in terrorism, including the jihadist attacks of 2017 and incel-related violence.
But after looking into his behaviour, officials decided he did not meet the threshold for intervention by Prevent because there was no evidence of extremism or a particular ideology.
Prevent was set up to prevent young people being drawn into terrorism, but there is no programme available to divert those who are simply obsessed with violence.
Jonathan Hall, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said the counter-extremism programme needed to be looked at again.
He said: “Prevent either needs to be expanded or you need to have a separate thing that can catch up these people of high risk.”
Matt Jukes, the head of counter-terrorism policing, said his officers had been supporting Merseyside Police throughout the investigation but insisted that information about Rudakubana’s background had “not been withheld due to any lack of candour.”
He said: “We have taken advice from the Crown Prosecution Service on what information could be released and when.”
Rudakubana was involved in a string of violent incidents that brought him to the attention of the authorities. He was excluded from the Range High School in Formby when he was 13 years old after taking a knife into the classroom.
Following his removal from the school, he returned brandishing a hockey stick and assaulted a fellow pupil. The police were called and he received a youth justice referral order.
Lancashire Constabulary were called to his home on five occasions between 2019 and 2022 following calls over concern about his behaviour.
On each occasion, officers referred the matter to a Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub and children’s social services became involved. Rudakubana was sent to a pupil referral unit before and later attended two specialist schools, The Acorns School in Lancashire and Presfield High School & Specialist College in Southport. But he never settled and his attendance at Presfield was less than 1 per cent, it is understood.
In 2020, he was diagnosed with autism at Alder Hey children’s hospital.
In recent years, he spent an increasing amount of time in his bedroom researching war, terrorism, violence and atrocities. One source said he had become an expert on genocide and mass killers.
When police searched his home after the Southport murders, they discovered a cache of weapons, including a machete, as well as books and documents about war and terrorism.
