Summary
King Charles led a two-minute silence at the Cenotaph in central London as senior royals and senior politicians, including the prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the leader of the Conservative party Kemi Badenoch, gathered for the national memorial service on Remembrance Sunday.
The culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, vowed that Labour is going to “grip” the prison crisis as the government continues to come under pressure after a number of high-profile cases of prisoners being wrongly released. Speaking to Sky News’ Trevor Phillips this morning, Nandy confirmed that four wrongly released prisoners are still at large. She said it was a “completely unacceptable” situation where an average of 22 people are wrongly released from prisons each month in England and Wales, a rise from an average of 17 wrong releases under a large period over the previous administration.
In a separate interview with the BBC, Nandy apologised for breaking rules by failing to declare she had received donations from David Kogan, the person she picked to run the Independent Football Regulator. The culture secretary had previously apologised to Keir Starmer for the “unknowing” breach in the governance code.
Nandy also said that she retains confidence in the BBC’s leadership, despite the corporation being accused of selectively editing a Donald Trump speech to make it appear clearer that he encouraged the US Capitol attack. “I have complete confidence that both Samir Shah, the chair of the BBC, and Tim Davie are treating this with the seriousness that this demands,” she said. “I do want to see that response to the select committee, and I will, of course, consider it and have further conversations with them about the action that they’re taking.”
Nandy added: “There are a series of very serious allegations made, the most serious of which is that there is systemic bias in the way that difficult issues are reported at the BBC. I’ve spoken to the chair this week, I am confident that he is treating this with the seriousness that that demands.”
Updated
HMRC trial of child benefit crackdown wrongly suspected fraud in 46% of cases
Home Office travel records used in a trial of a controversial anti-fraud crackdown that under which thousands of parents lost their child benefit were so flawed that almost half of the families initially flagged as having emigrated were still living in the UK, it has emerged.
The pilot scheme saved HMRC £17m but left 46% of families targeted incorrectly suspected of fraud, a margin of error far in excess of the 1% to 5% scientifically acceptable.
In Northern Ireland, 78% were incorrectly identified as not having returned from trips abroad and 129 families were flagged during the pilot as having left the country when only 28 had actually done so.
Kim Johnson, the Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside called for an urgent investigation after being contacted by several constituents who had their benefits stopped.
The results of the pilot raise fundamental questions about using Home Office data to infer fraud, experts have said.
You can read the rest of the story by my colleagues, Luke Butterly and Lisa O’Carroll, here:
