Keir Starmer has committed to a judge-led inquiry into the Nottingham attacks if Labour wins the election, saying there are “too many examples of victims and family members being let down”.
Barnaby Webber, Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Ian Coates were stabbed to death last year by Valdo Calocane, who was sentenced to a hospital order after pleading guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility due to paranoid schizophrenia.
Barnaby’s mother, Emma Webber, directly challenged Starmer during a listener phone-in on LBC.
She asked him: “If you do get into Downing Street, what are your thoughts about following through with the call for a public inquiry, or possibly a jury and judge-led inquest?
“And also your thoughts please on the urgent need to reform our homicide laws and also the victim support in this country? Which from bitter experience, I can confirm is woeful and very inadequate.”
The Labour leader replied that the families had been through a “horrific experience” as he committed to holding a judge-led inquiry if Labour win.
“She wants a judge-led inquiry and I said when I met her that I thought that was the right way forward, and we would do that,” he said.
“I was very concerned when I heard from her directly about the way the system had let her and the other family members down in relation to the charges that were brought, the communications with the family, and so many other aspects.”
He said listening to what the families had been through was “really difficult”.
“My resolve is to ensure that we have that inquiry and make sure that that doesn’t happen to anyone else. I’ve had too many examples of victims and family members being let down. We have to improve here,” Starmer said.
Calocane killed the university students O’Malley-Kumar and Webber, both 19, and Coates, a 65-year-old school caretaker, and ran over three other people in a spate of violence in Nottingham last June.
Following Calocane’s sentencing hearing in January, Webber said “true justice has not been served”. He was handed a hospital order and not jailed.
His sentence was deemed unduly lenient by the attorney general, who referred it to the court of appeal, where lawyers argued Calocane should be given a hybrid order, under which he would be sent to prison if deemed fit enough to be discharged from hospital. The application was rejected.
The families of the victims have long been calling for a public inquiry to investigate the missed opportunities to stop Calocane before the attacks.
Sanjoy Kumar, the father of Grace O’Malley-Kumar, said: “We have to have a public inquiry. These individual investigations that have been set up will not change legislation, and they will not change the status quo.”
Starmer previously backed their calls, saying earlier this year: “I think somebody outside of this, independent, needs to look at exactly what happened, what were the points at which there could have been an intervention and why it didn’t happen. That is the least that these families are owed.”
