Afternoon summary
Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, has agreed that Keir Starmer can campaign for Labour in the Holyrood elections only days after calling for the prime minister to resign. (See 4.01pm.)
Pam Duncan-Glancy, the Scottish Labour MSP who had the whip withdrawn over her friendship with convicted sex offender Sean Morton, has hit out at her treatment, saying she is “deeply disappointed” at the party’s decision and “not yet clear” why they chose to do so now. As Libby Brooks reports, describing Morton as “someone who grew up with me, and who is to all intents and purposes family”, Duncan-Glancy said: “I have never condoned his crimes and have always been clear that his actions were wrong.” Morton was, however, “someone requiring support”, Duncan-Glancy said. She said:
My actions arise from loyalty and care. I was providing support to a highly vulnerable person. Loyalty and care are values that I think make me a good representative and for which I believe others know me for.
Duncan-Glancy, who joined Holyrood at the first permanent wheelchair user to do so, said that she would complete casework for my constituents in the remaining weeks until the end of this parliamentary term.
For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today, do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog.
Updated
Gordon Brown calls for inquiry into UK links to Epstein's sex trafficking, calling it 'monumental failure' to protect women
Last week Gordon Brown, the former prime minister, wrote to the Metropolitan police urging it to open an investigation into Peter Mandelson and evidence that he leaked confidential government documents to Jeffrey Epstein when he was a minister. Later that day the Met confirmed they were starting a criminal investigation.
Brown has not left it at that. He has been looking at the Epstein files in considerable detail and, in a long and powerful article for the New Statesman, he says it has led him to conclude that a much more extensive investigation is required. He says:
What I discovered about the abuse of women by male predators and their enablers – and Britain’s as yet unacknowledged role – has shocked me to the core. It demands an in-depth police investigation, and is by far the biggest scandal of all.
It is time to listen to the proposals long argued for by the UK special envoy for women and girls, Harriet Harman, the minister for safeguarding, Jess Phillips, and the backbench champion of change, Natalie Fleet. They have for decades led the fight to address inequality, exploitation and gender-based violence and they rightly feel that a male culture has for too long failed to accord the priority these realities require.
The Epstein files open our eyes to the sheer scale of the sex trafficking industry: the suffering of at least six million girls and women living in sexual slavery, whose plight has never been adequately addressed. I now see clearly that, despite all the warnings by women, there has been a monumental failure worldwide to execute the law even after the power to do so was set out in the Palermo Protocol 25 years ago, and given effect by Theresa May’s Modern Slavery Act of 2015.
Brown also says there is a specific need to investigate the part that Britain, and Britons, played in Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation.
The Epstein emails, which record the visas issued, payments made and transport organised for girls and women trafficked across the world, suggest a number of British girls were on 90 Epstein flights organised from UK airports on what was called his “Lolita Express”. Among the many aspects that should sicken anyone looking at the emails is that 15 of these flights were given the go-ahead after his 2008 conviction for soliciting sex from a minor. How the flights were allowed to continue should have been fully investigated.
Epstein’s trafficking was a three-decades-long criminal enterprise, a far greater scandal than the Profumo affair. Because of the scale of lawbreaking and the use of dirty money, these revelations far exceed those in various sleaze scandals throughout the 1980s and 1990s …
The emails tell us in graphic detail how Epstein was able to use Stansted Airport – he boasted how cheap the airport charges were compared to Paris – to fly in girls from Latvia, Lithuania and Russia. His messages link at least one to Britain and the former Prince Andrew. One email, headed “the girl”, described her as “just turned 18, 179cm, very cute, speaks English, I saw her in real 3 years ago… i will send you the video in next email”.
Stansted was also where women were transferred from one Epstein plane to another; women arriving on private planes into Britain would not need British visas. It seems the authorities never knew what was happening: evidence the BBC has uncovered shows incomplete flight logs, with unnamed passengers simply labelled as “female”. To this day, the names of many of the male passengers are unknown because their names were withheld. In short, British authorities had little or no idea who was being trafficked through our country, and for whom other than Epstein.
Brown says the police should interview Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, at least about the Stansted link. But he says a wider investigatioin into the Epstein links with the UK is needed.
Rape and sexual abuse in the UK should never become a second-order issue – and never on the pretext of an investigation in another jurisdiction. The evidence suggests some in the UK were complicit in trafficking. This demands a full inquiry.
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