Summary of the day …
The former senior judge who ran the mediation service between the Post Office and the Justice for Subposmasters Alliance in the early 2010s has described the Horizon IT scandal as “the greatest scandal that I have ever seen”. He said after working on the mediation project, which was ultimately cancelled by the Post Office, that “My initial view that it was very unlikely that these people had stolen money remained.”
Former MP James Arbuthnot, who is now a Conservative peer, told a public inquiry that the Post Office appeared to have been operating a “behind-the-scenes deception process” about the reliability of its faulty Horizon computer system. Arbuthnot, who campaign on the issue for years as an MP, said “I think that with the help of this inquiry, we are moving belatedly to the right place.”
Rishi Sunak has doubled down on the UK’s decision not to suspend arms sales to Israel, echoing foreign secretary David Cameron’s words from yesterday by saying that “none of our closest allies” have stopped existing export licences. On LBC this morning, Sunak said the UK has a “long-established process” relating to the arms export regime and “we review these things regularly”. Sunak also criticised Nato allies for failing to increase defence spending
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper has renewed Labour’s calls for the government to publish its legal advice on Israel’s military action in Gaza, saying there were “real, deep, serious concerns” about the war.
Three people have been charged with public order offences after a pro-Palestine demonstration outside Labour leader Keir Starmer’s home, the Metropolitan police have said.
The prime minister has said again that he is “confident” his government can get its plan to deport to Rwanda asylum seekers who have reached the UK. The Financial Times has reported that Rwanda’s state-owned airline turned down a UK government proposal to transport asylum seekers, with reports that it considered it “brand damaging.”
The Times has reported that Sunak faces a cabinet revolt if he continues with his threat to leave the European convention on human rights (ECHR). It names Jeremy Hunt and James Cleverly among those opposing the move, alongside ten others. Sunak again this morning on LBC said he would not let what he called a “foreign court” prevent his government’s Rwanda deportation policy from coming into operation.
The UK taxpayer spent £4.3bn (27.9%) of the total UK international aid budget on supporting the housing and food costs of refugees based in Britain, an increase of £600m from 2022, new official government aid statistics for 2023 show.
The government is investing more than £55m in expanding facial recognition systems – including vans that will scan crowded high streets – as part of a renewed crackdown on shoplifting. Sunak appeared with police in a shopping centre in Horsham to promote the scheme.
Sunak has tried to deflect criticism of his handling of the William Wragg sexting scandal by saying that Starmer has been weak about Angela Rayner’s tax affairs. Wragg voluntarily resigned the Tory whip yesterday, days after the scandal first emerged.
Ministers are reportedly considering banning the sale of smartphones to children under the age of 16 after a number of polls have shown significant public support for such a curb.
Police Scotland received 7,152 complaints under Scotland’s new hate crime law in the first week of operation, with 240 hate crimes and 30 non-crime hate incidents recorded, the force has announced.
Labour’s leader in Scotland, Anas Sarwar, has described a poll from YouGov that puts Labour ahead of the SNP in Westminster voting intentions for the first time since 2014 as “a huge moment”.
That is it from me, Martin Belam, today. I should be back with you tomorrow. Enjoy the rest of your evening and I will see you then.
Sir Anthony Hooper: Post Office Horizon IT cases are 'the greatest scandal that I have ever seen'
Sir Anthony Hooper, the former senior judge who chaired the mediation panel in the early 2010s to try to resolve claims between the justice for subpostmasters campaign and the Post Office involving the Horizon IT system has described it as “the greatest scandal that I have ever seen”
Speaking at the end of giving evidence remotely to the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, he said “In the criminal justice process, we’ve had many miscarriages of justice, but nowhere near as many of these.”
He went on to say “we need to reevaluate how we approach criminal cases of this kind. Something went very, very wrong and I don’t envy the chairman’s task and trying to find out how it all started. Something went very, very wrong.”
Hooper said one of his concerns was cutbacks in legal aid, saying that it used to be that senior members of the bar would work on cases on legal aid, but “that’s all gone now, largely gone.”
He also sugggested the justice system needed a fundamental reform, saying:
All that a prosecutor has to establish … is enough evidence to support a conviction. That is a very low threshold. It means defence have to do a large amount of work to see whether there is some alternative to guilty.
He was highly critical of the Post Office refusal to countenance in public that there were any problems with the Horizon IT system, leading to them by default assuming that any criticism of it or suggestion it was malfunctioning was untrue.
Hooper said in many years as an appeals judge, the largest problem he saw over and over again was non-disclosure.
Yesterday’s session of the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry began with lead counsel Jason Beer KC again criticising for late disclosure of documents by the Post Office to the inquiry.
Sir Anthony Hooper said that by 2014 he thought it was likely there had been serious miscarriages of justice. While chairing the mediation scheme.
He told the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry:
My initial view that it was very unlikely that these people had stolen money remained.
I wanted people who probably already left prison, people who had suffered so badly, I wanted everyone to get on, identify the miscarriages of justice by one route or another, get their convictions quashed – that’s what I wanted.
He also expressed the view that it was likely if you were charged with theft of £10,000 and were found guilty you would end up in prison, whereas pleading guilty to false accounting on the same amount would avoid a custodial sentence. He suggests that is why people were pleading guilty.
North of England correspondent Mark Brown has spoken to Chris McEwan, Labour candidate in May’s Tees Valley mayoral election:
Many people would like the poll to be a verdict on Lord Houchen’s stewardship of Teesworks, the flagship regeneration project on the site of the former steelworks at Redcar. An independent report into Teesworks was damning. It said the vast project had been excessively secretive and taxpayers were not being guaranteed value for money or transparency.
Crucially, it said there was no evidence to support allegations of corruption or illegality raised under parliamentary privilege by the Middlesbrough MP, Andy McDonald.
Chris McEwan, in an interview with the Guardian, said a mayoral priority for him would be to start projecting “openness and honesty. Particularly openness because things have been very closed and tight.”
He stressed he had never used the word “corruption” in relation to Teesworks, but said it was “beyond belief” that there were 28 recommendations for change in the report. He also said that Teesworks was not the unadulterated success story that government ministers claimed. He sees it as a missed opportunity.
How much the Teesworks report influences voters remains to be seen. When the Guardian canvassed views in Darlington town centre, no one raised it as an issue. Potholes, on the other hand, were complained about over and over, and they are the reason why the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, was comically pictured peering into one when he visited Darlington a year ago.
Read more of Mark Brown’s report here: ‘We have to get the basics right’: Labour’s Chris McEwan in Tees Valley
Sir Anthony Hooper is expressing great regret about the suffering of people due to the Post Office Horizon IT scandal, and has said over the years he has experienced many times that government won’t swiftly apologise and say “we are sorry, something has gone wrong” and move to put things right. He said all he was ever trying to do was move things forward.
The Times has reported that Rishi Sunak faces a cabinet revolt if he continues with his threat to leave the European convention on human rights (ECHR).
It names Jeremy Hunt and James Cleverly among those opposing the move, alongside ten others. Sunak again this morning on LBC said he would not let what he called a “foreign court” prevent his government’s Rwanda deportation policy from coming into operation.
In a piece by Matt Dathan which the Times labels an exclusive, he writes:
The Times has established that at least 12 ministers who attend cabinet would oppose any move to leave the ECHR altogether, double the number who are understood to be supportive of leaving the convention.
The remaining 14 ministers are either undecided or have not disclosed their position to colleagues. One cabinet minister opposed to leaving said it would “fuel the fire” of extremists in Northern Ireland, given the importance of the ECHR to the Good Friday agreement.
At the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, Sir Anthony Hooper said that the mediation process was never going to uncover a “smoking gun” with the Horizon IT system, since it was only ever looking at things on a case by case basis, rather than being a deep dive review of the whole system.
Hooper, who chaired the mediation process, was asked by chair Wyn Williams if it was his belief that the Post Office went into the mediation process with the position that there could be nothing wrong with Horizon, and ended the process still holding that position. Hooper concurred.
Hooper said it had been “ridiculous” to shut it down in 2015. Appearing remotely, he told the hearing in Aldwych House while being questioned by Julian Blake:
Conflicts gradually grew and grew, and grew and grew, until we were finally closed down in March 2015. So I can’t tell you at what stage it disintegrated, it was a slow disintegration. I thought it was ridiculous to close down the scheme at this stage when we were still at the very early stages.
Sir Anthony Hooper has said that the mediation scheme between 2013 and 2015 had no chance of working because the Post Office would not accept that there could be any problem with the Horizon IT system.
There is a short break in proceedings at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry. I will be taking a short break as well. See you in a bit.
Labour’s leader in Scotland, Anas Sarwar, has described a poll from YouGov that puts Labour ahead of the SNP in Westminster voting intentions for the first time since 2014 as “a huge moment”, but “we take nothing for granted”.
The single YouGov poll of Scottish voters gives Labour a slight lead over the SNP when people are asked how they would vote in a general election, while the SNP retains a narrow lead over Labour when people are asked who they would vote for at constituency level in a Scottish parliament election.
This is a huge moment, but we take nothing for granted.
— Anas Sarwar (@AnasSarwar) April 10, 2024
Under my leadership, @ScottishLabour is fighting for every vote to deliver the change that Scotland needs. https://t.co/MlP1edjSsK
Sir Anthony Hooper said he wanted four prosecutions of subpostmasters that had been planned by the Post Office to be dropped in January 2014.
The former chairman of the mediation scheme for those who believed they had been wrongly prosecuted told the Horizon IT inquiry on Wednesday: “As I remember, there were about four cases which had gone past the charge stage and were to go to trial, and I was obviously concerned, not really in my position as chairman, but simply as someone who wanted to make sure there were no wrongful convictions.
“So I think I asked to look at the case summary and I think I suggested that I would hope that these four cases would be dropped. That’s my memory.”
Talking about the cases that the mediation scheme examined, he has also said there was tremendous difficulty with the paperwork. He said:
Some of these cases went back to 2005, 2006. So there was an absence of paperwork on perhaps on both sides. SPMs who had lost paperwork, obviously had given up. There was difficulties with the paperwork from the Post Office.
He has said several times that he knows a lot more now about the circumstances than he was allowed to know then, and at times seems genuinely indignant about the way the Post Office held information back from the work he was doing, when he was acting in good faith to try to progress case reviews as quickly as possible.
There is a thorny bit where documents from the Post Office are implying that Hooper was losing faith in Second Sight. Hooper says he was not.
He says that in advice he was giving to Second Sight he was simply “doing my best to try and help to get better reports in a way that will be easily understandable and readable by the mediator.”
He says he had faith in Second Sight to the very end
Anthony Hooper tells Horizon IT inquiry he wishes he'd spoken directly to Post Office board about 'fundamental implausibility' of its case
At the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, Sir Anthony Hooper has praised forensic auditors Second Sight, saying they had “a difficult path to tread”, but also that they only had two or three people working on it, and were dealing with 150 cases that had come forward. Hooper was chair of the mediation process investigating the affair between 2013 and 2015.
“These were very complex and difficult cases that we were looking at,” he says. “And throughout the whole of the time of the mediation scheme, the Post Office would maintain over and over again that the Horizon system was robust, there was nothing wrong with it.”
We now know that they were aware of multiple bugs in the system.
Hooper said the Post Office case “didn’t make sense.”
He said:
I tried to make it clear to Paula Vennells and to the chairman that the Post Office case didn’t make sense. And I felt that throughout. It didn’t make sense that reputable SPMs, appointed by the Post Office after examination of their characters, would be stealing these sums of money. It didn’t make sense.
He pointed out earlier that when he took on the role he knew very little about the background, and that we only know about what is called the Post Office Horizon scandal because of reporting by Computer Weekly, Private Eye, and the work of MPs like James Arbuthnot, who gave evidence earlier today.
Julian Blake, questioning him, observes that he is “more animated” today than the words in his written submission appear. “I mean, I’m not always very measured,” Hooper says, to laughter in the room.
Hooper says now he wished he’d spoken directly to the Post Office board about “The fundamental implausibility of the Post Office case.”
Updated
Here is an exchange from the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry evidence from earlier today, when former Conservative MP Lord Arbuthnot was appearing, in which he said he felt that Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells was “ashamed” when he called her out in a meeting for breaking her word.
PA Media has pulled the section out in its coverage, quoting Arbuthnot saying:
They said that the Post Office should exclude altogether from the mediation scheme people who had pleaded guilty – a different proposition from their being put to the back of the queue.
I asked them how they thought I would have supported a scheme which excluded my constituent, Jo Hamilton, to which they had no answer.
This, for me, was the final straw. Paula Vennells seemed almost cowed by their stronger personalities and said little. I told her she was breaking her word.
I sensed, rightly or wrongly, that she felt ashamed. The meeting broke up in acrimony.”
He said the meeting had also featured Angela Van Den Bogerd, the then-head of network services, and former general counsel Chris Aujard.
Sir Anthony Hooper, the former Lord Justice of Appeal and former Chair of the Working Group for the Initial Complaint Review and Mediation Scheme in the Post Office Horizon IT scandal is appearing now at the inquiry. He is being question by Julian Blake.
Hooper is appearing remotely, and essentially has opened by saying that if he knew then what he knew know, he wouldn’t have taken on the job because the Post Office’s attitude made it “undoable”.
Talking of opinions about Rishi Sunak, social media has been excited today by a bit of polling that pits Sunak against Keir Starmer in a range of everyday scenarios and finds that the public would back Sunak in an escape room, and negotiating a discount, but would slightly prefer it if Starmer were putting up their shelves or chatting to them down the pub.
NEW: Only 13% of Brits trust Rishi Sunak to put up a shelf, compared to 47% who opt for Keir Starmer.
— James Johnson (@jamesjohnson252) April 10, 2024
Starmer also leads on pub conversation and putting out a fire.
Sunak leads only on 'negotiating a discount' and 'solving an escape room'.@JLPartnersPolls @RestisPolitics pic.twitter.com/gZY8fYVO44
I should add that having agreed to take the survey, I am quite impressed that given this barrage of questions at least a third of the British public then appear to have greeted all the options with a hearty ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Rafael Behr has written for us today in his column that when Rishi Sunak speaks, the nation shrugs and there’s no coming back from that. Here is an excerpt:
Rishi Sunak is not a deep-cover agent of the Labour party, but politics might not look very different if the prime minister were on a secret mission to make life easier for Keir Starmer.
To achieve this feat, special operative Sunak would occupy positions expected of a Conservative leader, but in a way that minimised public enthusiasm and maximised division in his own party.
He would present himself as a unity candidate, then stagger around in the policy no man’s land between rival factions. He would be too soft to satisfy Brexit hardliners but still indulge populist bullies enough to alienate squeamish liberals. He would be close enough to David Cameron to elicit contempt from people who admire Nigel Farage, while aping Faragism enough to demoralise one nation Tories. With precision targeting, his messages would connect with no one.
You can read that here: Rafael Behr – When Rishi Sunak speaks, the nation shrugs. There’s no coming back from that
For time reasons at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, Jason Beer KC has said in the last section that they have galloped through about eight years of narrative in a short time. Lord Arbuthnot has been asked about how the Post Office sacked the forensic accountants Second Sight, and closed down the working group between the Post Office, the justice campaign and MPs supporting them.
Asked if he had anything to add, Arbuthnot said:
I think that with the help of this inquiry, we are moving belatedly to the right place. And so I’d like to say thank you.
Chair Wyn Williams, like yesterday with Alan Bates, has asked people in the room to refrain from showing appreciation to Arbuthnot with applause, as it is not the right place for that.
He extended his own thanks to the witness, and praised him for having also been willing to engage with “a non-statutory review, which was not welcomed by many people, but you thought it appropriate to give it what assistance you could. So throughout my involvement in this process, I have had nothing but help from you for which I thank you very much.”
There is now a short pause in proceedings.
At the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, Chris Aujard has come in for some criticism from Lord Arbuthnot. Aujard was interim general counsel for the Post Office from mid-October 2013 through to late February 2015.
Arbuthnot has said that when he appeared, he felt there was a significant change in attitude from the Post Office, which he has just described as full of “defensiveness, secrecy, legalism” during this period.
He said “it seemed to be blocking information” and personally described Aujard as “unconvincing, defensive, offhand and obstructive.”
He said at this point he thought the forensic auditors Second Sight were “uncovering something really crucial about Horizon”.
Arbuthnot tells the inquiry that he thought the Post Office “were worried that Second Sight [the forensic auditors] was getting too close to the truth, and that if they allowed Second Sight to go on uncovering these things it posed an existential threat to the future of Horizon. And that that in turn posed an existential threat to the future of the Post Office. That’s what I think I thought they were doing, and I still think that that’s what they were doing.”
He said relations between the MPs pursuing the justice campaign and the Post Office essentially broke down.
With apologies if I’ve made any transcription errors today. For clarity I am using Otter.ai to do the transcription while listening to the hearing, and then tidying up the automatically generated transcript against delivery, but I will inevitably have not captured it perfectly.
Cooper: 'real, deep, serious concerns' about Israel's military action in Gaza
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper has renewed Labour’s calls for the Government to publish its legal advice on Israel’s military action in Gaza, saying there were “real, deep, serious concerns” about the war.
PA Media reports that on a visit to Yarm in Teesside, she was asked whether she agreed with US President Joe Biden that Benjamin Netanyahu’s approach to the conflict was a “mistake,” to which she responded: “There’s real deep, serious concerns. It’s devastating what is happening. We need an immediate ceasefire and also for the hostages to be released.
“But as David Lammy has said they’re in serious allegations about the breaches around international law.
“And that’s why it’s so important that the British Government now publishes its legal advice around our sales and around breaches of international law. We need that to be published. This is so important.”
Josh Halliday, our North of England editor, has another case study today of someone who has been pursued to repay benefits after exceeding the then-earnings limit of £120 a week by only a small amount with a low-paid part-time job pushed her over the DWP’s “cliff edge”. You can read it here.
Prime minister Rishi Sunak has been in Horsham alongside local MP Jeremy Quinn and police and crime commissioner Katy Bourne, where he has been promoting the government’s new shoplifting plans.
The Post Office Horizon IT inquiry hearing has resumed. You can watch it here. And it is Martin Belam back with you on the live blog.
Three people have been charged with public order offences following a pro-Palestine demonstration outside Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s home, the Metropolitan Police have said.
On Tuesday demonstrators hung a banner outside Sir Keir’s house that read: “Starmer stop the killing”, surrounded by red hand prints.
Protesters then laid rows of children’s shoes in front of the Labour leader’s door, a tactic that has been utilised at a number of pro-Palestine protests to signify children killed in Gaza.
The group that carried out the demonstration, known as Youth Demand, describe itself as a “new youth resistance campaign fighting for an end to genocide”.
A Metropolitan Police statement said: “Two women and a man arrested in Kentish Town on Tuesday April 9 have been charged with public order offences and will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
“Leonorah Ward, 21, of Beechwood Mount, Burley, Leeds, Zosia Lewis, 23, of Rokeby Terrace, Newcastle upon Tyne and Daniel Formentin, 24, of Woodside Avenue, Burley, Leeds, will appear before the court on Wednesday April 10.
“All have been charged with section 42 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 and for breaching court bail.
“The arrests were made on Tuesday April 9 under section 42 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001.
“This power stops the harassment of a person at their home address if an officer suspects it is causing alarm or distress to the occupant.”
The Post Office Horizon IT inquiry is breaking for lunch. So will I. Jamie Grierson will be sitting in for me for an hour.
Ministers are considering banning the sale of smartphones to children under the age of 16 after a number of polls have shown significant public support for such a curb.
The government issued guidance on the use of mobile phones in English schools two months ago, but other curbs are said to have been considered to better protect children after a number of campaigns.
Esther Ghey, the mother of 16-year-old Brianna, who was murdered last year, has been campaigning for an age limit for smartphone usage and stricter controls on access to social media apps.
Read more here: UK ministers considering banning sale of smartphones to under-16s
There’s been a key exchange at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, were Lord Arbuthnot said he does not believe the Post Office was acting in good faith in 2013, even though at the time he believed they were. Here is what was said:
Jason Beer KC: You tell us in your statement that around this time, you thought that the people you were dealing with in the Post Office were dealing with a matter in good faith.
Lord Arbuthnot: Yes.
Beer: And intended to work towards a resolution of all of the outstanding cases.
Arbuthnot: Yes, that’s what I thought.
Beer: Knowing what you know now, does that remain your view?
Arbuthnot: No.
Beer: And why not?
Arbuthnot: What I know now is that they had commissioned the [legal] advice, they knew that the evidence had given rise to a number of prosecutions had led to those prosecutions being unsafe. They knew that there were a large number of bugs in the system which they had not told MPs about. They were operating – well I’ve never got to the bottom of Project Sparrow but they were operating some sort of behind the process. Which suggests to me now that they were stringing MPs along in order to preserve the robustness of Horizon, the existence of Horizon and possibly the existence of the Post Office. That’s what I know now. But I didn’t know that at the time.
He said that September 2013 appeared to be the break point where the Post Office stopped co-operating with MPs.
At the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry there is a sombre mood during a passage where the setting up of the mediation scheme is being discussed. Lord Arbuthnot says essentially he felt the Post Office had said everybody could take part, and then reneged and said people who pleaded guilty would be excluded. These were, he implies, exactly the kind of problematic case that most needed investigations.
He has described a “bust-up” between the MPs and the Post Office, when the latter began insisted that people who had pleaded guilty at their trials should not be included. This is specifically about the case of Jo Hamilton, who he says he “believed from the beginning that [she] had not committed the offences for which she pleaded guilty.”
As I mentioned earlier it has been striking that during this testimony today we are hearing how again and again the Post Office appeared to obstruct sitting MPs from the parties of government from truly being able to help their constituents, and that Lord Arbuthnot was repeatedly given the impression that the Post Office wanted to fully cooperate in the process, while it was also trying to limit the investigations into the cases.
Police Scotland received 7,152 complaints under Scotland’s new hate crime law in the first week of operation, with 240 hate crimes and 30 non-crime hate incidents recorded, the force has announced.
The “vast majority” of these reports were anonymous, Police Scotland said in a statement and were assessed against the new legislation and “no further action is being taken”.
It said: “All complaints received are reviewed by officers, supported by dedicated hate crime advisers, and dealt with appropriately, whether that is being progressed for further assessment, or closed as they do not meet the criteria under the legislation.”
Police Scotland said two crime reports were raised in relation to hate crime at the Rangers v Celtic match at Ibrox Stadium in Glasgow on Sunday.
Earlier today Scottish Green MSP Ross Greer has said the legislation had not made it illegal to “be an asshole”. He said:
It was not illegal to be an asshole before and for the last week it has still not been illegal to be an asshole. That doesn’t mean that you should be.
There are plenty of things that it’s not illegal to do, but that in a decent society we don’t generally encourage people to do. We should all be trying to be as pleasant and decent to each other as possible, whether the law allow for it or not.
The bill was passed with cross-party support in 2021.
I should add at this point, as his name has cropped up a few times in testimony today, that Andrew Bridgen, who now sits as an independent MP after losing the Conservative whip in January last year for comparing the use of Covid vaccines to the Holocaust, has objected to not being called as a witness by the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry. In January he pointed out on his social media accounts that he was “one of the first MPs to raise concerns about the Post Office Horizon scandal and one of only two of that five who remain in elected office.”
The Post Office Horizon IT inquiry has just been shown an email from Ron Warmington, who was managing director of Second Sight, the independent forensic accountants hired by the Post Office. In the message, which he sent to then MP James Arbuthnot, he wrote:
They are still understandably, I suppose, incredibly defensive, and nobody at the levels producing the responses is ready to give an inch. They probably fear it will be career death to concede any failings whatsoever. We have consistently and clearly asked for short, easy to understand, honest and complete answers to the assertions that we have put forward.
What we are getting are highly technical multi-page responses that appear to have been crafted so as to avoid actually giving any answers to those assertions and allegations at all.
Without wishing to burden you with the detail the attached is a pretty good example and shows my exasperation in trying to get them to ANSWER THE BLASTED QUESTIONS.
On the witness stand, Lord Arbuthnot contrasts what Second Sight were experiencing with what he had been told was taking place. He told the inquiry:
My understanding was that [Second Sight] could have the complete openness and transparency that Paula Vennels had promised me, and access to any documents that they considered to be relevant, including documents that were confidential in order to get to the bottom of the issues that the Post Office told us they wanted to get to the bottom of.
Lord Arbuthnot has said “central to the business” was whether the Post Office or Fujitsu could access subpostmaster accounts on the Horizon system remotely.
He has told the inquiry:
Remote access would have completely undermined the Post Office’s position. Because if Fujitsu or the Post Office can manipulate a subpostmasters’ account, without the subpostmaster knowing about it, then how can you prosecute that subpostmaster for something which could not be provably down to the subpostmaster? It might have been an action by the Post Office or by Fujitsu. It would, I think completely undermine the question of the standard of proof required in a criminal trial.
A lot of this is revolving around Michael Rudkin’s allegations of remote access being available in the system, and Lord Arbuthnot is unclear of the timing on when this was raised with the Post Office.
You can read a bit more about the background to Michael Rudkin here. Rudkin was a constituent of then-Tory MP Andrew Bridgen, who Arbuthnot said had been repeatedly raising it.
The Post Office Horizon IT inquiry is now discussing the period of time when forensic accounting firm Second Sight was reviewing the issue, in association with both the Post Office and the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA) campaign.
In a document Second Sight identified seven things it was investigating:
Submitted transaction anomalies following communications or power failures
Rogue transactions not entered by subpostmasters or their staff.
Missing or duplicated transactions associated with postage labels, phone cards, gyro payments, ATMs or checks
Training and support issues
Loss of transaction audit trails being available to subpostmasters
Accounting issues at the end of trade the trading period
The contract between the Post Office and subpostmasters
The JFSA was unhappy that Second Sight was still saying it was investigating this as an aside to cases, rather than making systemic failures the central issue.
Lord Arbuthnot says that at this point “this was beyond my technical knowledge” but he felt there was a dispute about the meaning of the word “systemic”. He said Second Sight were using it to mean “systemwide” issues that affected Horizon, but Alan Bates meant a problem where it struck wherever “in the system”, by which he meant the environment.
Arbuthnot suggests that the Post Office grabbed for the most favourable interpretation of the word “systemic”, whereas Bates took the opposite view.
Arbuthnot said at this point he began to think the Post Office was objecting to the way Second Sight was proceeding with its investigation, and he consequently had a call with Paula Vennels about this at the request of the Post Office.
Sunak ‘confident’ he can get Rwanda scheme up and running
The prime minister has said again that he is “confident” his government can get its plan to deport to Rwanda asylum seekers who have reached the UK.
Rishi Sunak told reporters: “I’m committed to stopping the boats, we need to have a deterrent so that if people come here illegally, they can’t stay, they’ll be removed.
“That’s why Rwanda is so important. That’s why I’m determined to see it through. Once it’s up and running, I’m confident we’ll be able to operationalise the scheme, get people on flights.
“Because that’s how we’ll set up a deterrent and ultimately end the unfairness of people jumping the queue, coming here illegally putting pressure on local services, and risking their own lives.
“None of that’s right. None of it’s fair. None of it’s compassionate either, to do nothing, and our plan is the right one.”
The government’s attempt to get the scheme running has repeatedly failed in the courts and the latest legislation has been opposed by the House of Lords. Sunak said “First of all, we need to get it through parliament where the Labour party has been blocking it for a long time.”
A Labour spokesperson yesterday described the scheme as a “farce” that was costing taxpayers huge sums of money with no results.
The Financial Times has reported that Rwanda’s state-owned airline turned down a UK government proposal to transport asylum seekers, with reports that it considered it “brand damaging.”
Under the scheme, successful asylum seekers would remain in Rwanda. However, media reports yesterday suggested that some accommodation which was previously said to have been built to receive asylum seekers via the scheme had instead been sold to local residents in Rwanda.
Appearing on LBC radio this morning, Sunak again threatened to pull the UK out of the European convention on human rights, which would see the UK join Russia, Belarus and Vatican City as the only European states outside it. He told listeners:
I can be very clear – and I have been repeatedly – I am determined to see this policy through, because I think it’s really important for the country, for the security of our borders, for fairness.
I won’t let a foreign court block our ability to put people on planes and send them to Rwanda. We are a reasonable people trying to do a reasonable thing.
The Post Office Horizon IT inquiry has resumed. Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom is giving evidence. The lead counsel Jason Beer KC has just clarified that at the point Arbuthnot was being told in 2012 by the Post Office that no prosecution had ever failed and had not disclosed to him there were any bugs in the Horizon IT system, there had been three jury acquittals in cases where Horizon had featured.
There was also at this point a lengthy list of known problems with the system, including an instance where one subpostmistress had watched the amount of money she was supposed to owe the Post Office double in front of her eyes after following some instructions from the Post Office helpline to try to correct the balance.
You can watch here …
UK spent 27.9% of international aid budget on housing refugees in the UK
Patrick Wintour is the Guardian’s diplomatic editor
The UK taxpayer spent £4.3bn (27.9%) of the total UK aid budget on supporting the housing and food costs of refugees based in Britain, an increase of £600m from 2022, new official government aid statistics for 2023 show.
There has been a growing criticism that Foreign Office funds intended to help alleviate poverty overseas are being diverted to subsidise a chaotic Home Office run asylum system. The latest statistics show that the trend has continued in 2023.
Although the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) was the largest spender of UK Official Development Assistance (ODA), spending £9,471m, the Home Office spent £2,955m of ODA funding in 2023, the statistics published on Wednesday show.
Five other government departments each spent more than £200m of UK Official Development Assistance (ODA). The UK four years ago suspended the target to spend 0.7% of national income on aid.
Aid analysts said the refugee spending was only part of a wider long term trend whereby UK aid spend is increasingly being spent inside the UK rather than as promised in locally led projects operating inside recipient countries.
Ian Mitchell, from the Centre for Global Development in Europe commented “Headline figures showing the government spent 0.58% of the country’s income on aid are masking a bigger problem. The government is now spending over 50% of the £9.9bn bilateral aid budget within the UK. Over the last decade, every year has seen the UK spend a greater share of its bilateral aid within its own borders: rising from a low of 6% in 2013, to the 48% figure in 2022.”
The Post Office Horizon IT inquiry has just been reminded of an occasion when an MP Mike Wood asked “whether the Post Office was saying that the system was 100% secure and 100% foolproof, making the point that it would be the first software system implemented by government to be so”, and the Post Office reply was “There had not been a case investigated, where the Horizon system had been found to be at fault … The problem is that a small number of postmasters borrow money from the till. The problem is not Horizon. Every prosecution involving Horizon has found in favour of the Post Office, and not a single case existed where on investigation the Horizon system was found to be at fault.”
The inquiry is hearing that the Post Office at this point knew that at least two prosecutions had failed several years earlier, and it knew that bugs existed in the system. In fact, leading counsel Jason Beer KC is now reading out a devastatingly long list of bugs in the system that were well-known to the organisation and not disclosed to Lord Arbuthnot.
“We were all unaware”, he says. “But Mike Wood was raising the question is this the only perfect computer system in existence.”
This is all taking place in the summer of 2012. The chair Wyn Williams is asking Lord Arbuthnot about whether the role of Fujitsu had been raised at this point.
I don’t tend to focus on individual polls, as it is somewhat more reliable to average them out, as we do on our poll tracker. However it is worth noting that YouGov have put out some polling from Scotland this morning, where they say that Labour has overtaken the SNP for the first time in Westminster voting intention since the independence referndum.
I will immediately caveat that by saying it is an extremely small lead and it is just one poll, but UK national level polls are next to useless at teasing out the situation in Scotland, and it does appear to demonstrate that there has been a narrowing of the gap between the SNP and Labour in Scottish constituencies at a UK general election level.
A couple of key points from the YouGov figures:
One in three Scots (33%) currently say they intend to vote for Labour at the forthcoming general election, giving the party a minor two point lead over the SNP (31%). Our previous poll in this series – conducted in October 2023 – had the SNP just a single ahead of Labour, at 33% and 32% respectively. The SNP have lost a fifth (20%) of their 2019 voters to Labour, and are currently holding on to 66% of those who backed them previously. The Conservative vote share in Scotland has shifted more noticeably, falling six points since October to 14%.
YouGov Westminster voting intention (Scotland, 25 Mar - 2 Apr): Labour are now ahead of the SNP for the first time since the independence referendum
— YouGov (@YouGov) April 10, 2024
Labour: 33% (+1 from Oct)
SNP: 31% (-2)
Con: 14% (-6)
Lib Dem: 7% (+2)
Reform UK: 7% (+5)
Green: 5% (=)https://t.co/rUj2aYQo9s pic.twitter.com/wAzGpO8X6s
The same polling data produces the opposite result for Holyrood constituencies, with the SNP retaining a slim lead.
YouGov Holyrood *constituency* voting intention (25 Mar - 2 Apr)
— YouGov (@YouGov) April 10, 2024
SNP: 34% (-3 from Oct)
Lab: 32% (+3)
Con: 15% (-5)
Lib Dem: 9% (=)
Green: 4% (+1)https://t.co/rUj2aYPQjU pic.twitter.com/jrQxrlMeEg
At the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, Lord Arbuthnot has said that everybody seemed to rally around the word “robust”, and he was constatnly told that the Horizon system was “robust”.
He told the inquiry “There were lots of people who were told to use this word, which implies a sort of series of group-thinking seminars, which led to the use of language.”
A communication from Paula Vennells was read out to the inquiry in which she said:
The Post Office takes very seriously any perception that there is an issue with the accuracy of the Horizon system. There isn’t. The Horizon system has been rigorously tested using independent assessors and robust procedures.
Arbuthnot is being asked about how he was part of now a group of MPs pursuing the case, which included Oliver Letwin.
It is quite striking, at this point in the evidence, how even a group including then-senior MPs who belonged to the parties of government were being completely stonewalled by the Post Office insistence there was no problem, and officials accepting that as the truth.
One document shown to the inquiry states that most people having difficulties with the system could be successfully given extra training on Horizon, and the Post Office also appears to have insisted to the government and to MPs that it never failed in prosecutions over fraud.
Back to the Cass review of the NHS’s gender services for children for a moment, and victims and safeguarding minister Laura Farris has said she does not accept that the report showed the government was failing to look after children.
Appearing on GB News, Farris said:
I don’t accept that. And I make that point very gently and respectfully. There has been a 20-fold, something like a 15 or 20-fold increase in the number of children using these services in the last 10 or 15 years and that’s happened in many countries, many other countries.
It’s a problem everybody’s been grappling with. We’re the government that asked Hilary Cass to conduct that review, she spent three and a half years doing it, there is nothing comparable in any other country that is remotely as in-depth as this.
It’s been incredibly helpful to hear from doctors, from mental health experts and to look at the way that she recommends that this should be dealt with holistically on a regional basis, on a multidisciplinary basis. Actually, I think we’ve acted responsibly. We recognised how it was emerging, with the concerns that people were raising.
On publication of the report, Cass stressed that her findings were not intended to undermine the validity of trans identities or challenge people’s right to transition, but rather to improve the care of the fast-growing number of children and young people with gender-related distress.
In an interview with the Guardian, Cass said that gender-questioning children have been “let down” by the NHS, health professionals and a “woeful” lack of evidence about what treatment works. “One of the things that has let them down is that the toxicity of the debate has been so great that people have become afraid to work in this area.”
Lord Arbuthnot compares government 'arms length' relationship with Post Office to 'risks of owning dangerous dog'
The first thirty minutes of Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom’s evidence at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry has had its focus on the late 2000s and early 2010s, when he was actively trying to draw the government’s attention to the problem.
He was first involved as an opposition MP writing to Peter Mandelson when the latter was at the department of business about a specific case involving a constituent.
Mandelson, writing on behalf of the then-Labour government, said that the Post Office had assured the government that the Horizon IT system was sound, and that cases were being investigated thoroughly. The government also restated its position that in order to give it commercial freedom, while it was the single shareholder, the government operated the Post Office at an “arms length” relationship.
Arbuthnot has told the inquiry that he compares this to the risks of owning a dangerous dog. He said:
You cannot say that the dangerous dog has an arm’s length relationship with you if the dangerous dog behaves badly. So the whole premise of arm’s length control is a worrying one.
A little bit later in the chronology, when the coalition government was now in power, Arbuthnot continued correspondence with ministers about other Post Office employees who had been accused of fraud and who were saying it was the Horizon system to blame. He had this to say to the inquiry:
There was something at the back of my mind, which continued to trouble me. Which was the number of these people who were being told you are the only person this is happening to. And that struck me as being profoundly wrong.
Because at first it was obviously disprovable they were not the only people it was happening to. Second it was isolating those [people] so they could not get support from others in the same position. And third, it had an element of intimidation about it.
All of which set the Post Office and its way of operating with it subpostmasters in a bad light.
There has been some response to the government announcing it is intending to make assault on retail workers a specific offence. Part of its rationale, victims and safeguarding minister Laura Farris said, was to make it recordable. [See 9.12am]
Jo Causon, CEO of the Institute of Customer Service, said it was a “welcome step in the right direction” saying it offers “essential safeguards for countless frontline workers who are subjected to intolerable acts of physical aggression.”
She added:
This matter is not confined to retail workers alone. There is an urgent need to extend these protections to service professionals across various industries who are similarly exposed to daily abuse – including those in transportation, delivery services, and customer support roles. I urge the policing minister to take decisive action by ensuring that incidents of assault on public service workers are distinctly categorized within police records.
I mentioned earlier that asked about accusations he had shown weakness in dealing with the William Wragg sexting scandal, on LBC the prime minister sought to deflect that criticism into one of Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner. Here is a fuller transcript of that exchange. Sunak said:
People can can judge me if they want to judge me on that, that’s fine. I accept that. But when it comes to weakness, I mean Keir Starmer still hasn’t answered any questions properly about what’s going on with Angela Rayner. When it comes to me or my affairs people are very happy to ask lots of questions, including Angela Rayner herself.
Host Nick Ferrari then challenged Sunak, saying “come on prime minister, that dates back more than ten years, to a woman in a previous relationship, there’s nothing to see here.”
Sunak then continued:
Hang on. This is someone who, as far as you believe the media, assumes he’s going to stroll into 10 Downing Street later this year. And this is the person who’d be deputy leader, deputy prime minister of the country. And I think there are very clear questions for her to answer about this. He hasn’t answered them. She hasn’t answered them. I think it’s reasonable that people get a straight answer on it.
This is not the first time that Sunak, who was appointed prime minister by the Conservative party without an election or even a vote of Tory members, has suggested Keir Starmer would be “strolling” into Downing Street were the Labour party to win a general election under Starmer’s leadership.
The Post Office Horizon IT inquiry has resumed in London. You can watch it here. I will keep an eye on it for any key lines that emerge. The first witness is peer Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom, who supported the justice campaign led by Alan Bates.
Updated
Sunak: focus should be 'beyond the timing' of the next election and instead on 'substance'
Pushed on LBC this morning about the timing of the next general election, prime minister Rishi Sunak refused to be drawn, and suggested the country should have its focus on the “substance” of issues instead.
He told listeners:
When I got this job we’d been through a tough time as a country, the pandemic, war in Ukraine, impacts on energy bills. And there was a lot to get on with.
I set out five very clear priorities, I’m sure we’ll talk about them, to halve inflation, grow the economy, reduce debt, cut waiting list and to stop the boats.
And on all of those, you know, as I’m sure we’ll get into, I’m keen to just make progress and demonstrate to the country that if we stick to our plan, we can deliver the change that they and I want to see, and by doing so just restore everyone’s confidence and hope that there’s a brighter future ahead, and we can have a renewed sense of pride in the nation. That’s what I’m working very hard day and night to achieve.
I said at the beginning of this year very clearly that my working assumption was that we would have an election in the second half of this year, and beyond the timing of that, I really think it’s important to focus on the substance and the choices I just mentioned.
There are a lot of things facing the country that we’ve been working hard on that your callers I’m sure are interested in, whether its helping with the cost of living, tackling the waiting lists, stopping the boats, having a more sensible approach to net zero.
These are all real things that make a difference to people. We’ve got a plan, and actually, as I’m sure we’ll get into, it’s been tough, but I’m encouraged that the plan is now working, and we’re starting to deliver the change that I really wanted to.
Of those five pledges, Sunak has struggled to make progress. Inflation has halved while remaining above the Bank of England’s 2% target, and on the other measures debt has increased since 2022, NHS waiting lists are higher, the economy actually entered a recession the latter half of 2023, and while the number of Channel crossings was lower in 2023 than 2022, Sunak has failed to get his Rwanda deportation scheme live.
Incidentally, the main source of social media mirth to come out of Rishi Sunak’s LBC phone-in today was the moment when host Nick Ferrari introduced a caller by saying “The next caller is Louise in the Rhondda Valley, and you’re through to the prime minister, go ahead Louise, morning to you”, to which Louise said “Good morning prime minister”, and to which Sunak enthusiastically said “Hi Rhonda!” before realising his mistake. And now we all have a Beach Boys earworm.
"The next caller Louise, is in the Rhondda Valley and you're through to the Prime Minister, go ahead Louise."
— Adam Bienkov (@AdamBienkov) April 10, 2024
"Good morning Prime Minister."
"Hi Rhonda..." pic.twitter.com/JFd5C1EL1R
Updated
We are expecting two witnesses to give evidence at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry today from 10am. Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom, who you might recall better as James Arbuthnot, is a peer who supported yesterday’s witness Alan Bates in his justice campaign. We also expect to hear from Anthony Hooper, who chaired a working group set up by the Post Office to investigate cases. I will keep an ear out for any key lines emerging from that today.
Here is my colleague Sarah Butler with a little more on those new shoplifting plans which the government has announced:
The government is investing more than £55m in expanding facial recognition systems – including vans that will scan crowded high streets – as part of a renewed crackdown on shoplifting.
The scheme was announced alongside plans for tougher punishments for serial or abusive shoplifters in England and Wales, including being forced to wear a tag to ensure they do not revisit the scene of their crime, under a new standalone criminal offence of assaulting a retail worker.
The new law, under which perpetrators could be sent to prison for up to six months and receive unlimited fines, will be introduced via an amendment to the criminal justice bill that is working its way through parliament. The change could happen as early as the summer.
The government said it would invest £55.5m over the next four years. The plan includes £4m for mobile units that can be deployed on high streets using live facial recognition in crowded areas to identify people wanted by the police – including repeat shoplifters.
That investment follows the development of Project Pegasus under which some of the UK’s biggest retailers, including Marks & Spencer, Boots and Primark run their CCTV images through police databases using facial recognition technology.
Read more here: Shoplifting crackdown to include £55m for facial recognition tools in England and Wales
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper has been asked on Sky News this morning about the Cass review of the NHS’s gender services for children. She described it as “a watershed moment for the NHS and for NHS gender services.”
She said it was important to focus on children’s welfare, and not “get caught up in culture wars”.
She told viewers “I think the Cass Review is really important – we welcome it, Labour accepts all of its recommendations. I think they should be implemented now, as swiftly as possible, and we would like to work with the government on doing that.”
Kay Burley asked Cooper whether “children be able to socially transition without their parents permission”.
Cooper replied “parents obviously need to be involved in something like this. I think have been changes now to the guidance on this for schools. But again, I think this is something where everybody – parents, children, clinicians – everybody should just want the child’s welfare to be put at the heart of this, and to make sure that they’ve got the support that they need.”
On the same topic, victims and safeguarding minister Laura Farris said there would be a “fundamental change of direction” for the NHS after the review. She said:
We are going to have regional support centres across the UK so that a child who is questioning their gender will be given a holistic package of support and not just funnelled down an irreversible pathway.
Sunak tells shopworkers he's 'got their backs' with introduction of new criminal offence
Rishis Sunak has told retail workers he has “got their backs” and spoke of his own experience of his parent’s business dealing with shoplifters while announcing a crackdown on the crime which will invlove money to use facial recognition technology in stores.
Speaking on LBC, Sunak said “It’s not acceptable. It’s absolutely not right” about a rise in shoplifting figures. He said:
That’s why we’ve said we’ll introduce a new crime of assaulting retail workers shop workers, because it’s not right. They should be able to go about their day to day lives without fear of being assaulted by people. That’s why we’re introducing a brand new offence to target people who do that, and we’re working closely with [retailers and the police] to make sure that prolific offenders actually are not able to come into their shops in the first place, with the use of tags and things like that.
Sunak said he saw shoplifting in his parent’s pharmacy, and said “for a small family business it’s obviously financially affecting but it’s also very distressing. I know what it feels like.”
It isn’t clear that assaulting a retail worker wouldn’t be covered by existing law. Speaking on BBC Breakfast, the victims and safeguarding minister Laura Farris said the Government had spent “quite a lot of time going back and forth” on making assaulting a shopworker a separate criminal offence. She said:
The reason we’re changing the law today is because first of all we accept that this continues to be a problem and that it has increased.
And secondly because we think that it will work well for the purpose of recording the offence, this specific offence, and also because we’re attaching bespoke sanctions to it, different sanctions that would apply to ordinary assault.
Farris went on to say in a separate interview on Times Radio that “We’re not hearing from the retail sector that this is sort of individuals stealing a loaf of bread, we’re hearing something far more sinister and organised and methodical that’s been taking place. They say that they think it’s by and large organised crime.”
Sunak defends his failure to sack MP accused in sexting scandal
Rishi Sunak has tried to deflect criticism of his handling of the William Wragg sexting scandal by saying that Keir Starmer has been weak about Angela Rayner’s tax affairs.
William Wragg announced yesterday that he had voluntarily given up the Conservative whip in parliament, days after it had emerged that he had passed on details of colleagues in what appears to have been a sexting sting. Earlier on Tuesday he also resigned as chair of the Commons’ public administration and constitutional affairs committee and as vice-chair of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs.
“There are wider things happening and he rightly apologised for what happened,” the prime minister told LBC. “There’s a police investigation that’s happening it’s important that we work through these things in due time. The important thing here is that we let the police investigation run their course.”
Sunak, whose wife agreed to end her non-dom status and start paying UK tax in 2022 when he was chancellor after an outcry, said of claims that he had been weak in dealing with it:
People can judge me if they want to judge me on that, that’s fine, I accept that. When it comes to weakness I know Keir Starmer still hasn’t answered any questions properly about what’s going on with Angela Rayner. When it comes to me and my affairs people are very happy to ask lots of questions, including Angela Rayner herself.
The Conservative party chair, Richard Holden, yesterday said it was quite clear that Wragg’s “career in public life is at an end”. Wragg remains the MP for Hazel Grove in Greater Manchester.
Sunak criticises some Nato allies for not spending 2% of GDP on defence
Rishis Sunak has criticised Nato allies for failing to increase defence spending, while defending his own record on the issue.
The government is committed to increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, above the 2% target for Nato allies.
He told listeners of LBC:
The world is sadly a less certain and a less safe place and it’s important that we invest to keep the country safe. That’s what we’ve been doing … we’ve seen the largest increase in defence spending since the end of the cold war. I authorised that as chancellor.
He went on to say only the US in Nato spent more on defence than the UK, adding “There are dozens of other members of Nato who are not even spending the 2%, we have shown British leadership on this. Our job is always to set a lead and that’s what we have done.”
A Washington Post analysis in February showed that the UK was tenth in the table of countries spending a proportion of the their GDP on defence in Nato, with Poland (3.9%), the US (3.49%) and Greece (3.01%) being the only countries to spend above 3%. Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, Romania, Hungary and Latvia all spent a higher proportion of GDP than the UK. 19 allies did not spend more than 2%, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
Yesterday former armed forces minister James Heappey urged both the Tories and Labour to put a committment to spending 3% of GDP on defence in their manifestos for the next general election.
Sunak doubles down on no change to status of UK arms exports to Israel
Rishi Sunak has doubled down on the UK’s decision not to suspend arms sales to Israel, echoing foreign secretary David Cameron’s words from yesterday by saying that “none of our closest allies” have stopped existing export licences.
Cameron had made the comments in Washington during a joint press conference with US secretary of state Antony Blinken.
On LBC this morning, Sunak said the UK has a “long-established process” relating to the arms export regime and “we review these things regularly”.
“That’s led to no change. Actually none of our closest allies have currently suspended existing arms licences either, so we continue to discuss these things with our allies.”
He said the government has a “strict set of criteria” and an “obligation to act in accordance” with legal assessments when it comes to arms exports, and dismissed suggestions that civil servants might refuse to process licences.
He suggested it would not be “appropriate” for officials to stop work relating to the sale of arms. “That’s not something I’m familiar with, I don’t think that would be appropriate,” he told LBC. “We have a civil service code. All civil servants should work to the civil service code.”
Sunak described the deaths of humanitarian aid workers caused by multiple Israeli airstrikes on their convoy as a “shocking tragedy”, saying:
It was a shocking tragedy what happened to our veterans when they were selflessly carrying out aid missions into Gaza and I’ve also said repeatedly the situation in Gaza is increasingly intolerable, you know, the humanitarian suffering that people are experiencing isn’t right and prime minister Netanyahu needs to do more to alleviate that. I’ve made that very clear to him.
Welcome and opening summary …
Good morning. Rishi Sunak has been on the radio this morning, where he has criticised Nato allies for not spending enough on defence, doubled down that the UK won’t change its position on arms sales to Israel, and defended his handling of the William Wragg sexting scandal. More on that in a moment, first your headlines …
A shoplifting crackdown is to include £55m for facial recognition tools in England and Wales. Minister Laura Farris has suggested that shoplifting is “by and large” linked to “organised crime” rather than the cost of living
After a Sky News investigation into serious offenders who have applied for asylum in the UK, Farris criticised what she described as a “merry-go-round”. Labour’s Yvette Cooper said rules needed to be tightened around sex offenders
William Wragg has finally resigned the Conservative party whip days after admitting to giving out colleagues’ personal phone numbers to someone he had met on
More than 7.4 million people in the UK struggled to pay a bill or a credit repayment in January, according to a financial regulator
Former Conservative work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith called on the Department for Work and Pensions to stop hounding people for the repayments and investigate its own responsibility for the errors
The Post Office Horizon IT inquiry continues today, albeit with less star-power than Alan Bates. Former minister James Arbuthnot and retired judge Anthony Hooper are the witnesses. Westminster, the Scottish parliament and Senedd are on recess. There is some business scheduled in the Northern Ireland assembly.
It is Martin Belam here with you this week. You can email me at martin.belam@theguardian.com, especially if you have spotted my inevitable errors and typos, or you think I’ve missed something important.
Updated
