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Downing Street rejects US suggestion of 'two-tiered policing'
Downing Street has rejected the US state department’s suggestion of “two-tiered policing” in the UK, while insisting Britain’s relationship with the US remains “incredibly strong”.
In a statement, the prime minister’s spokesperson referred to comments made by David Lammy this morning during a media round (see post at 09:19). The spokesperson said: “We do reject any suggestion of two-tier policing in the United Kingdom.
“The deputy prime minister [David Lammy] said mistakes can be made in any public service, it is right there is now an investigation going on.”
When asked how Keir Starmer would characterise the UK-US special relationship, the spokesperson said: “As ever, it is incredibly strong.
“We work with them on a number of fronts right across out systems and this remains.”
Ministers are “in regular touch” with their US counterparts, they added.
Key events
Sundus Abdi
A proposed travel card for northern England modelled on London’s Oyster system could save commuters up to £276 a year, data shows.
Users would tap in and out across different transport networks and fares would be automatically capped at the cheapest available rate.
Researchers estimate the scheme could generate up to £2.7bn for the economy over five years by making it easier for people to travel between towns and cities for work, training and leisure.
The proposal would link together transport systems across northern England including Greater Manchester’s Bee Network, West Yorkshire’s planned Weaver Network and South Yorkshire’s People’s Network, allowing passengers to move between regions without buying separate tickets.
The scheme is backed by the Good Growth Foundation thinktank and the Labour MP Luke Charters. Supporters argue that while city regions across the north of England have invested heavily in improving local transport, travelling between those networks can involve navigating different ticketing systems, fare structures and operators.
The US state department has intervened in the debate surrounding the murder of Henry Nowak in the UK with a thinly-veiled rebuke criticising “two-tier policing” in the country.
Here my colleague Jamie Grierson takes a look at the case and the controversy behind the US intervention:
Downing Street has responded to Kemi Badenoch’s suggestion that conflict over identity politics could lead to civil war, saying Britain is a “reasonable and tolerant” country.
In an interview for a BBC Radio 4 documentary, England’s Identity Crisis, before the violent scenes in Southampton over the case of murdered teenager Henry Nowak, the Conservative leader said: “This is not a racist country. But now we are seeing more and more hostility to people of every ethnicity, whether they’re English or not English, because people are bringing political conflict into an area where we didn’t have political conflict.”
She added that politicians should not use tensions “as a way to get some votes from one particular community”.
“Parties which do that, politicians who do that, they may get to benefit in the short term, but in the long term, that’s how you end up with civil war,” Badenoch said.
Responding to her comments, a Downing Street spokesperson said: “That’s not the Britain that we recognise.
“We are reasonable, tolerant people. When we have a terrible case like Henry’s, we react calmly, as his family have done.
“The disgraceful scenes that we saw in Southampton on Tuesday night do not represent the majority of people who want to see unity and progress, and a violent minority with a mob mentality will not change that.”
Meanwhile, a debate on the impact of AI on human relationships and society is taking place in the House of Lords.
Opening the debate, the archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, asked: “Does AI make human life more human?”
She continued:
The question matters for those designing, developing and building the technology as they think about what ideologies and belief systems should underpin the models, as there is no such thing as value neutral technology.
It matters for governments, for policymakers, as they determine what should and should not be permitted and regulated.
And it matters for those using the technology. Many feel that AI is affecting them hugely without having any say in the matter. Others feel that the things which make us unique as humans are at risk of being eroded, devalued and replaced by AI.
As people turn to chatbots rather than other human beings for comfort, for wisdom, in moments of loneliness, loss, anxiety or pain, how should we adopt AI and what is the right place for it in our relationships, our families and our societies?
She warned of reports showing evidence of AI “facilitating violence against women and girls” and allowing child sexual abuse “with few safeguards”.
She added: “These harms are not simply the result of user misuse. AI platform design choices, policies and governance failures are encouraging and enabling them, and existing regulation is wholly inadequate to prevent them.”
Downing Street rejects US suggestion of 'two-tiered policing'
Downing Street has rejected the US state department’s suggestion of “two-tiered policing” in the UK, while insisting Britain’s relationship with the US remains “incredibly strong”.
In a statement, the prime minister’s spokesperson referred to comments made by David Lammy this morning during a media round (see post at 09:19). The spokesperson said: “We do reject any suggestion of two-tier policing in the United Kingdom.
“The deputy prime minister [David Lammy] said mistakes can be made in any public service, it is right there is now an investigation going on.”
When asked how Keir Starmer would characterise the UK-US special relationship, the spokesperson said: “As ever, it is incredibly strong.
“We work with them on a number of fronts right across out systems and this remains.”
Ministers are “in regular touch” with their US counterparts, they added.
In todays’ episode of Today in Focus, Hugh Muir and Joe Mulhall explain the far-right conspiracy theory of “two-tier policing” that can be heard everywhere from pubs to parliament and riots to talk radio.
It has been parroted in parliament by Nigel Farage, on social media by Elon Musk, and on the ground by far-right figures such as Tommy Robinson, as violent anti-police protests erupted in Southampton.
It has come after the death of 18-year-old Henry Nowak, who was stabbed by Vickrum Digwa and then arrested as he lay dying. Terrible mistakes were made by the police who ignored his pleas for help.
To his father, Nowak’s death is a warning about the dangers of knife crime. Yet since Digwa’s conviction, it has been shaped into something very different: proof – because Nowak was white, and his assailant Asian – that white people are treated unfairly and discriminated against by the police.
The government has now rushed to push back, with Keir Starmer meeting Nowak’s family. But is it already too late to dispel the two-tier policing myth?
Joe tells Annie Kelly: “It feels a little bit like the genie’s out the bottle, it’s hard to turn people’s minds back around.”
And Hugh explains how a backlash to address the evidence-based discrimination against black and minority communities has festered.
You can listen to the episode here:
UK in the “most dangerous period” in decades, says military chief
Earlier, Air Chief Marshal Richard Knighton, the UK’s chief of the defence staff, warned now is the “most dangerous period” in decades for Britain and the country needs to prepare for potential “longer conflicts”.
Knighton said Russia was “probing, challenging, testing our defences” including through “cyber-attacks or trying to smuggle technology, and reckless sabotage and assassination attempts”.
“This is the most dangerous time I have known in my working life,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“And it is important that society and all of us recognise and understand that, and that may mean that we need to make different choices and different priorities.”
Jamie Grierson
A former chair of an influential parliamentary committee said it was “shocking” that the public spending watchdog had not established Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s income from subletting properties.
Margaret Hodge, who led the public accounts committee, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme she was “very concerned” that the National Audit Office (NAO) was not able to find out how much money the former prince had made from letting properties.
She also raised concerns that a report by the NAO did not cover all of the crown estate properties.
Hodge made her comments after the NAO revealed Mountbatten-Windsor received private income from subletting three cottages on his Windsor Royal Lodge estate while paying a “peppercorn rent” to the crown estate.
“We all want a royal family to be continued to be respected, valued and treasured. I want a royal family, but in a modern era that does require proper transparency and accountability. It’s shocking that the National Audit Office was not able to establish how much money Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor secured from the properties he let,” the Labour peer, who was chair of the committee from 2010 to 2015, said.
Read more:
Starmer says UK must boost defence investment over threat of Russia
Commenting further on the defence investment plan, Starmer highlighted the urgency of boosting defence due to the threat of a Russian attack against Nato.
He said:
If you needed any reminder about the importance of this, it is our intelligence assessment, and the assessment of other countries in Nato, that there could be an attack by Russia on Nato as soon as 2030.
So you can see the urgency and the priority that we’re putting behind this.
That defence investment plan will be really important, it will be very much focused on the capability of the future that we need to defend our country.
It will mean more work for you and other people like you around the country, because I’m really determined that as we increase defence spend, which we’ve already done, as we implement the defence investment plan, which will be published in coming weeks, it’s really important that what goes alongside that is good, well-paid, skilled jobs in this country.
Speaking during a visit to a defence factory, Starmer said:
We’ve been working on that defence investment plan for some time, very closely with our armed forces, as you would expect, because we need that interaction.
What is the capability that you most need, in what time period, with the MoD and actually across government, because this is a cross-government priority.
And that will now be published before the Nato summit, which is in just a few weeks’ time, a very important summit where countries across the world come together.
Nato, of course, being the single most effective military alliance the world has ever seen.
Starmer says delayed defence investment plan will be published 'in the coming weeks'
The prime minister is speaking about defence during a visit to Wiltshire.
He said the long-delayed defence investment plan “will now be published before the Nato summit” on 7 July. He added that it will be published “in the coming weeks”.
Originally expected last autumn, the defence investment plan has faced repeated postponements amid warnings that the military faces a £28bn funding gap over the next four years.
Pippa Crerar
Andy Burnham has signalled he would begin transforming England’s broken social care system this year if he became prime minister, accusing Westminster of “flinching away” from tackling difficult policy problems.
The Greater Manchester mayor said politicians must be willing to take on “the weight of the system” that stood in the way of radical change, as he began to set out his prospectus for government if he won the Makerfield byelection.
Burnham, who first tried to change the social care system when he was Labour’s health secretary in 2009, said there was an urgent need to fix the crisis. Then, he had planned a levy on estates to pay for universal social care, while in recent years he has talked about replacing inheritance tax with a progressive “care levy” to fund a national care service.
“It is urgent, the need to fix social care, and I personally would look at all of the kind of implications of that in relation to inheritance tax and care charges and everything. I wouldn’t flinch from it,” he said.
Read more:
UK asylum system on the brink of collapse, report warns
In other developments this morning, a committee of cross-party MPs has warned the UK asylum system is on the brink of collapse as the government fails to cope with severe pressure.
In a report published today, the public accounts committee said the Home Office has focused on short-term fixes and was “at considerable risk of repeating past failures”.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the committee, said:
Our report provides an end-to-end snapshot of the entire asylum system, and its findings paint a disturbing picture – at the time of our inquiry, control of it had been all but lost.
The focus on short term, reactive ‘fixes’ has left the government chasing after pressures pushed from one part of the system to the next.
There is no clear strategy uniting these efforts, and engagement across departments and with local authorities is patchy at best.
Given senior officials’ inability to articulate what the asylum system is collectively trying to achieve, it is no wonder such a directionless bureaucracy ends with people at the heart of it either left in limbo, or lost entirely.
The Home Office announced a series of reforms to asylum and refugee policy, including plans for people granted asylum in the UK having their refugee status made temporary and subject to review every 30 months.
Conservative MP Harriet Cross also commented on claims from the Trump administration of “two-tier policing” in the UK.
Speaking to Sky News, she said: “I think it’s clearly not helpful when we’ve got enough people within the UK itself concerned about this for other voices to add.
“But certainly … the point is that there is concern within the UK of how policing is at the moment, and what we really need is a return to common sense policing and for everyone to have equality under the law. And for whatever reason we have slipped away from that.”
Also commenting on the US state department’s statement on Nowak’s murder was Liberal Democrat MP Calum Miller.
He suggested the prime minister should summon the US ambassador over the matter.
“The three main parliamentary party leaders were right to call for calm, respect and unity yesterday,” said Miller, who is the Lib Dems’ foreign affairs spokesperson.
“The Trump administration should not be using the tragic murder of Henry Nowak as a political football.
“This is flagrant foreign interference that seeks to fan the flames of division and the prime minister should summon the US ambassador immediately.”
Lammy rejects US state department criticism of 'two-tier policing' in UK
We have more comments from David Lammy, who was on the media round this morning.
He rejected the US state department’s criticism of “two-tiered policing” in the UK in relation to the murder of 18-year-old student Henry Nowak.
The US state department weighed in after Vickrum Digwa, 23, was jailed for 21 years this week for killing Nowak in Southampton in December. Digwa stabbed Nowak five times with a Sikh ceremonial knife before telling police that Nowak had been racist towards him, causing officers to arrest and handcuff the student before they saw his fatal injuries.
In a post on X, the US state department expressed their condolences to Nowak’s family, but added: “Ideological conditioning and two-tiered policing are glaring symptoms of civilisational decline.” (Read more on this story here).
When asked to comment, Lammy told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I don’t recognise this caricature of a two-tier policing system in our country.
“I just don’t see it in the interactions I have with policing, and so I do reject that.”
Lammy said it was “good” that police chiefs are looking at the wording of anti-racism guidance as the “public need clarity in these circumstances”.
“And it sounds like there’s not clarity fully in this area,” he added.
Opening summary: Lammy comes out in defence of Starmer after Burnham confirms leadership ambitions
Hello and welcome to our UK politics blog.
David Lammy has come out in support of the prime minister, saying Keir Starmer would fight in a leadership contest after Andy Burnham said he would join one if elected an MP.
“There is no contest at the moment, and my view is it would be a huge distraction at this time,” the deputy prime minister told LBC this morning.
“The prime minister, by the way, has been absolutely clear: if there is a contest, he’ll be in it.”
He added: “I’ve supported every leader of the Labour party. They’ve had my full loyalty. Keir Starmer has got my loyalty, full loyalty, until the day he no longer wishes to serve.”
His remarks came after the Greater Manchester mayor announced he would challenge the prime minister should there be a leadership race. It was the first time Burnham, who is standing in the Makerfield byelection, has publicly said he would consider launching a bid to become the Labour leader.
Appearing on Question Time last night, he said: “I think Wes Streeting seems to have launched a leadership contest, so if that is running, I would seek to join it. But I’d have to persuade members of the Parliamentary Labour Party to do the same.”
Hitting back at Burnham, Downing Street issued statement saying Starmer “will not walk away”, adding: “The country expects us to focus on governing and to deliver change for hard-working people, not get distracted by Westminster debates.”
In an interview with the Guardian’s political editor Pippa Crerar, Burnham signalled he would begin transforming England’s broken social care system this year if he became prime minister.
“It is urgent, the need to fix social care, and I personally would look at all of the kind of implications of that in relation to inheritance tax and care charges and everything. I wouldn’t flinch from it,” he said.
Read more here:
Also today, Lammy said tech billionaire Elon Musk should “step back” from tweeting about the murder of Henry Nowak amid an ongoing feud between the government and X owner.
“I think there’s an IPO this week in the States on Starlink. Elon Musk should get on with that,” Lammy told Sky News.
“I mean, tweeting over 100 times about this tragic, horrific case … I urge Elon Musk to stay out of tweeting about this sensitive case.”
He added: “I don’t spend time on X surfing Elon Musk tweets, so I haven’t read them, but I’m not sure any of them reached the standard that require that. But I think it is appropriate for politicians to urge Elon Musk to step back.”
Starmer has accused Musk of “interfering in our politics” and attempting to create division with the numerous social media posts he has made about the murder of Nowak, many of which have used far-right themes and talking points.
