Keir Starmer is facing a grilling on Southport today as he orders an inquiry into how the state failed to stop the killer going on the rampage.
The PM will hold a press conference in Downing Street after he condemned ‘failings’ over the case of Axel Rudakubana and acknowledged people were right to ‘demand answers’.
But he is expected to reject allegations of a ‘cover up’ of terrorist links in the immediate aftermath of the atrocity – which was followed by a wave of rioting across the country. The authorities are adamant that they could not risk the case collapsing.
Rudakubana pleaded guilty yesterday to murdering three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in July.
It has emerged he was referred three times to anti-extremism programme Prevent amid concerns over his fixation with violence.
But despite this and contact with other state agencies, the authorities failed to stop the attack which claimed the lives of Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven.
Announcing an inquiry last night, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the country needed ‘independent answers’ on Prevent and other agencies’ contact with the ‘extremely violent’ Rudakubana and ‘how he came to be so dangerous’.
Following Rudakubana’s guilty pleas, Sir Keir described the 18-year-old as ‘vile and sick’, and said there were ‘grave questions to answer’ on how the state ‘failed’ to protect the three girls.
The PM added: ‘Britain will rightly demand answers, and we will leave no stone unturned in that pursuit.’
As well as the three murders, Rudakubana admitted 10 counts of attempted murder, possession of a knife, production of a biological toxin, ricin, and possession of information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing to commit acts of terrorism.
The terrorism offence relates to a PDF file entitled Military Studies In The Jihad Against The Tyrants, The Al Qaeda Training Manual.
He is also understood to have possessed numerous other documents on violent subjects, including A Concise History Of Nazi Germany, The Myth Of The Remote Controlled Car Bomb and Amerindian Torture And Cultural Violence.
Sources said the material discovered showed an ‘obsession with extreme violence’ but there was no evidence he ascribed to any political or religious ideology or was ‘fighting for a cause’.
With some opposition figures alleging a ‘cover-up’ of Rudakubana’s contact with the authorities, Sir Keir is likely to face questions about why this information had not been published earlier.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage insisted he was ‘right all along’ when he claimed in the summer that information had been withheld from the public.
But Ms Cooper said the information about Rudakubana’s background could not be made public earlier ‘to avoid jeopardising the legal proceedings or prejudicing the possible jury trial, in line with the normal rules of the British justice system’.
There are also likely to be questions about why the charges relating to the possession of ricin and the al Qaida training manual were not made public for three months after the teenager’s arrest.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said there were many questions that ‘remain unanswered about what went wrong’.
Welcoming the announcement of a public inquiry, he said: ‘We also need to know who in Government knew what and when, as well as why the authorities may have withheld some information from the public.’
Mr Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘There is quite a lot you can put into the public domain without prejudicing the judicial proceedings.
‘In previous incidents, we’ve seen more information being put out and Jonathan Hall drew attention to the risks of not putting out information, it undermines trust in justice, but it also creates a void.
‘So, I think these are legitimate questions. I think it’s important the inquiry looks at those questions as well as what happened before this appalling incident.’
Asked whether he was confident in the Prevent counter-terrorism programme, he told Times Radio: ‘The Prevent programme is a long-running programme. It deals with about 7,000 referrals per year.
‘There was quite a comprehensive review of Prevent by William Shawcross that was published in February of last year … So, one question I’ll be asking the Government is whether they plan to implement the recommendations in the Shawcross report.
‘I think it’s just important the inquiry looks at all of this, gets to the truth both about what happened beforehand, but critically also the Government’s response afterwards, and what they knew when and whether they should have put more information into the public domain.
‘It appears they withheld information about the perpetrator, potentially, on CPS advice.
‘William Shawcross has raised questions over that, saying that if you leave a void, then speculation fills it, and William Shawcross is obviously an expert lawyer, and also says there’s quite a lot you can say about these incidents afterwards.
‘But clearly in this case, the Government, it appears, didn’t share information which they had in their possession.’