Chris Whitty to give evidence to MPs on assisted dying bill committee – UK politics live
Chris Whitty to give evidence to MPs on assisted dying bill committee – UK politics live
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Good morning. The main political event of the week will be Rachel Reeves’ speech tomorrow on promoting growth, and this morning she and Keir Starmer have been meeting business leaders over breakfast in the centre of London to discuss what it will say. It is not clear yet how impressed the audience were, but the pictures look good.
![[Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves meeting business leaders over breakfast in central London]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/685866774728b390d45c05cbb75e3d2ed01e4aa9/0_0_7787_5191/master/7787.jpg?width=465&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
A week ago Starmer was giving a speech in Downing Street on his response to the Southport killings, and one of his arguments was that the authorities need a wider definition of terrorism to include people like the Southport killer, Axel Rudakubana, who was not treated as a terrorist because he was not ideologically motivated, but who committed a crime that spread as much terror as any conventional act of terrorism. But today you will have woken up to the news on the BBC that Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, has rejected an internal Home Office report calling for the official definition of terrorism to be widened.
![[Chris Whitty giving evidence to assisted dying public bill committee]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/32edc56b099f70dbe878fc92836a439bada95d2f/0_0_1238_692/master/1238.jpg?width=465&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
The actual situation is complicated. Overnight Policy Exchange, a rightwing thinktank, published a report which included some leaked details of the internal Home Office report, commissioned by Cooper after the Southport killings, with critical commentary. The report is called “Extremely Confused”, which gives a fair view of its assessment of the report, and one of its authors is Andrew Gilligan, a former adviser to Boris Johnson. The paper includes quotes from the leaked report, but Policy Exchange has not published the whole document. Nevertheless, the Policy Exchange report has been widely written up, particularly in Tory papers critical of what the internal Home Office report is saying, and Cooper briefed against it in response.
