Inquiry should be free to seek answers without ‘ridiculous nonsense’ online – MP
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Inquiry teams looking at the Southport attack should be free to complete their probe without “nonsense” online, the town’s MP has said. Patrick Hurley warned that speculation by “public figures who should know better” could have caused a jury trial to collapse, if murderer Axel Rudakubana had not admitted to all charges.
But Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp called for more “openness and transparency” from the Government, which he claimed could have helped combat disinformation “which arguably fuelled the riots” last summer. Rudakubana, 18, pleaded guilty on Monday to murdering three girls – Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven – at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, Merseyside, last July.
Mr Hurley told MPs on Tuesday: “It’s been another tough week for my Southport constituency, I’m sure members across the House will appreciate.”. The Labour MP added: “I was clear back in the summer that I did not want people speculating online as to the motives or the background of the person that we can now say was the murderer of those three girls.”.
He warned that “the trial could have collapsed because of that speculation, because it wasn’t just speculation but also in some respect downright lies – and downright lies that were being circulated in the interests of gaining political gain for themselves, with the interests of justice a distant second”.
Mr Hurley said “the public inquiry should also be allowed to undertake its work and make its recommendations free of the ridiculous nonsense and lies that we’ve seen from public figures who should know better circulating purely for their own interests”.
