Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said the failure of state institutions in the case of child-killer Axel Rudakubana “frankly leaps off the page”. The 18-year-old pleaded guilty on Monday to murdering three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, Merseyside, in July. The PM added that the Southport killings “must be a line in the sand for Britain”. Report by Faragt. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00The senseless, barbaric murder of three young girls in Southport is a devastating moment in
00:08our history. No words come anywhere close to expressing the brutality and horror in this case.
00:18The tragedy of the Southport killings must be a line in the sand for Britain.
00:24We must make sure the names of those three young girls are not associated with the vile perpetrator
00:32but instead with a fundamental change in how Britain protects its citizens and its children.
00:42In pursuit of that, we must of course ask and answer difficult questions,
00:50questions that should be far-reaching, unburdened by cultural or institutional sensitivities,
01:00and driven only by the pursuit of justice. That is what we owe the families.
01:09The responsibility for this barbaric act lies, as it always does,
01:15with the vile individual who carried it out.
01:20But that is no comfort, and more importantly, it is no excuse.
01:28And so, as part of the inquiry launched by the Home Secretary yesterday,
01:34I will not let any institution of the state deflect from their failure,
01:39failure which in this case, frankly, leaps off the page. For example, the perpetrator
01:48was referred to the Prevent Programme on three separate occasions. In 2019, once, and in 2021,
01:58twice. Yet on each of these occasions, a judgment was made that he did not meet the threshold for
02:08intervention. A judgment that was clearly wrong, and which failed those families.
02:16And I acknowledge that here today.