20 years on from the febrile aftermath of London's 7/7 bombings, a heart-stopping minute by minute account of the day Scotland Yard's first ever shoot-to-kill operation ended in the... CATASTROPHIC death of an innocent man
Twenty years ago, London was a city under attack, living on its nerves. Out of the blue that summer of 2005, the capital's transport system was hit by a murderous wave of al-Qaeda bombers, with devastating results. Ordinary folk going about their everyday lives died in the onslaught. Hundreds were mutilated.
London knew all about terrorist bombs from years of enduring attacks by various Irish factions. But here was something new to these shores and infinitely more terrifying – the suicide bomber hell-bent on martyrdom. To Commissioner of Police Sir Ian Blair it was a door opening into a new kind of terrorism. 'The IRA and the Loyalists never did anything the size of this. This was a step change.'
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Telegraph
16 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Reeves to give prosecutors extra £250m to tackle courts backlog
More prosecutors are to be recruited, as part of a £250 million courts cash injection to be announced by Rachel Reeves. The funding will tackle record legal backlogs which are forcing thousands of victims to wait more than two years for justice. Secured by Shabana Mahmood, the Justice Secretary, the money is a 10 per cent uplift for the period 2026-29. It will enable the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to recruit and retain hundreds of prosecutors to tackle the backlog of cases, which stood at a record 74,651 at the end of 2024. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is expected to emerge as one of the biggest winners in the spending review on Wednesday. The Chancellor will also confirm an extra £700 million to recruit more probation officers as part of an expansion of community punishments to ease prison overcrowding. Ms Mahmood has further secured a £4.7 billion capital investment to build new prisons to help meet the Government's target of 14,000 extra jail places by 2031. Three sites – HMPs Garth, Grendon and Gartree – have already been commissioned. The funding increase is a recognition of the political damage the Government could suffer if it fails to solve the prison overcrowding crisis and reduce court delays. Last year's early release of thousands of prisoners, including some who were filmed toasting Sir Keir Starmer, has been a major factor in undermining public confidence in Labour, according to opinion polls. A Treasury source said the cash injection would 'speed up justice for victims and witnesses waiting months or years for cases to come to trial, after the Government inherited a justice system on the brink of collapse and courts in crisis'. The source added: 'To battle the backlog, this new funding by 2028/29 will mean the CPS can recruit more Crown Advocates and front-line staff to prosecute cases and better support victims.' The MoJ is soon expected to announce the biggest shake-up in a generation of the court system, with thousands of suspects to be stripped of the right to a jury trial. The plans, to be outlined by Sir Brian Leveson, one of Britain's most senior judges, are expected to limit the number of such cases to help clear the backlog. Proposals being considered include the creation of an intermediate court comprising a judge and two magistrates to hear cases that would previously have gone to a lengthy crown court trial before a jury. It is understood Sir Brian has also been looking at the possibility of increasing magistrates' sentencing powers so that they would be able to rule on cases related to offences that carry prison sentences of up to two years. They can currently only imprison convicted offenders for up to a year. Any removal of jury trials is expected to prompt a fierce backlash from many within the legal profession. However, Ms Mahmood has already warned that without such action the court backlog could increase to an unprecedented 100,000 cases. The courts review, commissioned by Ms Mahmood, follows a sentencing review by David Gauke, the former Tory justice secretary, which recommended criminals should be freed as little as a third of the way into their sentences if they behave well and engage with rehabilitation schemes. The proposals, which have been accepted by the MoJ, will also allow killers, rapists and other violent offenders to be freed halfway through their terms rather than two-thirds, if they behave well and engage in training, education and work while behind bars. A Treasury source said: 'The criminal justice system was broken after 14 years of neglect. We need to rebuild not just the system itself, but confidence in it too. You can't make our streets safer if you don't have the resource to put dangerous suspects on trial. 'That's why the Chancellor is going to throw her backing behind battling the backlog in our courts, hiring more prosecutors and giving them the tools to deliver justice for victims as part of our Plan for Change.'
The Guardian
30 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘Smash the gangs': is Labour's migration policy just a slogan?
At 5.30am on Tuesday, six immigration enforcement officers and a BBC TV crew gathered in a deserted B&Q car park near Sheffield's railway station, waiting in the rain for a call from London that would trigger simultaneous arrests of suspected people smugglers in six towns. Forty minutes later, the Home Office staff drove in convoy to a nearby residential block (followed by the BBC and the Guardian), made their way up the stairs carrying a red battering ram, ready to smash the suspect's door down. The equipment wasn't needed, because the man, barefoot in his checked pyjamas, opened the door and let the team inside. He was given a few moments to get dressed, before being taken silently in handcuffs to the van outside, sweat running down his face. Footage of the wider operation was broadcast that night on the BBC and also ITV News at 10, with the security minister, Dan Jarvis, in Cheltenham, wearing a black immigration enforcement stab vest, observing another of the six linked arrests. Keir Starmer posted photographs of the raids on X, tersely announcing: 'When I said we would smash the people smuggling gangs, I meant it.' It was a useful bit of positive messaging, carefully facilitated by the Home Office press office, in a week when ministers have been confronted with uncomfortable evidence that their efforts to prevent the arrival of small boats are flailing just as spectacularly as those of the last government. Last Saturday 1,195 people arrived in the UK on 18 small boats, the highest number of arrivals this year, bringing the provisional total for 2025 to 14,811; 42% higher than the same point last year (10,448) and 95% up from the same point in 2023 (7,610). The defence secretary, John Healey, said Britain had 'lost control of its borders over the last five years'. The Home Office tried to explain the rising numbers by releasing figures showing that the number of 'red days' – when weather conditions are favourable for small boats crossings – peaked in 2024-25. Conservative opposition MPs accused the government of 'blaming the weather'. 'Public opinion won't put up with this,' the Reform UK party leader, Nigel Farage, told GB News, urging the government again to declare a national emergency on illegal immigration. With Reform's popularity ratings surging, the government is under enormous political pressure to show that its much-advertised 'smash the gangs' policy is beginning to work. Last week's raids were flagged as an anti-gangs success, but they turned out to be entirely unconnected to people smuggling in small boats. The six people who were arrested on suspicion of facilitating illegal entry are believed to have helped at least 200 Botswana nationals to travel to the UK by plane on tourist visas, and to have assisted them with false documentation on arrival to claim asylum or to get work in care homes. The criminal and financial investigation unit of the Home Office's immigration enforcement team said this was one of the department's top 10 immigration investigations, ranked by potential financial gain, number of people involved and risk of harm to victims exploited by the gang. Reminding the home secretary that small boat crossings were 'one of the biggest challenges your department faces', the Labour MP Chris Murray asked Yvette Cooper at a home affairs select committee hearing: 'Can you tell us how many gangs you've smashed so far?' The home secretary gave some details about the arrests that morning, prompting Murray to respond with enthusiasm: 'When I asked that question, I did not expect you to say you had smashed a gang today!' In its manifesto, Labour made it clear that the policy of launching a new border security command with hundreds of new specialist investigators using counter-terror powers was designed to 'smash criminal boat gangs'. The arrests may have represented a significant development for Home Office staff trying to crack down on the exploitation of vulnerable people trafficked into the UK and criminalised by being forced to work illegally, but packaging this as a major breakthrough in the smash the gangs drive has prompted some raised eyebrows. One former Home Office official described taking TV cameras to these arrests as a sleight of hand, a PR exercise designed to detract attention from a small boats policy that he said had so far been a 'damp squib'. Peter Walsh, a senior researcher with the migration observatory at Oxford University, said the government should be given some leeway because the border security, asylum and immigration bill, which will bring in the much-trailed counter-terror style powers to help identify and control smuggling gangs, has not yet been passed. 'Overall it's too early to evaluate their 'smash the gangs' policy, because the main legislative developments are in that bill,' he said. 'But it would be difficult to describe whatever has been done operationally so far to disrupt smuggling networks as a success, because the numbers [of small boats] have gone up.' Starmer's catchy 'smash the gangs' slogan risks becoming almost as much of a millstone as his predecessor Rishi Sunak's commitment to 'stop the boats'. Sunak's pledge was described as impossible to achieve the moment he announced it, but he continued to put out videos repeating his promise, and gave immigration control speeches standing behind a lectern with a 'stop the boats' logo. Labour may eventually be able to show some progress on dismantling organised people smuggling operations by citing rising arrest figures. The Home Office press office said that, from July to November 2024, its immigration enforcement teams have convicted 53 people smugglers, including 23 individuals for piloting small boats, leading to more than 52 years in sentences. But Walsh questioned whether these arrests would have a discernible impact on the number of people crossing the Channel in small boats. 'It doesn't require substantial investment in training and skills to have a functional smuggler on the ground, getting boats into the water in Calais, getting people into boats. But it takes a lot of resources to investigate them and bring them to justice. One of the major challenges is that lower-level smugglers can quickly be replaced,' Walsh said, pointing, as a comparison, to the speed with which gangs dealing drugs hire new recruits to replace those arrested. 'Smuggling networks are adaptable. They're increasingly well financed and decentralised. Senior figures operate in countries like Afghanistan, where we have minimal or no law enforcement cooperation.' Campaigners for an overhaul of the asylum system have been dismayed by Labour's resolutely tough rhetoric on those crossing the Channel illegally, which often fails to acknowledge that many arrivals are coming from war-torn nations such as Afghanistan, Syria, and Eritrea. This week, a research paper published by Border Criminologies and the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford found that hundreds of those imprisoned for arriving in the UK on small boats since 2022 were refugees and victims of trafficking and torture, in breach of international law. It said at least 17 children had been arrested and charged with 'facilitation', for having their hand on the tiller of a dinghy. Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, said the government should 'dial down the rhetoric', and adopt a quieter multi-pronged approach, cooperating more deeply with France and other European countries, undermining the business model of the gangs by creating safe and legal routes for people to apply for asylum in the UK. 'The more you make announcements on a week-by-week basis, the more you give the impression to the public that you're going to fix the problem very quickly, so you end up falling into the trap of damaging trust because you're overpromising and underdelivering,' he said. It is a message that Starmer's comms team has yet to learn. In a second tweet on the subject of smashing the gangs in the space of 24 hours this week, the prime minister announced: 'My government is ramping up our efforts to smash the gangs at their source.' Attached was a video montage of boats, barbed wire, police vans and men being arrested, overlaid with the words (in emphatic capitals) 'OUR PLAN IS WORKING'.
Telegraph
32 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Watch: Cyclists run red lights at roundabout as Khan pledges £6m to protect them
Sir Sadiq Khan's Transport for London (TfL) claims it is a death trap for cyclists. That is why one of London's busiest roundabouts is about to undergo a £6 million revamp with a large protective cycle lane to assuage concerns that it is 'unsafe and intimidating'. But a campaign group's footage appear to show cyclists wilfully putting themselves in harm's way, prompting the group to ask why it is drivers who will now be penalised. Save Our Streets (SOS) says it has proof that more than half of cyclists crossing at the busy junction are going through red lights. Video footage shows a string of cyclists passing through traffic lights, stopping inside a yellow box area and narrowly avoiding being struck by passing buses. Some can be seen riding across the six-lane interchange in front of oncoming traffic. Transport for London wants to revamp the Holland Park roundabout under plans to encourage people to 'walk and cycle more and drive less'. TfL says there have been 'a significant number of collisions' in which 59 people, including 14 cyclists and pedestrians, were hurt in the three years up to May 2023. 'Complete waste of money' But Nicholas Bell, a Holland Park resident and cyclist himself, said the scheme was a 'complete waste of money'. He monitored the roundabout to examine the behaviour of cyclists and counted more than 1,000 using the roundabout over four separate days in April, during the morning and evening rush hours. About one in seven pedal bikes and two in five e-bikes entering the roundabout from Uxbridge Road on the roundabout's western arm jumped the lights in their determination to get across as quickly as possible, Mr Bell found. His weekday counts revealed that more than half of cyclists approaching from Holland Park Avenue, on the roundabout's eastern side, illegally passed through red lights. 'I thought cyclists would be more hesitant at a major junction. I was quite surprised how gung-ho they were,' he said. Danny Lidgate, another campaigner, who runs the 175-year-old butcher's shop C Lidgate on Holland Park Avenue, agreed that building more cycle infrastructure when riders already ignore current provision was a waste of time and money. He said he feared TfL's plans would lead to the area around Holland Park and Shepherd's Bush railway station becoming 'jammed up with traffic'. He said: 'All the customers we have coming into our shop, and all the local residents, they all feel the same.' Revamp will be 'misery' for residents Andrew Boff, the Conservative deputy chairman of the London Assembly, said on a visit to the roundabout with The Telegraph: 'They're going to make life in this area and all around for the residents absolute misery.' Mr Boff said he would tell the mayor of London, whose Vision Zero scheme is driving projects such as the Holland Park roundabout cycle lanes: 'Why don't you pause for breath and actually deliver a scheme that's good for cyclists? 'Focus on where your problem is, and not trying to create year zero at Holland Park roundabout by throwing everything out and then starting again.' Helen Cansick, TfL's head of healthy streets investment planning, said: 'The Holland Park roundabout is an unsafe and intimidating junction for people cycling, and the changes at the roundabout have been carefully designed to tackle road danger while enabling everyone to travel through the area efficiently. 'The results of our consultation showed strong support for the proposed changes. We always take congestion, including impact on bus journey times and air quality, into careful consideration when designing schemes, and we value feedback from local residents and businesses. 'We will continue to engage with the local community as we move forward with these important safety measures. 'Everyone using the roads must obey the law and follow the Highway Code and we continue to work closely with the police to enforce the rules of the road.'
