Suffolk MP Patrick Spencer MP charged with two sex attacks
Central Suffolk and North Ipswich MP Patrick Spencer has been charged with two counts of sexual assault which allegedly happened at London's Groucho Club in August 2023, the Metropolitan Police said.
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.You can receive Breaking News on a smartphone or tablet via the BBC News App. You can also follow @BBCBreaking on X to get the latest alerts.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
14 minutes ago
- Telegraph
This must end the grooming cover-up for good
For decades, officials and politicians have systematically turned a blind eye to the horrific grooming gangs operating across Britain. It is therefore welcome that after months of pressure, Sir Keir Starmer has felt forced to announce a national inquiry into the full extent of the scandal. It is also long overdue. A culture of cover-ups and dismissive attitudes have concealed the true scale of offending from the public, extending from local council officials and police officers fearful of accusations of racism to national politicians like Lucy Powell, who in May felt able to call references to the scandal a 'dog whistle'. Even in January, when Elon Musk and others brought renewed focus to the issue on social media, Sir Keir Starmer's first instinct was to kick the issue into the long grass, commissioning a fresh review from Baroness Louise Casey and resisting calls for a full national inquiry. It is hard not to suspect – as Sir Trevor Phillips, former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, has claimed – that Sir Keir's reluctance was 'political', motivated by the extreme discomfort that a full inquiry will bring to the Labour party. Some of the highest profile scandals took place under the view of Labour councils, amid Pakistani-heritage communities seen as reliable Labour voters, and it is likely that any full inquiry will bring to light yet more damning evidence of the party's effective complicity. No matter how awkward, however, the inquiry must be given the freedom to ask all necessary questions. Those reviews and reports which have taken place to date have found that officials up and down the country felt under pressure to put 'community cohesion' ahead of the need to save children from sexual abuse. It is likely, moreover, that many in government will still be susceptible to this pressure, and wish to ensure that any inquiry is sufficiently sanitised to be 'safe' for public release. They must not get their way. There can be no more cover-ups. The inquiry must be broad enough to capture the full extent of offending, hold to account those politicians and officials who let the scandal go on, and given the resources and a timetable that brings the truth to light rapidly rather than dragging as the Covid Inquiry has. The grooming gangs scandal lay in plain sight for decades. Official inaction, through inertia and through deliberate choices to turn a blind eye, allowed abuse to continue unchecked. This cover-up must end once and for all, the officials and criminals responsible brought to justice, and the unvarnished truth laid before the country, no matter how damaging to our national self-image it may be.
The Guardian
15 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Keir Starmer to launch national inquiry into grooming gangs
Keir Starmer will launch a national inquiry into grooming gangs after receiving the recommendations of an independent report on the scandal. The prime minister said a new statutory inquiry was 'the right thing to do' based on the findings submitted by Louise Casey, who has carried out a months-long inquiry into the abuse of young girls. Speaking to reporters travelling with him to the G7 summit in Canada, Starmer said Casey recommended 'a national inquiry on the basis of what she has seen'. 'I have read every single word of her report and I am going to accept her recommendation. That is the right thing to do on the basis of what she has put in her audit,' he said. 'I shall now implement her recommendations.' Asked to set out a timeline for the inquiry, Starmer said: 'It will be statutory under the Inquiries Act. That will take a bit of time to sort out exactly how that works, and we will set that out in an orderly way.' Starmer has previously resisted pressure for a new national inquiry into grooming gangs, and said earlier this year it would delay justice for victims He called for ministers to instead focus on implementing the recommendations of previous reviews. Casey was asked to carry out an three-month national review on the scale and extent of grooming gangs in January after producing a report into sexual abuse in Rotherham. She was tasked with examining data not available to the initial national inquiry led by Alexis Jay, and to look into the ethnicity and demographics of abusers and victims, as well as 'the cultural and societal drivers for this type of offending, including among different ethnic groups'. Starmer said on Saturday that Casey's 'position when she started the audit was that there was not a real need for a national inquiry', but that she had changed her mind after reviewing the evidence. In parallel to Casey's review, the government asked Tom Crowther KC, who led an investigation in Telford, to help devise a model for a series of similar investigations in five towns where girls were abused, including Oldham. Ministers came under pressure over grooming gangs last year after Elon Musk spotlighted the government's decision to refuse Oldham council's request for a second national inquiry. The US billionaire's flurry of tweets on the subject brought the scandal back into public consciousness. On Friday, seven men who groomed two vulnerable teenage girls in Rochdale were found guilty of multiple sex offences after a long-running trial. The court heard the men subjected the girls to years of misery and expected them to have sex with them 'whenever and wherever they wanted'. Casey's 2015 review into the scandal in Rotherham said there had been 'archaic culture of sexism, bullying and discomfort around race', with councillors and staff fearing being labelled racist if they mentioned the ethnicity of perpetrators. In response to the announcement of a new national inquiry, Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative party leader, said: 'Keir Starmer doesn't know what he thinks unless an official report has told him so … I've been repeatedly calling for a full national inquiry since January. It's about time he recognised he made a mistake and apologise for six wasted months.'
Reuters
26 minutes ago
- Reuters
Britain moving jets to Middle East to support regional security, PM Starmer says
LONDON, June 14 (Reuters) - Britain is moving additional military assets, including fighter jets, to the Middle East to provide support across the region, Prime Minister Keir Starmer told reporters on Saturday as he was en route to a Group of Seven meeting in Canada. Iran and Israel traded missiles and airstrikes on Saturday, the day after Israel launched an air offensive against its old enemy, killing commanders and scientists and bombing nuclear sites in a stated bid to stop it building an atomic weapon. "We are moving assets to the region, including jets, and that is for contingency support in the region," Starmer said. Britain already has fighter jets in the Middle East as part of an operation to counter threats in Iraq and Syria. Crews began deployment preparations on Friday morning, when it was clear the situation in the region was deteriorating, a spokesperson for the prime minister said. Further refuelling aircraft from British bases have been deployed, and additional fighter jets will be sent, the spokesperson added.
