Grooming gang inquiry U-turn; and how will the UK respond to Israel-Iran conflict?
Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey discuss the UK's reaction to the Israel-Iran conflict, and whether Gaza has influenced the government's response. And as Keir Starmer bows to pressure to launch a national inquiry into grooming gangs, they ask: why now and what could the political fallout be of yet another U-turn?
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BBC News
12 minutes ago
- BBC News
NI riots: Officers pursuing sex crimes 'extracted' to deal with riots
Police officers tasked with investigating sex crimes and supporting victims had to be redeployed last week to deal with rioting in Northern Ireland, a senior Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officer has Supt Zoe McKee told MPs that 24 officers were "extracted' from her team to deal with the public disorder which she said had stemmed from "violence" involving "a women and girls' offence".The chief superintendent said a shortfall of £21m in police funding was affecting their ability to prosecute hearing was part of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee's ongoing inquiry into violence against women and girls in Northern Ireland. "It went on for the past week, every day there was a review of resources and a surge out to support front-line policing" she the issue of a lack of police funding in prosecuting offenders, she added: "We have officer numbers at the lowest ever level at 6,200 and we should be sitting at 7,500."That leaves real challenges which affects how we deliver services, support victims and prosecute offenders."The senior officer said the majority of victims from the recent disorder were women and children, many of whom were displaced from their leader Gavin Robinson said it was a "stark reminder" of how such disorder had a material impact on the police ability to help victims of violence against women and members also heard about the scale of violence against women and girls in Northern Ireland and the challenges facing policing and the justice Supt McKee said it was now an "epidemic" as she revealed that 28% of all victims of crime are domestic-abuse related and 71% of women of all ages experience harassment in public places. The committee also heard from Sonya McMullan from Women's Aid and Dr Siobhan McAlister, a criminology lecturer from Queen's University, McMullan said Stormont's new strategy to tackle violence against women and girls cannot be a "tick box" exercise and must be followed up with also said Northern Ireland is not a "victim friendly" place to go through the criminal justice system, pointing to a recent domestic violence case which took five years to complete."Women cannot afford to put their lives on hold for five years and that is why there is such a high rate of drop outs before cases are concluded," she McKee also linked a legacy of mistrust in policing to the reluctance of some victims in coming was responding to a question from SDLP leader Claire Hanna.
BBC News
12 minutes ago
- BBC News
Row over Reform council's new 'British values' flag rules
Reform's decision to scrap Leicestershire County Council's flag flying policy has been formally challenged by opposition party approved the move during its first cabinet meeting on 12 June, discontinuing a previously agreed schedule of flags to be displayed outside County Hall in Glenfield, including those to mark LGBTQ+ Pride Month, Windrush Day and Reform council leader Dan Harrison said the changes to the protocol were "to celebrate British values that unite us all".However, opposition leaders have called the decision in for further scrutiny, saying they did not believe it had been "thought through properly". Under the new rules, Harrison said the union jack flag and the county council's own flag would fly permanently on two of the three flagpoles outside County St George's flag would fly from the third pole, he said, unless it was replaced with the Lord Lieutenant's flag when they were in the building.A fourth flagpole in County Hall's quadrangle could be used to mark events such as Armed Forces Day, Commonwealth Day and Armistice on flying all other flags are to be delegated to council chief executive John Sinnott after discussion with Harrison. The decision prompted a joint letter from representatives of LGBTQ+, disabled and BAME staff who said they had not been properly consulted on the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) said the decision will be subject to further debate on Tuesday.A call-in announcement, signed by Conservative Deborah Taylor, Liberal Democrat Michael Mullaney, Labour's Jewel Miah and Naomi Bottomley for the Green Party, said the decision was "not clear".According to the LDRS, it states: "It cannot be left to a weekly decision. Neither can the staff be left without any clear direction."This decision was weakened by the current positive position of our approved flag flying policy."Harrison previously told the LDRS that staff were "protected by law" and said they "could always" fly flags at home."I will meet with their groups and assure them that their health, their safety, the [working] environment will be safe," he added."Nobody would ever disrespect anybody because there's a law to protect them, and we as a county council will guide the way to protect these people."
Telegraph
14 minutes ago
- Telegraph
HS2 has devastated my constituency. And for what?
For years we have been asking 'when? When will HS2 finally be completed?' But this misses the point. We should have questioned not the deadline, but the justification and purpose of the costly, benighted vanity project. We should have demanded to know why taxpayers are being forced to bankroll this failure. Why are we allowing the civil servants who have overseen this woeful tale of waste and incompetence to remain in their posts? Why have no heads rolled, as a consequence of this national embarrassment? The most painful aspect to this sorry affair is the knowledge that, even at the outset, when it was a twinkle in Lord Adonis's eye under the previous Labour government, it lacked a business case. Not one private sector investor was willing to risk a penny piece on it. Over a decade later, it has inflicted unnecessary misery on my constituents. And now we discover that the opening of HS2 will be delayed, with the Transport Secretary announcing that the remaining section of the line will not be completed by 2033. This is hardly the first time the project has come off the tracks. First the eastern leg to Leeds was scrapped. Then the Manchester leg was curtailed. For a time, it looked as though it would terminate at Old Oak Common in West London, not even making it to Euston despite the money piled into the station's revamp. Commuting times would then have more than offset any savings from HS2's much lauded speed. That truncation has since been abandoned. The Department for Transport (DfT) has faced accusations of insufficient oversight. Leadership at HS2 Ltd, a public company owned by the DfT, has been a merry-go-round. And all of this is before you get to the £100 million tunnel to protect bats in my county, or HS2's 52-page annual Equality, Diversity and Inclusion statement For the residents of Wendover, daily life has been fundamentally changed by HS2. The impact on local amenities – on churches and cricket clubs – cannot be overstated. The brazen attempts to send HGVs down narrow residential streets have been destructive. Landowners and community organisations have been abandoned by project managers. While they face the degrading financial uncertainty that comes with losing their land, the construction companies are raking in millions thanks to the DfT's cost-plus contract model, which guarantees a profit at the expense of the taxpayer whilst reimbursing firms' costs. This is why the project's real price tag has exceeded £200 billion, with one of the worst benefit-cost ratios of any major project, all to, in the words said to me by a former Minister of State for Transport a few years back, prop up Britain's construction industry. Last month it was revealed by RAIL Magazine, through a Freedom of Information request, that not only will the final cost of Phase One reach over £100 billion, with £81 billion (at 2019 prices) attributed to constructing as far as Old Oak Common, but also that it will be 2036 at the earliest until this section is finished. It's a slap in the face for those who've experienced compulsory land purchases, land which may have provided a source of income. There is effectively no spending control mechanism. It is a project which, by its very design, benefits the contractors at the expense of hard working taxpayers who are currently seeing no benefit from HS2 and likely never will, given its reduced scope. When asked, HS2 contractor Balfour Beatty Group's former Chief Executive Leo Quinn answered 'no' to a question on the efficacy of restructuring HS2's major works contracts in the interests of the taxpayer; his suggestion that 'no contractor in the UK could actually have a balance sheet to deliver something of that [HS2's] size' is highly alarming. Not only does this bring into doubt the Department's ability to renegotiate its own contracts – it also casts significant doubt on whether the project could ever be delivered in full at all when, as Mr Quinn suggests, the private sector does not have the capital resources required to facilitate a project like this. The utter failure of HS2 is a vivid example of British decline. That so much money has been spent on something which has so miserably failed to come about does not augur well for other future infrastructure projects. We need to learn from this. HS2 ruins the lives of everyone it touches and, if it's not reigned in soon, we as a country will suffer immensely, just as my constituents have.
