
UK MP Patrick Spencer charged with sexual assault
LONDON: A lawmaker from Britain's opposition Conservative party has been charged with committing sexual assault at a renowned private members club in London, prosecutors announced on Tuesday.
Patrick Spencer, who was elected an MP at last July's general election, is charged with two counts of sexual assault over the alleged incidents in August 2023 at the Groucho club.
His lawyers said the MP 'categorically' denied the charges and would 'defend the allegations robustly in court'.
The allegations involved two separate women, according to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
Spencer, 37, will appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Monday June 16, 2025, the CPS added.
A spokesperson for the Conservatives said Spencer, MP for the Central Suffolk and North Ipswich constituency in eastern England, had been suspended from the party with immediate effect.
Last month, the governing Labour party announced it had suspended its lawmaker Dan Norris after he was arrested on suspicion of sexual offences against a girl and rape.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


The Sun
a day ago
- The Sun
UK PM Starmer calls Air India crash ‘devastating'
LONDON: UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday called the scenes of the Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad 'devastating', adding 'my thoughts are with the passengers and their families'. 'The scenes emerging of a London-bound plane carrying many British nationals crashing in the Indian city of Ahmedabad are devastating,' Starmer said in a statement issued by his Downing Street office. 'My thoughts are with the passengers and their families at this deeply distressing time.' Air India said the 242 passengers and crew on board the Boeing 787-8 included 53 British nationals. UK foreign minister David Lammy wrote on X that he was 'deeply saddened by news of a devastating plane crash in Ahmedabad'. 'My thoughts are with all those affected,' he added. 'The UK is working with local authorities in India to urgently establish the facts and provide support.' Buckingham Palace said King Charles III was being kept updated on the accident, while Conservative leader of the opposition Kemi Badenoch called the news 'heartbreaking'.

The Star
2 days ago
- The Star
Labour's big worry is no one will feel record spending surge
BRITAIN's Labour government will make an historic investment into the country's battered public services this week – a £300bil (US$406bil) uplift for areas such as health care, education and transport, amounting to the largest sustained funding increase since at least 2010. The danger is the public won't notice. For all the political pain Labour has endured by raising taxes to pay for the commitment, the money will seem to disappear. That's largely because the previous Conservative administration cut spending to pay for giveaways before last year's general election, putting public services on track for a period of austerity described by critics as politically implausible. 'It turns out £300bil is the cost of ending implausible,' Andy King, former chief of staff at the Office for Budget Responsibility fiscal watchdog, told Bloomberg. Britons' experience of government over the last decade-and-a-half can be boiled down to two inconvenient facts: frontline services have deteriorated and taxes have risen. Today's broken social contract is that people pay more for less. The latest causes of the rot are ballooning costs from demographic pressures (the size of the state is at a postwar high), a debt pile swollen by Covid, higher interest rates and abysmal levels of productivity leading to persistently weak growth. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves has the unenviable task of confronting this reality when she unveils her Spending Review and the stakes could not be higher. James Smith, chief economist at the Resolution Foundation think tank, said Reeves' choices could determine whether Britain's long record of centrist politics survives and keeps Nigel Farage's populist Reform UK party at bay. Reform is soaring in the polls with the same promise of 'change' that Labour campaigned on in 2024. 'People are understandably frustrated with Britain's 'less for more' approach to public services in recent decades,' said Smith. 'The combination of austerity, economic stagnation and fiscal pressures mean that their experience of public services is that they don't work properly and yet they are paying more in tax to fund them. This economic failure has created a political opening for political parties like Reform who haven't been in government during this period.' Police seem unable to tackle shoplifters, a record number of patients are choosing private health care above the cherished National Health Service (NHS), and potholes blight the roads. Yet the tax burden is at a post-Second World War high, 3% of gross domestic product (GDP) or £90bil more in today's money than before both the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic. The Spending Review is Labour's chance to reset the contract, and will be the first opportunity to see clearly where the priorities lie for Prime Minister Keir Starmer's government. Trade-offs will have to be made, with cuts to policing expected to prop up the NHS. Even a record spending boost is not enough to prevent fights over how to split the pot. 'Not every department will get everything they want,' Reeves admitted. 'I had to say 'no' to things I want to do.' Aggravating the problem has been the collapse in productivity since Covid. Public sector workers today are 4.6% less productive than in 2019, according to the Office for National Statistics. That means for the same taxpayer contribution, the public gets a service that is almost 5% worse. That would be bad enough if taxes had stood still but they have risen by £90bil since 2008 in today's money – equivalent to increasing the basic rate of income tax from 20% to 33%. To show taxpayers their money is not being wasted and 'every penny counts,' Labour will cull thousands of civil service jobs. Meanwhile, since 2008, the United Kingdom debt pile has more than doubled to 100% of GDP and now costs about £50bil a year more to service than before both the 2008 crash and the pandemic in 2020, almost as much as Britain spends on defence. Weak economic growth has compounded the problem, costing tens of billions of pounds in foregone tax revenue. On an output per person basis, GDP per head – a proxy for living standards – has grown just 5.5% since the pre-financial crisis peak in 2008, an average of 0.4% a year. In the preceding 17 years, GDP per head grew eight times faster - by more than 45%, or 2.2% a year. — Bloomberg Philip Aldrick writes for Bloomberg. The views expressed here are the writer's own.


The Star
4 days ago
- The Star
British girl who took life was radicalised by U.S. neo-Nazis, inquest says
LONDON (Reuters) -A British teenage girl, who had said she wanted to blow up a synagogue and became fixated with Adolf Hitler, had been sucked into far-right extremism by two American neo-Nazis, a British coroner said on Monday. Rhianan Rudd, who was 16, took her own life in May 2022 at a children's home having been investigated by police and Britain's domestic security service MI5 over extremist views. Two years earlier, Rudd's mother had referred her daughter to the counter-radicalisation scheme, Prevent. She is believed to be the youngest girl to be charged with terrorism offences in Britain after she was arrested when 14, though the case against her was later dropped. At an inquest into her death, the Chief Coroner of England and Wales Alexia Durran said she had been initially radicalised by her mother's former partner, a U.S. neo-Nazi who had convictions for violence. She was further drawn into extremism by U.S. white supremacist Chris Cook, who was jailed in 2023 for terrorism over plans to attack power grids, Durran also said. Rudd, who had autism, became obsessed with fascism, even carving a swastika into her forehead, and had downloaded material about making bombs and 3D guns, Durran said. Durran concluded that both Mallaburn and Cook were each "a significant radicalising influence on Rhianan" who had "played a material role in introducing and encouraging Rhianan's interest in extreme right-wing materials". LEARNING FROM PAIN Rudd's mother Emily Carter said she believed that the police and MI5's prolonged investigation had played a role in her daughter's death. "Whilst nothing can ever bring Rhianan back, I urge all the authorities that came into contact with her to learn from what happened so that no other family has to experience the pain we have endured," Carter said in a statement. The charges against Rudd were not dropped until August 2021, four months after social workers believed she might have been a victim of sexual exploitation. However, giving her ruling at Chesterfield Coroners' Court in central England, Durran rejected the argument that the state had played a role in her death, saying it had been appropriate to investigate and prosecute her. "I am satisfied that the missed opportunities that occurred in this case were not systemic," she said. British authorities have become very concerned about the online radicalisation of young people. MI5's Director General Ken McCallum said last year that 13% of all those they were investigating were under 18, a threefold increase in the last three years. Britain's Crown Prosecution Service offered condolences to Rudd's family. "This is a tragic case," added Nick Price, CPS director of legal services. We do not prosecute young or vulnerable people lightly. Terrorism offences are extremely serious, and these are decisions our specialist prosecutors take great care over." (Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)