MPs have been told to make no “references”—to say “nothing,” in fact—about the suspect accused of murdering three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport this summer.
This officially-imposed silence follows the arrest and sometimes jailing of Britons who speculated online that the attack could be terror related.
After it was revealed this week that the government knew—and, some say, covered up—that suspect Axel Rudakubana faced new charges, including one under the Terrorism Act, the speaker of the House of Commons Lindsay Hoyle placed what critics have described as a “gagging” order on MPs. Hoyle warned that “references should not be made to the case.”
I know that all honourable members wish to see justice done in this case. It is therefore of paramount importance that nothing is said in this house which could potentially prejudice a proper trial or lead to it being abandoned.
Reform deputy leader Richard Tice did still ask Prime Minister Keir Starmer a question concerning the case in Parliament on Wednesday, to which Starmer responded with an expectedly evasive non-answer and an attack on those seeking answers as “undermin[ing] the police.”
Journalist (and Tice’s partner) Isabel Oakeshott later revealed that the Reform official “did have a very different [and more direct] question planned” before the speaker “gagged MPs from talking about the case.” Oakeshott added that Hoyle had also
made it very difficult for [MPs] to ask questions around what the government and other authorities knew when and what may or may not have been suppressed by way of information about a case that has absolutely rocked the nation.
TalkTV presenter Mike Graham described this as an “extraordinary intervention,” noting that the point of interest “is not about the suspect; it’s not about the circumstances of his arrest; it’s not about the circumstances of the actual event itself,” all questions which could prejudice the trial.
It’s about what the government knew and whether they withheld information from the public. And in my view, that’s not something that the speaker of the house should be telling people not to talk about.
Former Reform deputy leader Ben Habib went further, insisting the ban on elected representatives asking important questions of the government amounted to “the end of democracy,” while author Laura Dodsworth jibed that “if the Southport murderer had been a ‘far right’ terrorist, we would have been told straight away and Parliament would be awash with questions.”
Hoyle gave his “assurance” that MPs will be given “ample” time to ask important questions surrounding the Southport attack once Rudakubana’s trial has concluded—presumably mid-to-late next year.
Unusual in UK criminal law, charging Rudakubana with the production of ricin under the Biological Weapons Act 1974 requires the explicit involvement of the Attorney General or solicitor general, indicating at least one part of the case about which the Labour government had prior knowledge.
