Keir Starmer let Rishi Sunak off the hook at PMQs

Keir Starmer could have made Prime Minister’s Questions much more uncomfortable for Rishi Sunak, given the state of the Tory party. The Labour leader decided to focus his first three questions on the murder of Zara Aleena and the Probation Service failings that allowed her death to happen. 

Starmer listed the devastating findings of the Chief Inspector of Probation into the case, which included short staffing, excessive workload and systemic problems which meant such a murder could happen again. He linked this to the government’s ‘botched and then reversed privatisation after a decade of underinvestment’. Starmer then quoted the accusation of Aleena’s family, that the ‘government has blood on their hands’ at Sunak, and asked him whether he accepted that claim, along with the report’s findings.

Sunak initially listed the things the government was already doing to ensure that the Probation Service improved, but after the ‘blood on their hands’ question, switched into political mode, saying:

‘One of the other things we must remember, Mr Speaker, if we do want to increase the safety of women and girls out on our streets, that we need tough sentencing and that’s why this government passed the Police, Crime and Sentencing Act, which the honourable gentleman opposite and his party opposed.’