Starmer accuses Sunak of failing to act after Sarah Everard murder

Prime Minister’s Questions today was a weighty affair, with Keir Starmer focusing on the murder of Sarah Everard following the Angiolini Report into the failings of the police that allowed Wayne Couzens to continue in his role and to abduct his victim. The Labour leader asked how it could be the case that there was ‘nothing to stop another Couzens operating in plain sight’ three years on from Everard’s death. Sunak replied that the government had taken action ‘quickly’ to ‘strengthen police vetting, strengthen the rules for rooting out officers who are not there to serve and conducted the largest-ever screening of all serving officers and staff’. He added that ‘we will thoroughly consider all of the report’s recommendations’. 

Starmer continued to push on this, saying his party had been arguing for a mandatory national vetting standard, so why wasn’t that already in place. Sunak didn’t answer that initially, so the Labour leader came back again, snapping ‘I’m obviously very familiar with codes in criminal justice systems’ – which prompted a number of ‘ooohs’ from the Tory benches.