Southport Inquiry

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Monday 13th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank my hon. Friend for what she has just said, and associate myself with her remarks about the victims of the Forbury Gardens attack—about those who died and their families. She is absolutely right that we have been here far too many times. This must be a moment of change, and I am very hopeful that with such a thorough report from Sir Adrian Fulford, with such clear, practical recommendations for action to prevent such a tragedy from occurring in the future, we can and will make progress. As I know she will accept, that is the very least that we owe all the families, and I look forward to working with colleagues across the House to implement recommendations as we move forward. We all have to do more, and Government agencies all have to do more as well.

I assure my hon. Friend that I am standing up a taskforce to bring together all Government Ministers with relevant responsibilities, to make sure we begin work immediately on improving the systems and processes that are in place at the moment and that we are not simply waiting for the final phase of the inquiry to report—there will be more progress. We have taken steps to reform Prevent. I know that the Prevent strategy and the work it does has been of interest in this House for many years, and has been scrutinised very thoroughly. An intervention programme of this kind is always going to have to move very quickly to deal with changing threat patterns—for example, the way that Islamist extremism might have presented in the era of Daesh and ISIL in Syria becoming prominent is different from how it presents now—and practitioners have to be able to adapt as quickly as the presentation of extremist ideologies is developing. It will always be a work in progress, because the nature of the threat is changing so quickly and regularly. That is something we should acknowledge. However, we can and will have strong mechanisms in place to make sure that the programme does the job we all know it needs to do.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

As a consultant paediatrician, I have to undertake Prevent training at regular intervals. On each one of those occasions, I have raised with Ministers my concerns about either the quality or emphasis of that training, or both. Can the Home Secretary say whether she feels that in this particular situation, the problem was mostly that the perpetrator did not conform to the usual patterns that people were being trained to spot; that people were being badly trained; that people were not using their training diligently; or that the actions once the case had been reported were not followed through? Which does she think was the major factor?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I would be happy to hear the hon. Lady’s personal experiences of the quality of that training. I think this is the first time that she and I have had an interaction on this matter, so I would be very happy to pick those issues up with her offline.

On the substance of the hon. Lady’s point, we must follow the findings of the inquiry’s chair, who said that there were five major failures in this case, including that no single agency took ownership of the risk that the perpetrator posed, that there was poor information recording and management, and that the behaviour was sometimes excused on the basis of the perpetrator’s perceived or diagnosed autism spectrum disorder. There were a range of factors in place, and we should follow the evidence and the findings of the inquiry’s chair. We will respond based on the failures that have been found.