Minister condemns riot but urges review of police anti-racism guidance following Henry Nowak death – UK politics live
Policing minister Sarah Jones calls for calm and says police should review anti-racism guidance
Good morning. Keir Starmer spoke for many people yesterday when he said that he felt “sick” watching the video of Henry Nowak being handcuffed as he lay dying, while a police officer who had been told Nowak had committed a racist assault ignored Nowak saying he had been stabbed. Starmer’s was a good faith response to the tragedy, which saw Nowak’s killer jailed for life on Monday.
But there have been plenty of bad faith responses to the murder too, which culminated in rioting in Southampton last night. Here is our overnight story about yesterday’s events.
And here is Steven Morris’s report on the rioting.
Sarah Jones, the policing minister, has been giving interviews this morning. Speaking to Times Radio, she said the rioting was unacceptable and she said there had been two arrests, “one for assault of a police officer, one for possession of a weapon”.
She also appealled for calm, saying:
We are urging that people take the anger that they feel, which I understand, but let’s allow justice to do its course, and let’s not over-react, which indeed is what the family are asking us to do as well.”
Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, issued her own statement last night.
In her interviews this morning, Jones also said the government wanted an official “police anti-racism commitment” reviewed. In the Commons yesterday Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, saying that this document was “morally wrong”, claiming that it “urges police forces to reverse engineer the same arrest rates between ethnic groups, even though the offending rates are different, by treating different ethnic groups differently”. (In fact it does not say that, although arguably that it what its call for “equality of policing outcomes for people from different ethnic groups” implies.) In the Commons Mahmood gave a non-committal response to Philp. But now the Home Office wants it reconsidered
Asked about the document, Jones told BBC Breakfast that the National Police Chiefs’ Council were reviewing the document. She went on:
We don’t think that language is is right.
It is right to say, and it is important to say, that there is … a long history of racism in policing that we need to acknowledge, and we need to make sure isn’t there.
Of course, in all the training that is done with police officers, it’s an aspect that they are trained on.
This document feels like it’s not right, and I think it’s right that the NPCC are reviewing it.
I will post more from her interviews shortly.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.
After 12.30pm: MPs hold a debate on the Peter Mandelson files released on Monday.
2.30pm: Scientists and experts from the Climate Change Committee and other bodies give evidence to the Commons environmental audit committee on extreme weather.
3.30pm: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is speaking at at the Creating a Scientific Superpower Conference on the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (between 10am and 3pm), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
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Key events
Jones explains why she won’t endorse ‘two-tier policing’ claims
In an interview on the Today programme, Sarah Jones, the policing minister, was also asked if she could confidently say there was no two-tier policing in the UK. She replied:
I would say that the principles are important, that everyone is equal under the law.
I would say that there are 100,000 999 calls a day and that in the majority of cases, the police are doing the right thing, making the right decisions in the right way.
But I would also say that wherever there are mistakes – and this is I think a case where the country is looking to us to make sure we learn the lessons and put anything wrong right – that we continue to strive to do that.
But the principles of what our policing by consent foundations are based on, equality under the law, that is the basis of our entire society.
Asked if there were examples of two-tier policing, she replied:
We see examples of people making the wrong call in different ways. In the main, that is not what we see.
To push a certain sort of agenda in this case is not helpful.
Asked if she thought “anti-white racism” was a factor in how Henry Nowak was treated by the officer who handcuffed him as he lay dying, Jones replied:
I look at that footage and as a mother I find it almost impossible to see. I think everybody does.
I think everybody can’t understand what the response was. I think everybody has a degree of anger about it because it looks so wrong.
But I think we have to step back and allow the IOPC [Independent Office of Police Conduct] to do its investigation
And this government’s commitment is that whatever the IPCC says, there will be consequences to that, there will be action from that.
Jones rejects Farage’s claim police don’t treat white people fairly
Yesterday Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, delivered what he called an “emergency address to the nation” on YouTube at around this time. In it, he claimed that the Henry Nowak case was proof that white people were treated unfairly in the UK. He said that George Floyd (whom he described as a “career criminal”) died in policy custody in the US, there was a surge in support for the Black Lives Matter campaign, with Keir Starmer taking the knee. But nothing remotely similar has occurred after the death of Nowak, Farage claimed.
Silence, absolute silence, proof, if ever there was any, that we’re living in a two-tier culture in this country where the rights and privileges of white people matter less than those of ethnic minorities.
Saying that people should respond to Nowak’s death with “pure cold rage”, Farage went on:
Enough of anti white prejudice a promotion of the idea that white lives matter just as much as black lives. An end to DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] and positive discrimination, but a country that treats everybody equally and fairly before the law.
This is serious. This is urgent. I fear for where our society would be in a few short years if we don’t grip this and do it very, very quickly.
Ben Quinn has a good analysis of Farage’s intervention here.
Ben points out that Farage was speaking at a time when Reform UK risking being outflanked on the right by Restore Britain, an even more exteme party founded by the former Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe.
In an interview on Sky News, Sarah Jones was asked if she agreed with Farage that white people were not treated fairly by the police. She replied:
I don’t think the evidence at the moment would suggest that, if you look at the facts and figures about policing.
I will always listen to the police in terms of what they’re saying and the home secretary said yesterday [that] we need to talk to the police. We need to talk to the Sikh community. We need to talk to knife crime campaigners. We need to understand what it is we need to do differently and better and we will do that.
Last night Abimbola Johnson, a barrister who chairs the independent scrutiny and oversight board for the police Race Action Plan, told Radio 4’s the World Tonight that he thought Chris Philp’s criticism of the police anti-racism commitment (see 8.19am) was “disingenuous”. He claimed that when Philp was policing minister
The chair of the oversight board that scrutinised the Police Race Action Plan has said Chris Philp’s criticism of the police’s policy is ‘disingenuous’ and that he never raised concerns with the plan when he was policing minister from 2022 to 2024. Johnson said:
For [Philp] to take umbrage at the idea that there is a commitment to reduce disparities in arrest rates and use of force is disingenuous.
And I would also highlight that when the Conservative government were in power and Chris Philp was the policing minister, not once did he meet with the Race Action Plan, not once did he bring any legitimate concerns that he may have had around that and involve himself in any constructive conversations about it.
Policing minister Sarah Jones calls for calm and says police should review anti-racism guidance
Good morning. Keir Starmer spoke for many people yesterday when he said that he felt “sick” watching the video of Henry Nowak being handcuffed as he lay dying, while a police officer who had been told Nowak had committed a racist assault ignored Nowak saying he had been stabbed. Starmer’s was a good faith response to the tragedy, which saw Nowak’s killer jailed for life on Monday.
But there have been plenty of bad faith responses to the murder too, which culminated in rioting in Southampton last night. Here is our overnight story about yesterday’s events.
And here is Steven Morris’s report on the rioting.
Sarah Jones, the policing minister, has been giving interviews this morning. Speaking to Times Radio, she said the rioting was unacceptable and she said there had been two arrests, “one for assault of a police officer, one for possession of a weapon”.
She also appealled for calm, saying:
We are urging that people take the anger that they feel, which I understand, but let’s allow justice to do its course, and let’s not over-react, which indeed is what the family are asking us to do as well.”
Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, issued her own statement last night.
In her interviews this morning, Jones also said the government wanted an official “police anti-racism commitment” reviewed. In the Commons yesterday Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, saying that this document was “morally wrong”, claiming that it “urges police forces to reverse engineer the same arrest rates between ethnic groups, even though the offending rates are different, by treating different ethnic groups differently”. (In fact it does not say that, although arguably that it what its call for “equality of policing outcomes for people from different ethnic groups” implies.) In the Commons Mahmood gave a non-committal response to Philp. But now the Home Office wants it reconsidered
Asked about the document, Jones told BBC Breakfast that the National Police Chiefs’ Council were reviewing the document. She went on:
We don’t think that language is is right.
It is right to say, and it is important to say, that there is … a long history of racism in policing that we need to acknowledge, and we need to make sure isn’t there.
Of course, in all the training that is done with police officers, it’s an aspect that they are trained on.
This document feels like it’s not right, and I think it’s right that the NPCC are reviewing it.
I will post more from her interviews shortly.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.
After 12.30pm: MPs hold a debate on the Peter Mandelson files released on Monday.
2.30pm: Scientists and experts from the Climate Change Committee and other bodies give evidence to the Commons environmental audit committee on extreme weather.
3.30pm: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is speaking at at the Creating a Scientific Superpower Conference on the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (between 10am and 3pm), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
