this is bbc news. just to tell you, the prime minister is due to make a statement shortly about the public inquiry into the southport attack

when three young girls were stabbed to death. 18—year—old axel rudakubana pleaded guilty on monday to killing the girls at a taylor swift—themed dance class last year. number ten described rudakubana as "vile and sick" and said there were "grave questions to answer" about how the state "failed" to protect the girls. there will be a statement by keir starmer because of that pleading guilty by axel rudakubana, who many had been expecting to plead not guilty and face a trial at the beginning of those proceedings yesterday morning. the government last night announced a public inquiry with keir starmer saying there are grave questions about the case, and that britain will rightly

demand answers. let's listen to the prime minister now. the senseless barbaric murder of three young girls in southport is a devastating moment in our history. no words come anywhere close to expressing the brutality and horror in this case. every parent in britain will have had the same thought. it could have been anywhere. it could have been anywhere. it could have been our children. but it was southport. it was bebe, six years old. elsie, seven. alice, nine. back in august, i said there will be a time for questions, but that first, justice had to be done, and that above all, we must not interfere with the work of the

police, the prosecutors and the delivery of justice. police, the prosecutors and the delivery ofjustice. well, yesterday, thankfully, a measure ofjustice was brought, but it will not bring those girls back to their family, and it will not remove the trauma from the lives of those who were injured. their lives will never be the same. so before i turn to the questions that must now be answered, for the families and the nation, i first want to recognise their unimaginable grief, because i know the whole country grieves for them. the tragedy of the southport killings must be a line in the sand for britain. we must make sure the names of those three young girls are not associated with the vile

perpetrator, but instead, with a fundamental change in how britain protects its citizens and its children. in pursuit of that, we must of course ask and answer difficult questions. questions that should be far reaching, —— and in

2021, twice. —— and in 2021. yet on each of these occasions, a judgment was made that he did not meet the threshold for intervention. ajudgment that intervention. a judgment that was intervention. ajudgment that was clearly wrong. and which failed those families. and i acknowledge that here today. throughout this case, to this point, we have only been focused on justice. point, we have only been focused onjustice. if this trial had collapsed because i

or anyone else had revealed crucial details while the police were investigating, while the case was being built, while the case was being built, while we were awaiting a verdict, then the vile individual who committed these crimes would have walked away a free man. the prospect of justice destroyed for the victims and their families. i would never do that, and nobody would never do that, and nobody would ever forgive me would never do that, and nobody would everforgive me if i had. that is why the law of this country forbade me, or anyone else, from disclosing details sooner. nonetheless, it is now time for those questions. and the first of those is whether this was a terrorist attack.

the blunt truth here is that this case is a sign, britain now faces a new threat. terrorism has changed. in the past, the predominant threat was highly organised groups with clear political intent, groups like al-qaeda. that threat, of course, remains. but now, alongside that, we also see acts of extreme violence perpetrated by loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom accessing all manner of material online, desperate for notoriety. sometimes inspired by traditional terrorist groups, but fixated on that extreme violence seemingly for its own sake. now, it may well be that people like this are

harder to spot, but we can't shrug our shoulders and accept that. we can't have a national security system that fails to tackle those who are a danger to our values, our security, our children. we have to be ready to face every threat. when i look through the details of this case, the extreme nature of the violence, the meticulous plan to attack young children in a place ofjoy and safety, violence clearly intended to terrorise, then i understand why people wonder what the word terrorism means. so if the law needs to change to recognise this new and dangerous threat, then we will change it, and quickly. and we will also review our entire counter extremist system to

make sure we have what we need to defeat it. now, that work is already under way. i have tasked sir david anderson casey, the new independent prevent commissioner, to hold the system to account, to shine a light into its darkest corners so that the british people can have confidence that action will follow words. to face up to this new threat, there are also good questions. questions such as how we protect our children from the tidal wave of violence freely available online. because you cannot tell me that the material this individual viewed before committing these murders should be accessible on

mainstream social media platforms. but with just a few clicks, people can watch video after horrific video. video that in some cases are never taken down. no, that cannot be right. but it's notjust the nightmares of the online world, because when you wake from a nightmare, the first thing you do is reassure yourself with reality. but for far too do is reassure yourself with reality. but forfar too many people, the state of our society no longer does that. and people will say this is because of immigration, all because of immigration, all because of immigration, all because of funding cuts. but in truth, neithertells because of funding cuts. but in truth, neither tells us anything like the full story, or explains this case properly. no, this goes deeper. a growing

sense that the rights and responsibilities that we owe to one another, the set of unwritten rules that hold a nation together, have in recent years been ripped apart. children have stopped going to school since the pandemic. young people who have opted out of work or education. more and more people retreating into parallel lives, whether through failures of integration, or just a country slowly turning away from itself. wounds that politics, for all that may have contributed, must try to heal. thirdly, there are also questions about the accountability of the whitehall and westminster system. a system that is often driven by settling the institutional

wagon, but does not react until justice is either hard—won by campaigners or into appalling tragedies like this, finally spura tragedies like this, finally spur a degree of action. and time again, we see this pattern, and people are right to be angry about it. i'm angry about it. southport must be a line in the sand, but nothing will be off the table in this inquiry, nothing. and most importantly, it will lead to change. i know people will be watching right now and they will be saying, we've heard all this before. the promises, the sorrow, the inquiry that comes and goes, an inability to change. but frankly, it's become the oxygen of wider

conspiracy. and we have seen that throughout this case. a suggestion that there has been a cover—up. i want to put on record that yesterday's guilty verdict only happened because hundreds if not thousands of dedicated public servants worked towards it. many of whom endured absolutely harrowing circumstances, particularly in the police and the crown prosecution service. that is theirjob, they are brilliant at it, and we should never forget your service to our country. law and order depend on them. and yet, i'm under no illusions that until the wider state shows the country it can change, notjust what it delivers for people, but also

its culture, then this atmosphere of mistrust will remain stop so i want to be crystal clear in front of the british people today. we will leave no stone unturned. i was the prosecutor who first spotted failures in grooming cases in my institution, the cps, 14 cases in my institution, the cps, 1a years ago. and i was the prosecutor who first did something about it by bringing the rape gangs in rochdale to justice. and so my approach as prime minister will be no different. if any shortcomings are now holding back the ability of this country to keep its citizens and its children safe, i will find them and i will root them out. because when it comes to justice, the failure to be transparent is not only disgraceful on its own terms, it is also the enemy of

strong community. it spreads suspicion more widely and allows division to win. i remember when this happened, in those dark days of the summer, and i remember that like now, a whole country grieved for southport. but i also remember how it was —— and i was profoundly moved by their example, because even as that community faced an unimaginable evil, even as they had to endure mindless violence, bricks and bottles thrown at their community, their businesses, their mosque, police officers attacked, including those who were on the scene responding to this vile murder, even despite all of

that, they chose to come together, they chose to pick up the pieces of their lives, they choose to be billed, brick by brick, side by side, strangers no longer strangers, a community. this country has no shortage of empathy for