Summary
King Charles led a two-minute silence at the Cenotaph in central London as senior royals and senior politicians, including the prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the leader of the Conservative party Kemi Badenoch, gathered for the national memorial service on Remembrance Sunday.
The culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, vowed that Labour is going to “grip” the prison crisis as the government continues to come under pressure after a number of high-profile cases of prisoners being wrongly released. Speaking to Sky News’ Trevor Phillips this morning, Nandy confirmed that four wrongly released prisoners are still at large. She said it was a “completely unacceptable” situation where an average of 22 people are wrongly released from prisons each month in England and Wales, a rise from an average of 17 wrong releases under a large period over the previous administration.
In a separate interview with the BBC, Nandy apologised for breaking rules by failing to declare she had received donations from David Kogan, the person she picked to run the Independent Football Regulator. The culture secretary had previously apologised to Keir Starmer for the “unknowing” breach in the governance code.
Nandy also said that she retains confidence in the BBC’s leadership, despite the corporation being accused of selectively editing a Donald Trump speech to make it appear clearer that he encouraged the US Capitol attack. “I have complete confidence that both Samir Shah, the chair of the BBC, and Tim Davie are treating this with the seriousness that this demands,” she said. “I do want to see that response to the select committee, and I will, of course, consider it and have further conversations with them about the action that they’re taking.”
Nandy added: “There are a series of very serious allegations made, the most serious of which is that there is systemic bias in the way that difficult issues are reported at the BBC. I’ve spoken to the chair this week, I am confident that he is treating this with the seriousness that that demands.”
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HMRC trial of child benefit crackdown wrongly suspected fraud in 46% of cases
Home Office travel records used in a trial of a controversial anti-fraud crackdown that under which thousands of parents lost their child benefit were so flawed that almost half of the families initially flagged as having emigrated were still living in the UK, it has emerged.
The pilot scheme saved HMRC £17m but left 46% of families targeted incorrectly suspected of fraud, a margin of error far in excess of the 1% to 5% scientifically acceptable.
In Northern Ireland, 78% were incorrectly identified as not having returned from trips abroad and 129 families were flagged during the pilot as having left the country when only 28 had actually done so.
Kim Johnson, the Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside called for an urgent investigation after being contacted by several constituents who had their benefits stopped.
The results of the pilot raise fundamental questions about using Home Office data to infer fraud, experts have said.
You can read the rest of the story by my colleagues, Luke Butterly and Lisa O’Carroll, here:
You can continue watching the Remembrance Sunday ceremony in the video at the top of the blog.
First minister of Scotland John Swinney honoured those who have died in conflict at a Remembrance Sunday service in Edinburgh, laying a wreath at the Stone of Remembrance outside the City Chambers.
Three D-day veterans are among the second world war personnel who are attending Sunday’s Remembrance service at the Cenotaph in Whitehall.
About 20 veterans of the conflict between 1939 and 1945 are expected to have arrived in central London on Sunday morning.
Standing close to the Cenotaph were eight former prime ministers: John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.
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Starmer and senior politicians lay wreaths at Cenotaph as former PMs look on
The prime minister, Keir Starmer, and other senior politicians have laid wreaths at the Cenotaph in central London to honour the service and sacrifice of those who lost their lives in conflict.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, Lib Dem leader Ed Davey, foreign secretary Yvette Cooper, home secretary Shabana Mahmood and Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle were among the other political figures who laid floral tributes during the Remembrance Sunday service.
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The Prince of Wales, dressed in Royal Air Force uniform in the rank of Wing Commander, saluted after laying his wreath at the Cenotaph.
He was followed by the Duke of Edinburgh, with wreaths also laid on behalf of the Duke of Kent and the Princess Royal.
Queen Camilla, the Princess of Wales and other members of the royal family have been pictured on the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office balconies overlooking the Cenotaph.
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King Charles lays wreath at the Cenotaph after two-minute silence
King Charles has laid a wreath at the Cenotaph to honour those who have died in conflict after leading a two-minute silence at the annual Remembrance Sunday service.
Charles, wearing a field marshal uniform with a ceremonial frock coat, saluted as he stepped back from the monument in Whitehall.
Remembrance Sunday - in pictures
Here are some of the latest images being sent to us over the newswires from central London:
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King Charles set to lead Remembrance Sunday service at Cenotaph
King Charles and other senior royals are gathering for the national memorial service at the Cenotaph in central London, with commemorations also taking place across the UK, including in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast.
About 10,000 armed forces veterans will take part in the Royal British Legion’s march-past and about 20 second world war veterans will attend, 80 years on from the conflict’s end.
The two-minute silence begins at 11am on Sunday, with the march starting at 11.25am. Thousands of people are expected to line Whitehall to pay tribute.
King Charles is expected to lay his wreath down shortly after the two-minute silence, followed by other members of the royal family.
The prime minister, Keir Starmer, is then expected to lay his wreath down, followed by the leaders from the other political parties. You can watch our live feed at the top of our blog:
Starmer said:
This Remembrance Sunday, we pause as a nation to honour all those who have served our country.
We reflect on the extraordinary courage of our armed forces in the world wars and subsequent conflicts, whose service secured the freedoms we cherish today.
Eighty years since the end of the second world war, we remember a generation who stood against tyranny and shaped our future. Their legacy is peace and our duty is to protect it.
Such sacrifice deserves more than silence, which is why this government remains committed to supporting veterans, their families and those who serve.
Today, we remember, and we renew our promise to uphold the values they fought for.
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Nandy apologises after breach of code over appointment of donor to lead football regulator
As my colleague notes in this story, the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, apologised to the prime minister, Keir Starmer, last week after an inquiry found she failed to say that her choice of nominee to lead a new football regulator had donated to her and to Labour before she nominated him for the role.
In a letter to Nandy, Starmer said he accepted the apology, but noted that the process to appoint the media executive David Kogan “was not entirely up to the standard expected” and said her department could learn lessons from it.
Asked whether it was discussed at the interview Kogan was a Labour donor, she told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg show: “It was discussed at the interview it just wasn’t discussed that he donated specifically to me because I didn’t know about that.”
“He hadn’t recalled it, but as soon as that was discovered, as I said, as soon as I was given that information, that same day, I’d put that information into the public domain and recuse myself from the process.”
Nandy added:
We didn’t meet the highest standards throughout this process – that is on me. I am responsible for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and our appointment processes and I have unreservedly apologised.
The Conservatives have said Nandy’s actions were “a serious breach of public trust”.
Nandy says there were a series of 'very serious allegations' made about the BBC
MPs have said the BBC had “serious questions to answer” about the way a speech by the US president, Donald Trump, was edited by a BBC Panorama documentary.
The concerns regard clips spliced together from sections of the US president’s speech on January 6 2021 to make it appear he told supporters he was going to walk to the US Capitol with them to “fight like hell” in the documentary Trump: A Second Chance? which was broadcast by the BBC the week before last year’s US election.
On her Sunday morning politics programme, Laura Kuenssberg asked the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, if the editing was misleading. Nandy said she watched the programme but not the “full version of the interview versus the clips that the Panorama programme showed”.
She continued:
I have discussed the range of issues that were raised in the email that was leaked to the BBC. It isn’t just about the Panorama programme, although that is incredibly serious.
There are a series of very serious allegations made, the most serious of which is that there is systemic bias in the way that difficult issues are reported at the BBC.
I’ve spoken to the chairman (Samir Shah) this week. I am confident that he is treating this with the seriousness that that demands, and I understand he will be reporting back to the select committee on Monday.
Concerns about the Trump editing were raised in a memo by Michael Prescott, a former independent external adviser to the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee (EGSC). He left the role in the summer.
The dossier, first reported by the Telegraph, said the programme made Trump “‘say’ things [he] never actually said” by cutting together footage.
The Telegraph has also reportedly said that Prescott has alleged there were “systemic problems”, which had not been addressed by senior management, claiming there were “stark differences” between the coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza on BBC Arabic and on the main BBC website.
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The Guardian’s senior political correspondent, Peter Walker, provides some context behind the erroneous prison releases in this useful analysis piece which zooms in on HMP Wandsworth, the category B jail in south London cast into the headlines once again after the mistaken release of two prisoners in a week. Here is an extract:
Supposed to hold no more than 963 men, Wandsworth generally has about 1,500 kept in cramped and often dirty conditions, at times locked in cells for 22 hours a day.
Adding to the chaos is the transient status of many of the prisoners. According to another report on the jail, published this month by one of the independent monitoring boards that go into prisons to look at conditions, only 15% of Wandsworth’s inmates were serving sentences, with the rest either on remand, convicted but not yet sentenced, recalled to prison, or immigration cases.
Presiding over all this are about 85 staff, and often fewer. According to Taylor’s report, a combination of sickness and training commitments meant that at any one time a third of prison staff were not on frontline duties.
Those who were on the prison wings would generally be inexperienced. Across the prison service in England and Wales, every year about one in seven junior prison staff leave, and for senior officers the departure rate is one in eight.
At Wandsworth, Charlie Taylor, the chief inspector of prisons, found that this mass of inexperienced prison officers made implementing change difficult. “Staff were not wilfully neglectful, they simply did not understand their role and they lacked direction, training and consistent support from leaders,” he wrote.
David Lammy’s refusal to confirm whether any more asylum seekers had been wrongly released since Hadush Kebatu (a convicted child sex offender who arrived in the UK in a small boat and was mistakenly released from prison in October) at prime minister’s questions was a “profound mistake”, the shadow defence secretary told Sky News.
James Cartlidge said:
All I knew was we had a tip-off there was another such case, we didn’t know for certain.
You can’t know for certain unless you’re running the department and he stood up and answered my questions.
He had at his fingertips the facts and he’s in front of parliament, he has a Ministerial Code to be transparent, and he didn’t answer the questions at all.
And my judgment is that was a profound mistake and a discourtesy to parliament, notwithstanding what it means for his adherence to the ministerial code.
Cartlidge added: “I didn’t say he misled the House – he didn’t answer question at all.”
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In her interview with Sky News, Lisa Nandy rejected suggestions that the under-pressure justice secretary David Lammy had been “evasive” in his handling of the news a prisoner was wrongly released from HMP Wandsworth, saying he had been “weighing up in his mind” what information to share.
Asked whether his evasiveness made it more difficult to trust ministers on the issue, the culture secretary said:
I don’t accept that he was being evasive. I was in the House of Commons chamber, I was there, I was sitting next to the home secretary, and I could see that he was weighing up in his mind what information to release.
He was asked about an asylum seeker. The case in question was not an asylum seeker.
And I think all of us as ministers have an obligation to make sure that when we do speak about matters of such significance to the public and put information into the public domain, that we do that with care and make sure that the full facts are presented.
Lammy has faced scrutiny over his handling of the mistaken release of Brahim Kaddour-Cherif after he refused to answer questions put to him on the issue in the Commons on Wednesday.
On Thursday he insisted that parliament had not been misled. “I took the judgment that it is important when updating the house and the country about serious matters like this that you have all of the detail,” he said.
Kaddour-Cherif, 24, from Algeria, was accidentally freed on 29 October from Wandsworth prison in south London. He was arrested in Finsbury Park, north London, on Friday after police said they had received a call from a member of the public.
'Completely unacceptable' that mistaken prisoner releases have gone up under Labour, minister says
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of UK politics.
The culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, has vowed that Labour is going to “grip” the prison crisis as the government continues to come under pressure after a number of high-profile cases of prisoners being wrongly released.
Speaking to Sky News’ Trevor Phillips this morning, Nandy confirmed that four wrongly released prisoners are still at large.
She said it was a “completely unacceptable” situation where an average of 22 people are wrongly released from prisons each month in England and Wales, a rise from an average of 17 wrong releases under a large period over the previous administration.
Nandy said the “antiquated” paper-based system within the Prison Service partly explained the wrongful releases and said Labour inherited a broken prison system – which was nearly full to capacity – when Keir Starmer won the general election last year.
Nandy told Sky News:
What I can tell you is that under the last government, for quite some time, there were, on average, 17 wrong releases.
Under this government that has risen. It’s 22 – that is completely unacceptable. It was unacceptable before, it’s unacceptable now.
Even one is too many, and the justice secretary is gripping this by appointing Dame Lynne Owens, who is the former director of the National Crime Agency, to make sure that we really grip this, starting with the antiquated paper-based system that was developed in the 1980s that is still being used; building new prisons; and making sure that we have additional checks so that people aren’t wrongly released.
The Prison Officers’ Association (POA) has called for an “entire overhaul” of the sentencing calculation and discharging process and has warned the justice secretary, David Lammy, not to seek to blame individual officers for systemic failures.
Stay with us as we give you the latest developments in UK politics.
