Justice minister defends early release of PC Andrew Harper’s killers amid possible legal challenge – UK politics live

Jake Richards acknowledges ‘unimaginable pain’ of Harper’s family but says government faces an ‘unenviable position’Andy Burnham is considering launching a public inquiry into the UK activities of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a minister has said.The victims’ minister, Alex Davies-Jones, said the prime minister had agreed to meet Epstein’s victims, was “looking into” an inquiry and was “taking this very seriously”. A separate inquiry into the alleged actions of the former Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed is also being considered.I’m not giving him a national platform, he is standing to be a councillor in Somerset… it is a local platform looking at parking, sorting out bins. I have much higher thresholds for what it takes to be a Conservative MP.I am extremely worried about antisemitism and what I feel is that if we can’t have the people who have previously been radicalised, who understand what went wrong and are part of the fight against antisemitism now, if we’re saying: ‘No, no, no, you’re untouchable,’ then how can we pretend that we believe in rehabilitation?I’m someone who’s quite sceptical about rehabilitation and I see this man as somebody who has been rehabilitated. Continue reading...