Priti Patel – Sir David Amess ‘touched so many lives’
Tributes have continued to pour in this morning for the late Sir David Amess MP, who was murdered while hosting a constituency surgery in his Southend seat on Friday. The attack, which is being treated as a terrorist case, has shaken Westminster to its core, and once again highlighted the risks that come with a job that, by its very nature, is so open and accessible to all. The Home Secretary Priti Patel, who also serves as an Essex MP, was one of many to offer their fond memories of a close personal friend:
PP: He just had this infectious personality and energy, that I think has touched so many lives.
‘We need to close any gaps’ in MPs’ personal protection
Trevor Philips asked Patel about the adequacy of safety measures for elected politicians. Patel pledged to ‘look at everything’ to increase the security of MPs, ranging from a police presence during constituency surgeries to ending anonymity for social media accounts in an attempt to reduce online abuse:
PP: We need to close any gaps basically… There are discussions underway right now looking at a whole spectrum [of measures].
‘There is no magic solution’ to migrant crossings
Andrew Marr inquired about the Home Office’s grip on preventing the dangerous crossings of the English Channel by migrants based in Calais. Patel had previously pledged to make such crossings ‘unviable’:
PP: We are seeing unprecedented numbers of people… moving around the world… There is no magic solution… that is going to stop this.
Lisa Nandy – I’m not sure we can ever eliminate risk to MPs
Phillips spoke to the Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy, and sought her feeling on how to improve safety outside of the Palace of Westminster. Nandy said she did not believe that the risks were not totally surmountable, but stressed the need for ‘a better culture’:
LN: I’m not sure we can ever eliminate the risk, but there are things we can do to reduce the risk… I think all of us in Parliament need to tone down the rhetoric towards one another.
Gordon Brown – The answer cannot be less democracy
Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown told Phillips that the correct response to a terrorist attack would not be to make MPs more remote from the public, even if some additional security measures might need to be taken to make this possible:
GB: This is an attack on our democracy, so the answer cannot be less democracy… Our democratic values are indestructible, and we must show that now.
Philip Reeker – The US is committed to its climate goals
And finally, Marr confronted Philip Reeker, the acting US Ambassador to the UK, with an accusation from Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg that the US government was not really serious about the upcoming COP26 summit in Glasgow:
PR: I respectfully disagree [with Thunberg] and point out that President Biden has made very clear our focus on this… [which] will very much be discussed in Glasgow in the coming weeks.
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