Parliamentary activity

Answering body: Home Office

On 13 April 2026, the Chair of the Southport Inquiry, Sir Adrian Fulford published his Phase 1 report. Sir Adrian sets out five fundamental failings, and makes 67 recommendations for central government, and a range of national and local partners to consider. He concludes that the attack was foreseeable and avoidable.

I am grateful to Sir Adrian and his team for their diligent work in producing this comprehensive report. When I addressed Parliament on 13 April, I committed to publish our response by summer. Today that response has been published. The response has been laid before Parliament as a Command Paper (CP 1623) and copies are available in the Vote Office and on gov.uk.

In the response, we recognise the five fundamental failings. We accept all the recommendations that are for central government to deliver and set out how we are working at pace to implement these in full. There are recommendations that government has already made progress against, or in some cases, completed. The pace of this work demonstrates the urgency with which government is working towards meeting the outcomes set by the Inquiry. I have committed to formally report to Sir Adrian again in a year’s time.

I am clear that government expects other organisations to implement their recommendations. We have written to all organisations to highlight the findings of the Inquiry and will facilitate and support on delivery as far as possible.

The government has already acted across a number of areas.

We have published our Halving Knife Crime plan with the ambition to halve the level of knife crime across ten years. We have also taken the Crime and Policing Act 2026 through Parliament to significantly tighten the law on knives and other bladed articles. We have also recently held a public consultation about introducing licensing for sellers of knives and importers.

We published a Youth Justice White Paper setting out a comprehensive programme of reform to modernise the youth justice system, establishing a clear direction toward earlier intervention and taking action to encourage and strengthen the use of parenting orders.

The government is introducing legislation this session to criminalise lone individuals planning an attack without an ideological motive, closing a gap and strengthening our ability to disrupt the most serious threats from violence-fixated individuals.

We have announced that we will ban social media companies from offering their services to under 16s, in addition to new action to restricting their access to livestreaming and communication with strangers on services including gaming. We will also introduce legislation to tackle extreme violence content, to create a safer online environment, particularly for children and young people.

Alongside delivering the recommendations in Phase 1, we will work with the Inquiry throughout Phase 2 to strengthen our understanding of the evolving threat from extreme violence and the effectiveness of different interventions.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, my predecessor appointed Lord Anderson as the Interim Independent Prevent Commissioner and asked him to review the Southport attack along with the tragic murder of Sir David Amess. Today I am also publishing a letter accepting all the recommendations Lord Anderson made and setting out how we have delivered against them.

Today my thoughts remain with Alice da Silva Aguiar, Bebe King and Elsie Dot Stancombe, their families and friends, and the survivors. We owe it to them to act on the findings of these reports.

Answering body: Home Office

On 7 April 2025, the then Secretary of State for the Home Department announced the establishment of an Inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005, to be chaired by the Right Honourable Sir Adrian Fulford. This Inquiry was to examine the appalling events that took place at a children’s dance class in Southport on 29 July 2024.

Three young girls were tragically murdered on that day, Elsie Dot Stancombe, Alice da Silva Aguiar and Bebe King, and many more were seriously harmed. Our thoughts remain with the families who have suffered such devastating loss, as well as those who survived the attack but live with the lasting physical and psychological impact.

The Chair has today published his findings from the first phase of this Inquiry, which provides a detailed account of the events leading up to the attack, and the attack itself. The Inquiry examined the perpetrator’s history and interactions with a range of state systems including policing and criminal justice, education, health and social care, as well as considering the account of all those who were impacted by the attack.

The findings point to missed opportunities which could have stopped this attack from occurring. They indicate systematic failures, structural gaps, and a lack of ownership of the risk from the many agencies involved. The Inquiry also highlights how agencies failed to adequately share information and take all the facts about the risk the perpetrator posed to the community into consideration, which ultimately meant that his risk was not managed effectively.

Sir Adrian has examined these issues thoroughly, and I welcome the recommendations he has made. The Government is determined to learn the lessons identified by the Inquiry and to take the necessary action to reduce the risk of such an attack happening again. I must thank the Chair, his team, and all those that took part in the Inquiry, for the speed, rigour and professionalism with which they have conducted their work.

The Government will consider the report and its recommendations and will respond in full later this summer. Alongside this, the Government will respond to the recommendations made by the Prevent Commissioner, Lord Anderson KC, in his Lessons for Prevent report, which examined Prevent’s role in the Southport attack and the murder of Sir David Amess.

While the first phase of the Inquiry has looked specifically at the failings in this case, it has identified wider gaps in how to address the risk from individuals who hold a fascination with extreme violence. Following consultation with the Chair and those most affected by this attack, I am today publishing the Terms of Reference for the second phase of the Southport Inquiry.

I have asked the Chair in Phase 2, to examine the adequacy of arrangements for identifying and managing the risk posed by individuals who are fixated with extreme violence. The Inquiry will consider the role of multi-agency management, the interventions needed to reduce risk to the public, the effectiveness of laws around knives and weapons, and the extent to which the internet and social media are influencing and enabling people to carry out violent attacks.

This next phase of the Inquiry will begin immediately and is expected to report in Spring 2027. A copy of the Terms of Reference for Phase 2 of the Southport Inquiry will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.

The Government will provide the Inquiry with the resources it needs to complete this next phase and will fully support the Chair in the discharge of his duties. We will continue to engage with those affected by the events in Southport, to ensure that their questions are answered, and their views are heard, as this next stage commences.