Katie Amess, whose father Sir David Amess was stabbed to death by a terrorist in 2021, said it is right that an inquiry has been opened into Southport, but her calls have been ignored
The daughter of an MP who was murdered at a constituency surgery has demanded a government inquiry into his death.
Katie Amess, whose father Sir David Amess was stabbed to death in 2021, says she is “very confused” why there has there has been no inquiry into the killing. Tory MP Sir David was killed by British-born terrorist Ali Harbi Ali, who was known to the counter-radicalisation Prevent scheme.
On Tuesday Keir Starmer announced there would be an inquiry into the Southport murders to find out if opportunities were missed to stop killer Axel Rudakubana. Ms Amess told Times Radio her call for a similar probe into her father’s murder had been blocked.
She said there should be an inquiry into “every single” case where someone known to Prevent goes on to kill. Ms Amess said: “Terrorism is terrorism. It doesn’t matter if you’re following Islamic terrorist ideologies or if you’re somebody on the far right that’s doing terrorist crimes… I am just very confused as to why I am not allowed an inquiry because they said it could compromise security if we released to the public everything that was known about the man and where they failed following up with him.
“Why am I not allowed that? But instantly they can provide it for a different terrorist incident. And rightly so, it should be provided for that incident. What happened is absolutely abhorrent. It is appalling.”
Ms Amess said cases like her own are not isolated. She said: ” Every single person that has been failed by Prevent and by the government and also by the police force – I know the police weren’t to blame in that scenario, in that situation – they should also have an inquiry because I mean this is not isolated, it’s not just Southport and me. “
She said that she had looked into taking legal action against the Government to get answers. Ms Amess said: “It cost me tens of thousands I would say at this point. and then the coroner said it’s nothing to do with the courts.
“You need to ask the government. So I asked the government, the Conservative one. They ignored me, said go through somebody else. And then I asked the Labour government and they also said that they couldn’t help but that they were hiring a new commissioner for Prevent.
“And then all of a sudden instantly they can do a whole inquiry that Keir Starmer says it’ll be robust, no stone will be left unturned. Why is that? What is in my case that the public and me aren’t allowed to know?”
On Monday Mr Starmer said the country had “failed in its duty” to protect Bebe King, six, Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, who were murdered in Southport.
