A Labour MP has said the CPS were right to charge Rudakubana with murder if they were more confident of getting a conviction.

Speaking on GB News, Mike Tapp said:

“I think most of the public will agree with me, that this man is a terrorist. The judge alluded to that, and Yvette Cooper alluded to agreement as well.

“The complex part here is, yes, he killed people, and that was vile. He terrorised, he had an al Qaeda manual, he produced ricin.

“But the CPS made a decision to charge on murder because there wasn’t that clear ideological motivation for carrying out the murders.

“He is clearly a terrorist, and that’s why Yvette Cooper was right to say that they’ll look at the legal framework to look at things like intention to terrorise so that these people can be treated as terrorists in the future.

“When it comes to charging the CPS have to charge with the offence that they’re most likely to convict on. And if there isn’t that clear evidence of that motivation and ideology leading to those viral murders, they’ve got to go with the one that’s most likely to succeed.

“So that was most likely the right choice here, and that’s why we’ve seen him convicted.

“And of course, language is really important. That’s within British values to ensure that people like this go to prison.

“So we have to be really careful leading up to a sentencing and a trial.

“This is why it’s so important that we have this national review, so that we can put on the table everything that happened from the first referral to the last. How did he slip through the net, so we can make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“We need to know the facts before in order to fix it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“But I would also say, having worked in counter terrorism, we’ve really committed counter officers, people are working tirelessly to stop attacks from happening, and obviously many have been stopped, and one slipped through the net, which is an absolute tragedy, and we’ve got to get to the bottom of that to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“I think this started happening when he was a very young age. So possession of knives, obsession with murder, the vile things he’s been viewing online. And this is why Keir Starmer is right to say that actually this could become a big problem if we don’t get this right.

“These people, without clear ideologies, who are obsessed with murder. We’ve got to get on top of it.

“The specific attack was difficult for the CPS because the evidence available to link it.

“If we say the wrong things for political reasons that jeopardise a case like that, that would be disgraceful. And luckily, we didn’t do that.”