The world of All Party Parliamentary Groups is meant to promote cross-party harmony on difficult issues. They’re mostly talking shops, but some have had real clout…
As Angela Rayner’s ‘Working Group on Anti-Muslim Hatred and Islamophobia’ gets going – bizarrely chaired by former Tory Attorney General Dominic Grieve – co-conspirators have sounded the alarm over recent statements by the APPG on British Muslims. On 8 January, the group posted a message on social media attacking Kemi Badenoch, without consulting Robbie Moore MP, its co-chair and only Conservative member. The statement accused the Tories of “spreading lies and misinformation and whipping up far-right conspiracies.” Doesn’t sound very ‘all party’…
Moore promptly resigned, slamming the group, saying it had: “completely undermined the very principle of an ‘All-Party’ Parliamentary Group… being used more as a vehicle for political messaging than for genuine cross-party collaboration.” Fair enough…
The APPG then made another statement attacking “false right-wing narratives,” this time triggered by a report published by the think-tank Policy Exchange. The APPG didn’t give the specifics of what it thought was wrong with the report, possibly because it published its criticism before the report was even released…
A second Tory quit the group soon after, showing that the Conservatives had drawn a line and were trying to kick their relationship with the group into touch. But the APPG has managed to cling onto ‘all party’ status by recently recruiting Baroness Morris of Bolton as co-Chair. APPGs need at least four registered officers (with at least one from the government party and one from the main opposition) to exist. Surely the Tories will pull the plug on this…
David Lammy was asked on Times Radio if scrapping jury trials would eliminate the court backlog by the next election:
“It won’t be eliminated by the next election. That’s impossible. We just have 84 Crown courts across our country and 500 courtrooms.”