Keir Starmer defends actions after being blasted for Southport 'cover-up' as he admits knowing details

Starmer said that Southport "must be a line in the sand", although "nothing will be off the table in this inquiry", insisting that it will lead to change.

He continued: “I know people will be watching right now, and they’ll be saying, we’ve heard all this before, the promises, the sorrow, the inquiry that comes and goes, and inability to change that frankly, has become the oxygen for wider conspiracy."

Referring to the slew of accusations of being a part of a "cover-up“, he said: "I want to put on record that yesterday’s guilty verdict only happened because hundreds, if not thousands, of dedicated public servants worked towards it, many of whom endured absolutely harrowing circumstances, particularly in the police and the Crown Prosecution Service.

“That is their job. They are brilliant at it.”

He revealed that he was "kept up to date with the facts as they were emerging" - including the matter of the ricin and terrorist document discovered in Rudakubana's home - but had to "observe the law of the land".

He said that it was to "protect the integrity of the system to ensure that the victims and their families get the justice they deserve".

Starmer explained: “It was not my personal decision to withhold this information, any more than it was a journalist’s personal decision not to print or write about it.

“That is the law of the land and it is in place for the reasons I’ve set out to protect the integrity of the system to ensure that the victims and their families get the justice they deserve.”

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Rudakubana, from Lancashire, pleaded guilty yesterday to murdering Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, on July 29 last year.

It has now emerged that the murderer had been referred - on three occasions - to Prevent, which is the Government's scheme to prevent terrorist violence.

It had earlier emerged that Rudakubana had been referred three times to Prevent, the Government’s scheme to stop terrorist violence, with one of the earlier references was made after there was concern surrounding Rudakubana’s potential interest in murdering children in a school massacre.

Yesterday, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced that, after the guilty plea, "the families and the people of Southport need answers about what happened leading up to this attack".

Regarding such an inquiry, the PM said: "I will not let any institution of the state deflect from their failure, failure, which in this case, frankly leaps off the page.

He said that he understood the "frustration of all", including the journalists who do not report information because "they know the law doesn't permit it" as it "runs the risk of collapsing a trial" while, at the same time, they see others who fail to abide by the same restrictions.

He said: “That has to be addressed and will be part of what we will be looking at because that can’t be right."

When asked if it had been a mistake not to provide information before the guilty party was charged, he said: “You would be putting very different questions to me if I had disclosed information, and we were now faced with a decision that the trial had just collapsed and the families would never get justice, you would rightly be challenging me very, very hard about why I disclosed information.”

He warned there were also questions of “accountability” for the Whitehall and Westminster system, "which does not react until justice is either hard won by campaigners or until appalling tragedies like this finely spur a degree of action".

“Time and again, we see this pattern, and people are right to be angry about it - I am angry about it.”