Government failings a cause of great shame

LAST Thursday in Plymouth, a 22-year-old named Jake Davison shot dead five individuals and then himself.

His victims included his 51 yearold mother, Maxine, a young girl called Sophie, Sophie’s dad, Lee Martin, a 59-year-old passer-by named Stephen Washington and a 66-year-old passer-by named Kate Shepherd.

We now learn that this shooter was deemed by the local police to be unsafe to hold a firearm licence and took away this licence.

Then, the same police department changed its mind and decided to let him have the licence back.

They did not seem to take into account that this person was suffering from mental illness and that his mother had tried in vain to get expert medical help for him.

This may in part be due to the drastic cut in these facilities that successive Tory governments have forced on us over the past 10 years.

Also, not taken into this police decision is the fact that about eight years earlier, it was claimed this dangerous man carried out a serious physical attack on a man and his pregnant partner.

It has been claimed that the man was beaten 15 times and his partner was very concerned about their unborn baby.

Obviously, either through negligence or under-manning, the local police let Davison off with just a warning. In relative terms, it was a big gaff by the police to give him back the firearms licence.

And five individuals have paid an unfair price for this incompetence.

In days gone by, the minister concerned, in this case the Home Secretary Priti Patel, would have offered her resignation.

But she is not that conscientious. But, what about our Prime Minister, Boris Johnson?

We had these horrendous murders of five innocent individuals on Thursday and on Saturday morning, we saw the takeover of Afghanistan’s government by the Taliban.

By any standards, these were very significant events which we have not experienced for many years.

So, what does our PM do? He and his Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, decided to go on their summer holidays at the same time.

Lord Peter Ricketts, the former chair of the Joint Intellenge Committee (JIC), said Johnson’s holiday was “one more piece of evidence that Whitehall as a whole failed to anticipate either the scale or the speed of the collapse of the Afghan regime and the implications for the British interest’’.

Another officer, Major General Charlie Herbert, who under took three tours of duty in Afghanistan, said: “It is almost impossible to believe that the Prime Minister departed on holiday on that Saturday; he should hang his head in shame. It is dereliction of duty on an extraordinary scale.”

Suresh Chauhan, by email