Pic--Jon Venables was 10 when he and Robert Thompson killed James Bulger
crime reporter(wp/bbc):::
The father of James Bulger has lost a legal challenge to try to change a lifelong anonymity order for one of his son's killers.
Ralph Bulger wanted information relating to Jon Venables' new identity to be made public, after he was jailed for possessing child abuse images.
Venables and Robert Thompson, both 10, killed the two-year-old in 1993.
Mr Bulger's lawyers argued information about Venables which was "common knowledge" should be made public.
However, president of the family division Sir Andrew McFarlane refused to change the terms of the order, which was designed to protect Venables from "being put to death".
Sir Andrew said: "There is a strong possibility, if not a probability, that if his identity were known he would be pursued resulting in grave and possibly fatal consequences."
Under the order, dating back to 2001, Venables and Thompson were granted lifelong anonymity and given new identities when they were released on licence.
Mr Bulger had argued certain details about Venables were easily accessible online.
The court was told that information included details of the killer's identities and former addresses up to 2017 and prisons where he had been detained.
Anyone sharing those details could face prosecution for contempt of court, under the injunction.
Upholding the injunction, Sir Andrew said: "My decision is in no way a reflection on the applicants themselves, for whom there is a profoundest sympathy.
"The reality is that the case for varying the injunction has simply not been made."
She said: "I've always said, I don't want them dead, because I don't want blood on my hands. I don't agree with killing someone.
"All I've ever wanted was justice for James and getting that justice would be them two going from young offenders to a proper prison and spend proper time in there."
A knife crime tsar must be appointed by government in order to "get a grip" on the rise in youth violence, a former Metropolitan Police commissioner says.
Lord Hogan-Howe said a 93% rise in the number of under-16s stabbed over five years was a "terrifying statistic" and "something has to change".
It comes after two 17-year-olds were killed in separate incidents in London and Greater Manchester at the weekend.
The home secretary will meet police chiefs this week to discuss the issue.
Prime Minister Theresa May said she recognised people's concern, but insisted there was "no direct correlation" between the rise in knife crime and a fall in police numbers.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid condemned the "senseless violence", saying: "Young people are being murdered across the country, it can't go on."
The Met's Assistant Commissioner, Graham McNulty, said tackling violent crime "remains the Met's priority", adding officers from the violent crime unit worked extended shifts over the weekend.
He said: "The increased police presence has made a difference with officers conducting over 2,500 stop and searches in the last three days alone."
NHS data shows that the number of children aged 16 and under treated for stab wounds in England rose from 180 in 2012-13 to 347 in 2017-18.
Lord Hogan-Howe - who led the Met from 2011 to 2017 - said a tsar should be put in charge of how money is spent to tackle knife crime, rather than individual police forces - especially when it comes to officer recruitment.
"I'd want to know, week after week, when are you recruiting them? When do they arrive? When do they get trained? And when do they hit the streets?" he told the BBC.
"You want to know day-by-day what's going to get delivered. And I don't get that sense of grip.
"If it's not treated as a crisis, it will take another two years before we see action."
Tsars are unelected independent advisers to the government who help to shape policy on a range of issues from drug misuse to how to reinvigorate the high street.
Officers say Jodie's attacker was a black male in his late teens who stabbed her in the back without saying a word. There are no descriptions of a second suspect.
Jodie's family branded it a "totally random and unprovoked attack".
The Labour councillor for Heaton, Tele Lawal, who attended Jodie's sixth form college, told the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme: "She was a scout, loved by the community. To have a person like her taken away - is that not a wake-up call for our government?
"It shocks us all. For me as a councillor, what more can we be doing?"
Next steps
Lord Hogan-Howe said the government and police also needed to:
Tackle the supply of cocaine to the UK from Colombia and Mexico. As the supply has increased and the price has dropped, violence between dealers has intensified, he said
Deter young people from carrying knives. Too many are worried about being caught without a knife, not with one, he said, and the police need better technology than knife-detecting wands and arches to detect them
Combat deprivation, which he said was a common factor in knife crime across the country
Hazrat Umar, 17, was killed in Bordesley Green on Monday; Abdullah Muhammad, 16, died in Small Heath the previous week, and seven days earlier Sidali Mohamed, 16, was stabbed outside a college in Highgate.
Before you try to solve any problem, you need to know what's causing it. The Home Office says the spike in knife crime, and serious violence more generally, is largely being driven by disputes over drugs.
So, with the National Crime Agency, it's set up a co-ordination centre to focus efforts on disrupting supply and catching dealers.
But it's also clear many stabbings are not linked to drugs - they're part of a tit-for-tat cycle of street violence between gangs which breeds fear among young people and prompts them to carry weapons.
There's a consensus that fixing that requires a two-pronged approach. More visible and intrusive policing, such as stop-and-search, to suppress the problem, together with longer-term prevention work (known as the public health model) to identify and support those at risk of being drawn into violent gangs at an early stage.
Where there's disagreement is whether cuts to policing and other public services have played a role in the surge in violence. For ministers to acknowledge resources are a factor would mean admitting their policies contributed to the problem and providing funding to rectify it.
The Home Office set out a range of actions to tackle violent crime in October, including a £200m youth endowment fund and a consultation on a new legal duty to treat serious violence as a public health issue.
It also revealed plans for a consultation to adopt a new "public health" approach to tackling serious violence.
An extra £970m in police funding is also proposed for 2019-20 and the Offensive Weapons Bill, currently before Parliament, will introduce new offences to tackle knife crime and acid attacks.
But London's Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime Sophie Linden said new money was not enough to make up for the millions of pounds of cuts to services that ensured young people did well at school and were not excluded.
"This is a complex problem. It's policing, it's youth services, it's working with parents. We need the government to step up," she said.
Home Office minister Victoria Atkins told BBC Radio 4's Today programme a week of national action in February took 9,000 knives from the streets and saw more than 1,000 arrests.
Business reporter(wp/reuters)::: Britain’s construction industry reported the first fall in activity in almost a year last month, as Brexit uncertainty and a slow housing market delayed new building projects. The IHS Markit/CIPS Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) fell to 49.5 in February from January’s reading of 50.6, the first time the index has been below the 50-mark that separates growth from contraction since unusually icy weather in March 2018.
The last time the reading was below 50 for reasons unrelated to the weather was in September 2017, and February’s number was at the bottom end of economists’ forecasts in a Reuters poll.
“The UK construction sector moved into decline during February as Brexit anxiety intensified and clients opted to delay decision-making on building projects,” IHS Markit economist Tim Moore said.
Britain remains at risk of leaving the European Union on March 29 with no transitional arrangements, though last week Prime Minister Theresa May said lawmakers would be able to vote to delay Brexit for a short period if they continued to reject the deal she agreed with Brussels last year.
Builders said they were experiencing some of the longest delays in getting construction materials since 2015, due to transport shortages caused by manufacturers stocking up on materials in case a no-deal Brexit disrupts imports.
Construction projects such as new homes and office space were also being put on hold as Brexit uncertainty slowed commercial decision-making and the housing market weakened, with knock-on effects for hiring.
Although Bank of England data last week showed a pick-up in the number of mortgages approved at the start of 2019, house prices have been flat over the past couple of months, according to figures from mortgage lender Nationwide Building Society.
Last year construction output rose by the smallest amount since 2012, up just 0.7 percent according to official data.
Construction makes up only 6 percent of Britain’s economy, but its volatility often means it has an outsize effect on the quarterly growth rate of the whole economy.
Prime Minister Theresa May’s top lawyer will try to clinch a Brexit compromise with the European Union this week in a last-ditch bid to win over rebellious British lawmakers before crunch votes that could delay the divorce.
The United Kingdom is due to leave the EU on March 29 but still has no deal in place governing its exit terms, after members of parliament voted in January by 432 to 230 votes to reject an agreement May reached last year with the bloc.
May is hoping to win over enough MPs to pass it, by agreeing a legal addendum with the EU on the deal’s most controversial element: a “backstop” to ensure no hard border between EU-member Ireland and British-ruled Northern Ireland.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox, Britain’s top government lawyer, is due to meet EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier in Brussels on Tuesday.
“The attorney general continues to pursue legally binding changes to the backstop that are necessary to ensure the EU cannot hold the UK in it indefinitely,” a spokesman for May said.
“We’re now at a particularly critical stage in these negotiations,” said the spokesman. He declined to go into any specifics about the kind of legally binding changes Cox was trying to secure.
As Brexit goes down to the line, investors are watching to see if May can win over enough MPs to her deal. If she cannot, then the exit date is almost certain to be delayed by MPs eager to avoid a potentially disorderly no-deal exit.
British lawmakers oppose the backstop because it requires Britain to apply some EU rules in Northern Ireland indefinitely, unless another plan for keeping the border open can be agreed in future. May has promised to seek changes, although the EU has refused to reopen the draft treaty. Parliament will vote on her tweaked deal by March 12.
If they reject the deal, MPs will have a vote on whether to leave without a deal, and then on whether to delay Brexit, probably by a few months until the end of June.
LEGAL FIX
In a bid to win over opposition Labour Party MPs, May will on Monday set out plans for a 1.6 billion pound fund to help to boost economic growth in Brexit-supporting communities.
The Labour Party’s finance spokesman, John McDonnell, said the fund was “Brexit bribery”.
“This towns fund smacks of desperation from a government reduced to bribing Members of Parliament to vote for their damaging flagship Brexit legislation,” he said.
Labour, which like May’s Conservatives has formally backed exiting the EU in line with the results of a 2016 referendum, shifted its position last week to back a new public vote if May presses on with her deal.
As May seeks to win over MPs, a group of prominent Brexit rebels set out the changes they want to see to the agreement in return for their support: it must be legally binding, clear and set out an exit route for the backstop.
But the Daily Telegraph newspaper said Cox had abandoned attempts to secure a hard time-limit or unilateral exit mechanism.
The EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier said on Friday that the bloc was ready to give Britain more guarantees that the backstop was only intended to be temporary and used for a “worst-case scenario”.
