Mother of Manchester arena victim calls Boris Johnson’s Reading terror attack response ‘offensive’ and ‘patronising’

‘I think that sentence should never be uttered when people have died’, mother of attack victim says

The mother of a Manchester Arena bombing victim has said Boris Johnson's response to the terror attack in Reading was "offensive" and "patronising".

Three men - now identified as James Furlong, Joe Ritchie-Bennett and David Wails - were stabbed to death in the town’s Forbury Gardens on Saturday evening in an assault that lasted less than five minutes.

The incident appeared to carry hallmarks of previous recent attacks on British soil - including the 2019 London Bridge attack and the another earlier this year on Streatham High Street, both of which saw lone wolf attackers who were known to security services carrying out small-scale assaults with bladed weapons.

In the Reading incident’s aftermath, the prime minister vowed to make necessary changes to ensure such the risk of such an assault was diminished.

Mr Johnson said the following day: "If there are lessons to be learned, if there are changes that need to be made to our legal system to stop such events happening again, we will not hesitate to take that action, as we have before you will recall, over the automatic early release of terrorist offenders."

However Figen Murray, the mother of Martyn Hett, hit out at the PM’s commitment - attacking his comments on Twitter as platitudes in the aftermath of tragedy.

She wrote: "Having lost a loved one in a terror attack I find it offensive/patronising.

"I gave you Martyn's Law as a 'lesson plan' for some of this."

In reference to his comments that lessons would be learned, she added: “I think that sentence should never be uttered when people have died.

“It just does not feel appropriate and is hurtful. Learning from things that go wrong is of course very important but maybe it should not be said out loud.”

Ms Murray has spent the time since her son's death in 2017 visiting schools, colleges and universities to discuss radicalisation in an attempt to prevent young people being recruited to extremist groups.

Martyn's Law, a bill she has campaigned to have introduced to protect people in places like bars and restaurants, would introduce a duty on venue operators to consider the risks of terror attacks.

The government has backed the idea.

It comes after ministers were challenged on whether the government is doing enough before the Reading attack.

Earlier this month David Lammy, the shadow justice secretary, suggested that time in prison may have made the perpetrators of recent terror attacks more inclined to violence, and questioned why a “coherent deradicalisation strategy” had not been published alongside the Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill.

The prime minister’s official spokesman said Mr Johnson’s commitment to do away with legal barriers in the wake of the Reading attack went beyond rhetoric.

He said: “It’s not a case of simply saying that. In the past when it was clear that further steps were needed following the Streatham attack to protect the public, we took them and we passed emergency legislation”.

He added the government’s Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill was making its way through parliament, allowing for “a new serious terrorism sentence for dangerous offenders with a 14-year minimum jail term and up to five years spent on licence; ending early release for the most serious offenders who receive extended determinate sentences... and ensuring a minimum period of 12 months on licence for all terror offenders as well as requiring adult offenders to take polygraph tests.”