Category: Politics

The inquiry also heard that the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, who was the target of the attack, blamed Putin. .reports Asian Lite News

The UK government believes that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, authorised the Salisbury novichok poisonings, which could have killed thousands of people, an inquiry has been told.

A senior Foreign Office (FCDO) official has given a statement to the inquiry spelling out that the British government has concluded the nerve agent attack was so sensitive that Putin himself must have given it the go-ahead.

The inquiry also heard that the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, who was the target of the attack, blamed Putin. In a new statement provided to the inquiry, he said: “I believe Putin makes all important decisions himself. I therefore think he must have at least given permission for the attack.”

Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned by novichok on 4 March 2018 in Salisbury, where he had been settled after a spy exchange.

On 30 June 2018, Dawn Sturgess, 44, and her boyfriend, Charlie Rowley, fell ill at his home in Amesbury, 11 miles north of Salisbury, having been poisoned with novichok that Rowley had apparently found in a perfume bottle left in a bin. The Skripals and Rowley survived, but Sturgess died on 8 July.

The inquiry, which began at the Guildhall in Salisbury on Monday, has been set up to examine Sturgess’s death but it will also look in detail at the attack on the Skripals.

Andrew O’Connor KC, counsel to the inquiry, described the circumstances of Sturgess’s death as “extraordinary, unique”.

The barrister said: “When Dawn Sturgess was poisoned by novichok four months after the Skripal poisoning, the real possibility emerged that she had been caught – an innocent victim – in the crossfire of an illegal and outrageous international assassination attempt.”

O’Connor continued: “The evidence will suggest that this bottle, which we shall hear contained enough poison to kill thousands of people, must earlier have been left somewhere in a public place.”

He told the chair of the inquiry, Lord Hughes of Ombersley: “You may conclude that those who discarded the bottle in this way acted with a grotesque disregard for human life.”

Jonathan Allen, a senior official at the FCDO, had provided a statement summarising the UK government’s assessments on who was behind the poisonings.

His statement says: “In light of the required seniority under Russian law to approve assassinations….outside Russia, and that this incident concerned a politically sensitive target (Mr Skripal was a UK citizen, and was targeted on UK soil), it is HMG’s view that President Putin authorised the operation.”

The inquiry was told Skripal had expressed his own views on the matter. When interviewed in May 2018 by the police, he said it was his “private opinion” that Putin was responsible, and the “number one reason” for the assassination attempt was that Russia believed he was still working for the west.

In a further statement, provided to the inquiry in the last week or so, Skripal said: “I do not know for certain how Putin personally viewed me. As far as I know I never spoke to him, although I was in the same room as him two times many years ago.

ALSO READ: London Secures £100m Investment Deals

The 36-page essay, titled Conservatism in Crisis, claims to identify factors holding back economic growth…reports Asian Lite News

The Tory leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch has been criticised for a campaign pamphlet that said autistic people received “better treatment” and “economic privileges and protections”.

A pamphlet published by Badenoch’s campaign team at the Conservative party conference argued that conditions such as anxiety, as well as an autism diagnosis, had gone from something “people should work on themselves as individuals” to “something that society, schools, and employers have to adapt around”.

The 36-page essay, titled Conservatism in Crisis, claims to identify factors holding back economic growth. It was not written solely by Badenoch but it features her campaign branding throughout, and she promoted it at conference fringe events.

Robert Buckland, a former cabinet colleague of Badenoch, criticised the remarks about autism and suggested they were “stigmatising” the spectrum condition.

Buckland, a former justice secretary who published a review into employment rates among autistic people, told the i paper that the essay’s section on autism appeared “muddled” and should not be “stigmatising or lumping certain categories in with each other”.

“Anxiety is not a neurodiverse condition … autism is not a mental health condition,” he said. “That part of the report didn’t seem to me to be based on any evidence, and mixing up autism with mental health is not right. It’s not the correct approach to be taken into this.”

Anxiety is considered a mental health condition by the NHS, while the National Autistic Society defines autism as a developmental disability.

The Buckland review found that at least 700,000 autistic people were economically inactive because of the barriers they faced in finding work.

The essay said being diagnosed as neurodiverse had gone from “an individual focused challenge” that “meant you could understand your own brain” to something that “offers economic advantages and protections”.

It said diagnoses of anxiety or autism were being treated similarly to race or sex discrimination, and that children with the conditions “may well get better treatment or equipment at school” including transport to and from home.

It added that an autism diagnosis in the workforce came with better employment protections against unfair dismissal and a requirement for workplaces to make reasonable adjustments.

The essay said it was positive there was more openness around mental health, but the requirement for schools and workplaces to make adjustments for it had “created costs and failed to improve people’s mental health outcomes”.

A spokesperson for Badenoch told the i that it was “wrong to infer any prejudice” from the report and that it was “essential that we are able to talk about these issues without the media deliberately misleading their readers for the sake of easy headlines”.

“If we are to resolve the problem of deteriorating mental health, we must be able to point out that it is happening and how society has changed its approach to it and determine whether that approach is working,” they said.

Badenoch, who is seen as the frontrunner in the Tory leadership contest, has repeatedly been criticised for controversial comments. During the Tory conference, she faced backlash for suggesting that maternity pay in the UK, which is among the lowest in member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, was “excessive”.

ALSO READ: London Secures £100m Investment Deals