We need answers, says family of murdered MP David Amess

"We have a lot of questions, and somebody needs to answer them," the daughter of murdered Conservative MP Sir David Amess has said.

Katie Amess told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that the authorities had failed to adequately protect her father in the lead-up to his death.

Ali Harbi Ali is serving a whole-life sentence after he was convicted of stabbing Sir David to death during a constituency surgery in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, in October 2021.

Ms Amess said a full public inquest into her father’s death was needed because there are “so many people that are at fault here”.

She said her brother had received a phone call the night before the attack, saying Sir David, who served as an MP for Southend West, was going to be killed. However, a coroner's report concluded that there was no threat to the MP's life in that phone call and that the police had responded appropriately.

Essex Police said it investigated the call, which was not linked to the murder of Sir David “in any way”.

A woman, in her 20s, and a man, in his 30s, both from Southend, were arrested, the force added.

But Ms Amess said officers "should have gone" to Sir David's constituency surgery the following day, adding that a police presence might have deterred Ali.

"The guy that killed my father admitted that he had gone to another surgery and other people's houses to kill them and when he saw a police presence he obviously didn't go through with the attack,” she said.

"If they [police] were there, my dad probably wouldn't be dead."

She called for a "full investigation into why they didn't show up".

In a statement, Essex Police said it does not provide officers to police MP constituency surgeries.

“If information or intelligence comes to light to give us cause for concern of the safety of an MP we would of course advise and guide them to keep them safe and provide a policing presence where necessary," it added.

During Ali's trial in 2022, it emerged he had been referred to the government's counter-extremism programme, Prevent, in 2014 and 2015 when he was a teenager.

Ms Amess claimed she had been told authorities had “missed follow-up meetings with him” during this time, which meant he was able to “disappear out of the system”.

“Had we done the proper monitoring through this Prevent scheme, we could have stopped this. And it’s not just failed my family, it’s failing other members of the public and it’s failing other members of Parliament,” she said.

The Home Office said: "The attack on Sir David Amess was an awful tragedy, the safety of members of Parliament is paramount and significant work has been taken forward in response to his tragic killing."

It added that the Prevent scheme is a “vital tool to stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism”.

Coroner Lincoln Brookes decided in July not to resume Sir David’s inquest, which had been adjourned once Ali was charged with murder.

He said there was a gap between Prevent's intervention and the murder of Sir David that there was "no evidential basis to consider this attack was possibly preventable so many years and imponderables later."

Ms Amess said the decision was “ridiculous” because the scheme was supposed to “track down terrorists and stop them before they carry out their attack”.

"There's so many people that are at fault here, and nobody is being given any answers, because I'm not being allowed a full public, open inquest, so that we can learn from our mistakes and make sure this doesn't happen again," she said.

High Court papers show that Ms Amess, an actress who lives in California, filed a personal injury claim against the Home Office and Essex Police in December.

But she told the BBC: "I can't actually do the civil claim, because that would cost, like, hundreds of thousands of pounds that obviously I don't have.

"So my only hope was to do this inquest, and that has been taken from me."

Essex Police said it was aware a claim form had been filed at court, but "as these papers have not been served on our force, we are unable to comment any further upon them".

The force added that Sir David had been a "heroic public servant" and "in the immediate aftermath of his murder, two of our heroic unarmed officers ran into the face of danger, trying desperately to save him and of course detaining his killer.

“Several other of our officers attended shortly afterwards and worked with paramedic colleagues to help save Sir David, sadly they were unable to do this."

Ms Amess also paid tribute to her father as "the most hardest-working person I've ever met", describing him as someone who loved helping people and who was "full of life and enigmatic and passionate".

She said it was now "so hard" for her to be in Southend "because it just reminds me of my father".

"I just wish that he was here to see all of this and to see Southend as a city."