Tory

A TOP Tory minister has said she fears her hotel room was bugged on a fact-finding trip to Taiwan.

It comes after a case against an accused Chinese spy, Chris Cash, collapsed last month when the Government refused to class Beijing as a threat to national security.

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Chris Cash, 30, and his friend Christopher Berry, 33, were both accused and denied spying for China.

Cash, a parliamentary researcher, received high level briefings from former MI6 spooks, ambassadors and ministers before he was dramatically arrested.

The former teacher, who had lived and worked in China, was accused of passing secrets to Beijing.

The Crown Prosecution Service case against the two alleged spies collapsed with ministers blamed for failing to provide key evidence that China was a national security threat at the time.

Starmer has since claimed that there was nothing he could do about the issue and blamed the former government for not designating China a threat when the offences took place.

The Daily Mail has now revealed that at the same time the Government was refusing to designate Beijing a threat, then foreign secretary David Lammy was doing just that.

He branded China an enemy of Britain during a debate in the commons in an effort to defend Labour’s surrender of the Chagos Islands.

The Shadow National Security Minister, Alicia Kearns, 37, has now revealed that she was a target during the alleged spy operation.

In what is thought to be a spy dossier, details of her hotel room in Taiwan were found.

When the senior Tory minister was on a fact finding trip to the country as chairman of the foreign affairs committee, she fears she was bugged by Beijing.

She told the Daily Mail: “They could have got in that room at any time.

“You can’t be sure that the room hasn’t got a bug or a camera somewhere.

“There could be photos of you walking around your hotel room naked.”

China had threatened that the mother-of-three’s trip would result in “repercussions.”

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She worked alongside Mr Cash for a year and raised concern that others he met through work may have been exposed.

Chinese dissidents, victims of transnational repression and people intimidated in secret Chinese police stations in the UK may have all been laid bare to Mr Cash.

The Shadow National Security Minister continued, saying Mr Cash worked at the heart of government policy on China.

He gained insight from the Foreign Office, Home Office, Treasury and Department for Business and Trade according to Ms Kearns.

Mr Cash worked on key government policy around China including the TikTok ban on government devices and exposing covert Chinese police stations in the UK.

The alleged spy managed to speak to every top China expert in the UK, finding himself in a position to glean information as “valuable as gold dust” to Beijing Ms Kearns believes.

The revelations could raise more questions about why the case against the accused spooks was dropped.

Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper admitted: “We know China poses threats to the UK national security.”

“I am deeply frustrated about this case, because I, of course, wanted to see it prosecuted.”

Ex-diplomat Charles Parton previously told The Sun that the Government’s refusal to brand Beijing a threat clearly showed “a desire not to offend China.”

Mr Parton, who was due to testify for the prosecution, slammed the CPS for failing to find new witnesses after the Government pulled its national security official at the last minute.

He told The Sun: “They are both to blame. The Government for withdrawing.

“But the CPS should have got some evidence from experts to say, ‘Is China a threat?’

“Then the jury could have said, ‘Yes, national security threat,’ and now we’re going ahead and trying this case.

“That smacks either of interference by the Government or just sheer incompetence.”

Chris Cash and Christopher Berry both deny all charges brought against them under the official secrets act.

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A TORY Peer insists Labour’s flagship workers’ rights package must be changed to protect people from being sacked or disciplined for online posts. 

Baron Young, who founded the Free Speech Union, says any messages more than a year old shouldn’t be used to reprimand employees and “cancel” people. 

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Bosses would have to be able to prove that “tangible” harm had been caused rather than “reputational” damage which is too vague. 

The Employment Rights Bill is currently in the House of Lords and will be debated when Parliament returns after the party conferences. 

The Peer is compiling a report on how laws affecting free speech should be changed or abandoned. 

The dossier should be published before the end of the year and could be adopted as party policy after that, he added. 

He said changes “would make it unlawful for companies to discipline, fire, penalise employees for things they’ve said online unless, first of all, they’re less than a year old. 

“So there’s a one-year statute of limitations on what the offence archaeologists can dig into to try and find reasons to cancel you. 

“In addition, the employer would have to show that the comment in question has caused tangible harm to the company. 

Lord Young of Acton was made a peer by Tory leader Kemi Badenoch in December. 

He previously founded a network of free schools, and has been a newspaper columnist for more than 20 years. 

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ED MILIBAND is a “walking, talking cost-of-living crisis”, according to shadow Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho.

The senior MP — who will tomorrow unveil Tory plans for cheaper utilities — vowed to get her Labour arch-rival SACKED as gas and electricity costs rose again this week on his watch.

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Experts have warned that Red Ed, who promised to cut energy bills by up to £300 a year before the 2024 General Election, will only drive prices higher with his Net Zero obsession.

Already, £1billion has been spent this year switching off wind turbines when it got too blowy for the network to cope.

Other sources, such as gas-fired plants, then had to be paid to be used as a replacement. The shutdown has pushed household bills up by £15 a year.

In an interview with the Sun on Sunday, Ms Coutinho fumed: “Ed Miliband is a disaster.

“Every decision (he) has made in government is going to send people’s bills up.

“He promised people £300 off their bills, and so far they’re already £200 up. People are rightly furious.

“I don’t know what he’s on. He is a walking, talking cost-of-living crisis.

“I’m going to make it my mission in this parliament to get him sacked.”

She continues: “I think he can’t add up because if you look at what he’s doing, gas at the moment is about £55 a megawatt-hour.

“He said he’s willing to pay up to £117 for offshore wind this year, and then he talks about cutting people’s bills. You don’t need a calculator to see that is just total madness.”

The top Tory also slated Energy Secretary Mr Miliband for “signing up to 20-year contracts” for offshore wind, adding: “We’re going to be saddled with these incredibly high prices for decades.”

Ms Coutinho is the face of the Conservative Party’s scepticism over a move to Net Zero.

At their annual conference in Manchester tomorrow, she will outline proposals to cut bills by scrapping green levies.

She said: “The most important thing the country needs — and we’re unashamed about this — is lower energy bills.

“Our priority for energy policy going forward will be simple: Make electricity cheaper.

“It will be good for growth, it’s good for cost-of-living — something we know lots of families are still struggling with — and, most importantly, it will be good for the whole of the UK to have much cheaper energy bills.”

Levies funding environmental and social projects add around £140 to annual electricity bills and £50 to gas bills, says innovation agency Nesta.

It comes as the UK energy price cap rose again this week by two per cent, meaning the average household paying for gas and electricity by direct debit will see costs increase from £1,720 to £1,755 per year.

Ms Coutinho’s stance marks a much harder line on eco-policies as the Tories try to stave off Nigel Farage’s party.

Reform UK promised to scrap the Net Zero target and told wind and solar developers they will end green energy subsidies if they win power.

It has prompted Mr Miliband to liken the Tories to a “Reform tribute act”.

But Ms Coutinho said: “That’s absolute rubbish, If you look at Reform, they’ve got the economics of Jeremy Corbyn.”

She claimed there was a huge black hole in Reform’s spending plans, adding: “That simply isn’t going to work for a country where you’ve got interest rates high, inflation is high. We need to be bringing those things down. So we need to live within our means.”

Tories have pledged to scrap the restrictive Climate Change Act 2008 brought in by the last Labour government, and the target of Net Zero emissions by 2050 enshrined by Tory PM Theresa May in 2019.

Ms Coutinho said: “We’ve got new leadership now and both Kemi and I strongly feel that the biggest problem that this country faces is that we’ve got the highest industrial electricity prices in the world and the second highest domestic prices. Now that’s just not going to work for Britain.”

Tories would also abolish quango the Climate Change Committee, which advises the Government on Net Zero.

Ms Coutinho said: “For too long, energy policy has been in the hands of people who are unelected and unaccountable — and that’s just not right.”

And she has left the door open to fracking.

A ban was lifted by Liz Truss during her short tenure in Downing Street – but this was abandoned by her successor Rishi Sunak.

Ms Coutinho added: “We’re a small dense island and it can be very disruptive. So it shouldn’t be done to communities without their say so.”

The shadow cabinet member admitted people are frustrated the Tories have taken their time to come up with policies after their disastrous loss at last year’s General Election.

But she insisted: “At conference, you’ll see a lot more from us. This is the moment where we’ll start telling people all the results of our work, and be able to explain what our plan is.

“The difference between us and Labour and Reform is our plans are real, they’re fully funded, they can be delivered tomorrow.”

She promised the Tories will bring forward plans the public can trust, adding: “People have really lost faith in government to be able to do the things that they want it to do. So we need to rebuild that trust.”

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One civil service whistleblower told ITV filmmakers he was “disgusted” by amount of profits some companies made

Details of how the Tories presided over one of the biggest government spending scandals of all time are to be revealed in a shocking new documentary.

Eye-watering waste running into many billions of pounds resulted from huge Covid contracts for mountains of personal protective equipment and medical tests.

One civil service whistleblower told ITV filmmakers: “I was disgusted at the amount of money that these companies were making. It was just ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching for them.”

Some companies with little or no track record in supplying PPE landed massive contracts, including many introduced by ministers and key government figures via the high-priority VIP lane.

One firm, linked to Baroness Michelle Mone, is being sued by the Department for Health for more than £120 million for allegedly supplying unusable gowns. But the documentary names other previously unknown corporate winners.

Instead of buying four months of PPE stock as planned, within months of lockdown the government stockpiled years’ worth – including enough goggles to last 15 years.

One million pallets of unwanted PPE ended up being incinerated in what Gavin Hayman, of the Open Contracting partnership, says represents “probably the biggest government misspending scandal in the UK of all time”.

As the UK’s expensive Covid-19 inquiry rumbles on largely unnoticed by the public, new ITV documentary Exposures asks how we went from having almost no PPE to having more than we could possibly use.

The Mirror has previously revealed how thousands of ­ventilators bought for £50,000 each during the pandemic were sold off for as little as £100 via online auctions last year.

We also exposed how the NHS flogged 6,000 unused Nightingale hospital beds it had bought for £13million for just £410,000 as they were not suitable for hospitals. When the country went into lockdown in March 2020, the UK’s hospitals were woefully lacking in supplies of PPE.

Boris Johnson set up a new procurement unit run by Matt Hancock ’s Department of Health, with many of its staff coming from Michael Gove ’s Cabinet Office. The government put out public appeals to help source PPE from new suppliers, and the normal tender and competition rules were suspended.

Under pressure to respond quickly, a secret VIP lane was also set up by civil servants to deal with credible offers coming via ministers, MPs or senior officials.

According to the documentary, this is when things started to go wrong. A whistleblower who was working in the department at the time was exasperated that companies with a background in supplying PPE were being sidelined in favour of VIPs.

The source tells the programme: “It was very frustrating because you’ve done a lot of the background work, taking the time to find out about the companies, see who their manufacturer was, so that we could check the manufacturer had the capability of producing as many items as they said, and then to find out none of your deals have gone through.

“The VIP lane was obviously the Premiership, and all the rest of the suppliers were in the second division.” Mr Gove and Mr Hancock say the VIP lane was created by officials to effectively prioritise significant offers, that ministers were not involved in decisions to award contracts and just forwarded promising leads to civil servants. They say their priority at the time was to “save lives and protect the NHS”.

The ITV film shows how two previously unnamed Covid-testing companies, Tanner Pharma and Nationwide Pathology, both made huge profits thanks to their contracts.

Nationwide made £40million over the pandemic, while Tanner was given testing contracts totalling £1.4bn after it contacted a Department of Health official.

Tanner went from a pre-pandemic loss off £678,000 to a cumulative profit over the pandemic of £193m. Its American owner, Banks Bourne, paid himself a £148m dividend, courtesy of the British taxpayer.

Another company called Innova appeared from nowhere in March 2020. It was set up by Charles Huang, who rain a private equity firm in California.

Innova got its contract after it reached out to Dominic Cummings, who was Boris Johnson’s advisor at the time. By the end of the pandemic, Innova had been paid over £5bn by the UK government despite having no track record in supplying medical goods.

By contrast, Arco is a leading UK supplier of PPE with over 50 years’ experience. It sent 750,000 PPE kits to Sierra Leone during the ebola epidemic. But when Covid arrived, nobody was returning their calls.

Arco chairman Thomas Martin tells Exposure: “We used the government portals, we used all of our existing contacts. There would be 50 or 60 attempts every day to break through, and we were coming up against the closed door. I couldn’t understand why anyone in charge would choose to ignore the expertise on tap.

“The safety industry was not mobilised.” In all, the UK spent around £15bn on PPE. The whistleblower adds: “We had so much, but we were still buying when we didn’t need any more. We weren’t able to warehouse it, and it was getting left at docks.”

By March 2022, the UK had 300 pieces of unused PPE for every person in the country. Companies that were hired to supply PPE were now being rewarded again to store it. Much of it ended up incinerated. The whistleblower concludes: “We were wasting so much money.”

Tanner Pharma said: “Tanner Pharma was selected to provide lateral flow tests because they were determined by UKHSA to have high specificity and sensitivity. We were not referred to the high-priority lane and delivered over 480m reliable, accurate testing kits.”

Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings, Michelle Mone and Nationwide Pathology all declined to comment.

* The Covid Contracts: Follow the Money is on Sunday night on ITV at 10.15pm.

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Conservative MP Danny Kruger has become the first sitting Conservative MP to defect to Reform UK.

Kruger has been an MP since 2019, and sat on Tory leader Kemi Badenoch’s team as a shadow work and pensions minister.

“The Conservatives are over,” he told a press conference, sitting alongside Reform party leader Nigel Farage.

Kruger said he had been “honoured” to be asked to help Reform prepare for government, and said he hoped that Farage would be the next prime minister.

The East Wiltshire MP – who has said he would not be triggering a by-election – said the Conservatives were no longer the main party of opposition.

He said: “There have been moments when I have been very proud to belong to the Tory party”, but added: “The rule of our time in office was failure.

“Bigger government, social decline, lower wages, higher taxes and less of what ordinary people actually wanted.”

He added: “This is my tragic conclusion, the Conservative Party is over, over as a national party, over as the principal opposition to the left.”

Although he said he had “great regard” for Badenoch, he said the Tory party had a “toxic brand”, adding: “We have had a year of stasis and drift and the sham unity that comes from not doing anything bold or difficult or controversial.”

Describing his move leaving a party he has been a member of for 20 years as “personally painful”, he said his “mission” with Reform would be to “not just to overthrow the current system, it is to restore the system we need”.

Responding to the news of the defection, Badenoch said: “Danny has made his case very clear, that this is not about me.

“I can’t be distracted by that, and I’m not going to get blown off course by these sort of incidents.

“I know this is the sort of thing that is going to happen while a party is changing. I’m making sure people understand what Conservative values are.”

Kruger’s defection is damaging for Badenoch, not only as a Tory thinker and veteran, but also as the most significant among several from the party moving to Reform.

Speaking after the press conference, Kruger told the BBC he had come to the conclusion the Conservative Party remains “the same party that failed the people in the last government” and doesn’t have “any chance” of winning the next election.

A few weeks ago, Kruger said he agreed with Reform on many issues except public spending, telling MPs in July: “There is a problem: they would spend money like drunken sailors.”

Asked about his comment, Kruger said: “I think we’re all sober sailors now, I’m glad to say, because since I said that Reform have corrected their position on welfare spending.

“I was very concerned that we need to really reduce overall benefit spending… Nigel made clear he also wants to bring down overall benefit spending but he does want to support families with children.”

Kruger is the second sitting MP to join Reform UK. Lee Anderson, who was previously a Tory MP, sat as an independent before joining Reform in 2024.

Reform now have five MPs in the Commons, having seen two of their MPs elected in the 2024 general election, Rupert Lowe and James McMurdock, leave the party.

His previous jobs include serving as former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron’s speechwriter, penning the “hug a hoodie” speech, and as former political secretary to Boris Johnson when he was prime minister.

Kruger spoke in a 2022 Parliamentary debate about the US’s abortion ban and told MPs he disagreed that pregnant women had an “absolute right to bodily autonomy” and that he didn’t understand why the UK was “lecturing” the US.

In 2023, Kruger was one of the speakers at a National Conservatism Conference, an event organised by a right-wing think tank from the United States, and made comments about the role of conventional family values in society.

The evangelical Christian told delegates that marriages between men and women were “the only possible basis for a safe and successful society” and one that “wider society should recognise and reward”.

Rishi Sunak, the Conservative prime minister at the time, distanced himself from the remarks.

Kruger is the son of TV chef Prue Leith and an Old Etonian, who studied at Edinburgh and Oxford Universities before becoming a director at the Centre for Policy Studies.

A Labour Party spokesperson said: “Nigel Farage can recruit as many failed Tories as he likes – it won’t change the fact that he has no plan for Britain.

“Britain deserves better than Reform’s Tory tribute act that would leave working people paying a very high price.”

Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper labelled the Conservative Party “a shell of its former self” and said Badenoch had pushed lifelong Tories towards her party “in their droves”.

“Nigel Farage’s party is shapeshifting into the Conservatives in front of our very eyes,” she said.

“It is getting to the point where the only difference between them is just a slightly lighter shade of blue.”

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch is encouraging Tory-controlled councils to consider launching legal challenges against the use of hotels to house asylum seekers in their areas.

Badenoch said Epping Forest District Council had achieved “a victory for local people”, after a High Court ruling blocked a hotel from housing asylum seekers.

In a letter to Conservative council leaders, Badenoch wrote “we back you to take similar action to protect your community… if your legal advice supports it”.

A Labour spokesperson said Badenoch’s letter was “desperate and hypocritical nonsense from the architects of the broken asylum system”.

The Labour spokesperson said under the Tories, “the number of asylum hotels in use rose as high as 400”.

“There are now half that and there are now 20,000 fewer asylum seekers in hotels than at their peak under the Tories,” the spokesperson added.

It comes after the High Court on Monday granted the Conservative-controlled Epping council a temporary injunction to stop migrants from being accommodated at The Bell Hotel in Essex.

The court ruled that about 140 asylum seekers must be moved out of the hotel by 12 September, giving the government limited time to find alternative housing.

Councils across England are considering similar legal challenges as ministers to draw up contingency plans for housing asylum seekers set to be removed from the Bell Hotel.

Historically, hotels have only been used to house asylum seekers in short-term emergency situations when other accommodation was unavailable.

But hotel use rose sharply during the Covid-19 pandemic, hitting a peak of 56,042 in 2023 when the Conservatives were in government.

The Labour government has pledged to end the use of migrant hotels by 2029, by cutting small-boat crossings and speeding up decisions on asylum claims.

There were 32,345 asylum seekers being housed in hotels at the end of March, down 15% from the end of December, according to Home Office figures.

In recent years, other councils have taken legal action in an attempt to close asylum hotels in their areas but in previous cases judges have refused to intervene.

Conservative-run Epping Forest District Council successfully argued its case was different as the hotel had become a safety risk, as well as a breach of planning law by ceasing to be a normal hotel.

The judge ruled in favour of the council, which made the case there had been “evidenced harms” related to protests around the hotel, which had led to violence and arrests.

For other councils to follow suit they would have to show the High Court evidence of local harm.

On Wednesday, a number of councils, including some run by Labour, said they were assessing their legal options.

In her letter, Badenoch told Tory council leaders they may “wish to take formal advice from planning officers on the other planning enforcement options available to your council in relation to unauthorised development or change of use”.

The Conservative leader of Broxbourne Council, Corina Gander, said she was “expecting to go down the same path” as Epping Forest District Council when filing a legal challenge to an asylum hotel in her area.

“We do not know who is in that hotel and it has brought an unease to the community,” Gander told BBC Newsnight.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has said all 10 councils controlled by his party will “do everything in their power to follow Epping’s lead”.

“Several of them are already examining the legal transcript from that case,” Reform’s head of Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) Zia Yusuf said, adding “only a minority of our ten councils have planning control.”

The leader of Reform UK-led West Northamptonshire Council said he was “considering the implications of this judgment to understand any similarities and differences and actively looking at the options now available to us”.

Carol Dean, leader of Labour-controlled Tamworth Council, said her authority had previously decided against legal action but was now “carefully assessing” what the decision might mean for the area.

She said it was a “potentially important legal precedent”.

Wirral Council said it was also “considering the detail of the judgement and how it might impact on planning consent for the proposed use of the former hotel in Hoylake”.

Last week, the Labour-run council asked the Home Office to review its decision to house single male asylum seekers rather than families in the former Holiday Inn Express.

If successful, further legal challenges have the potential to pile more pressure on the government to find alternative housing options for migrants.

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said asylum seekers moved out of the hotel in Epping should not be put in other hotels, flats or house-shares.

In a letter to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, he called for alternative accommodation such as former military sites or barges to be used.

Speaking to BBC Newsnight, Conservative former leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt said “Kemi is right to back local councils” but warned the consequence of stopping asylum hotels would be more people put into local accommodation and family housing stock converted into HMOs [houses of multiple occupation].

“That is going to be so much worse than hotels. It will alter the housing stock in particular,” she added, suggesting the availability of housing in the area would slim.

Home Office Minister Dan Jarvis told the BBC the government was “looking at contingency options” for housing those being moved out of the Bell Hotel but gave no specific examples.

“There’s likely to be a range of different arrangements in different parts of the country,” Jarvis said.

In June, ministers said the government was looking at buying tower blocks and former student accommodation, external to house migrants.

Tory Lanez’s attempt to submit new evidence and challenge his 2022 felony conviction has collapsed.

Lanez, whose legal name is Daystar Peterson, brought forward two petitions in his case, which concerns the 2020 shooting of hip-hop artist Megan Thee Stallion. According to Complex, one involved Peterson’s driver not testifying and the other sought to bring forward a new statement from a security guard for Kelsey Harris, the victim’s former best friend. Both were subsequently denied Tuesday by the California Court of Appeals.

Peterson’s legal team alleged at a press conference in May that Bradley Jennings, who was working as a bodyguard and driver for Harris, approached them and said he had witnessed a conversation in which Harris said “she had the gun, she fired it three times, Mr. Peterson grabbed her arm and knocked it down, and the gun fired two more times.”

An attorney for Lanez added, “In essence, Mr. Peterson never shot anybody.”

Megan Thee Stallion’s team was quick to respond, issuing a statement the next day.

“Tory Lanez was tried and convicted by a jury of his peers and his case was properly adjudicated through the court system,” they wrote, per XXL Magazine. “This is not a political matter — this is a case of a violent assault that was resolved in the court of law.”

Peterson is serving a 10-year sentence after being convicted of assault with a firearm, possession of a concealed firearm and negligent discharge of a gun. He has an active main appeal set for oral argument Aug. 18.

This is not the first time the 30-year-old rapper has seen his efforts to revive the case shot down. In May 2023, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge denied his motion for a new trial.

Judge David Herriford rejected arguments from Peterson’s defense team, which claimed that evidence had been wrongly submitted in the December 2022 trial he presided over. “I could be your son. I could be your brother,” the rapper pleaded, but to no avail.

Three months later, in August 2023, he received his 10-year sentence.

Former MP Kate Kniveton bravely opens up about the decade of abuse she endured at the hands of her ex-husband and Conservative MP Andrew Griffiths who raped her while she was sleeping

As violence against women and girls reaches epidemic levels with police receiving a domestic abuse call every 30 seconds, one woman is telling her deeply personal story and making it her mission to stand up for victims of domestic abuse.

Former Conservative MP for Burton in Staffordshire, Kate Kniveton, 54, warns how domestic abuse can affect absolutely anybody – regardless of their background or profession – after she endured a decade of abuse at the hands of her ex Tory MP husband.

Bravely waving her right to anonymity, she also shines a light on the abuse many survivors endure long after the relationship has ended and how family courts are letting down vulnerable children.

“People don’t think it can happen to professional middle-class people – but domestic abuse has no boundaries, it can affect absolutely anybody,” Kate says. “When I was elected I made a promise to be an advocate of victims of domestic abuse. I am traumatised – not just by the 10 years of abuse I experienced – but the following five years where he continued to use the legal system to abuse me.”

READ MORE: ‘Dad strangled my mum to death – I forgive him and will stand by him’

The former MP explains how easy it is for women to get sucked in and find themselves stuck in unhealthy relationships. “He was very personable, charming and charismatic,” she says about her abusive ex Andrew Griffiths. “In hindsight I can see there were warning signs – but I always put it down to him being under a lot of pressure.

“For most people looking in from the outside our relationship was perfect, but the abuse had been going on for several years. Every time I said I was going to go to the police, I’m going to report you, he’d always say, ‘Nobody would believe you, Kate. I’m the MP here. I’ve got a great relationship with the police — they all think I’m the blue-eyed boy.'”

But behind closed doors things were not what they seemed. Kate recalls how her husband would rape her in her sleep and scream abuse at their two-month old baby. “It would start when I was asleep – I’d wake up and he would have started having sex with me,” she recalls.

“Sometimes I’d just think ‘let it carry on’ but there would be other times when I would cry. And those times he’d sometimes stop – not all times – but then he’d be in a foul mood if he did. I remember he’d be kicking me until he kicked me out of bed. And I would go into our spare room and barricade myself in another room for the night or leave the house.”

A turning point was when she realised their two-week-old child was also in danger. “I still hoped Andrew could change but when our baby was just two weeks old I realised that the abuse may not stop with me,” she adds. “He was up early in the morning to catch a train back down to Westminster and our baby started crying for a feed. He turned round and said ‘shut the F up’ and it was said with such force and aggression – and he tried to make out afterwards that he was just tired – but it was just a baby.”

Ironically, her abusive ex-husband campaigned for women’s rights – but in 2018 – Griffiths made the headlines when he got caught sexting two constituents – later resigning from his position. Kate took the opportunity to leave the family home but then had to fight the family courts to stop Griffiths from seeing their child.

Then in 2019 – some 18 months after the sexting scandal – Kate stood as an MP against her ex husband and won. Griffiths was found to have raped and physically abused his wife by a family court judge in 2021. Griffiths denies raping Kate.

Kate tells her story in a new ITV1 and ITVX documentary, Breaking The Silence: Kate’s Story, where she speaks in-depth for the first time about the decade of abuse she endured at the hands of her ex-husband. In it she is also keen to shed light on the problem with family courts – where an estimated 30,000 cases each year involve allegations of domestic abuse.

Many survivors report feeling retraumatised and disbelieved by the very process meant to protect them. Kate and other survivors share their experiences, voicing deep concerns that the courts often fail to safeguard children from violent ex-partners.

Dr Charlotte Proudman, who was Kate’s barrister in the family court, explains in the film, “It’s very common, even when there are convictions for domestic abuse offences, for a parent to be granted regular unsupervised contact with their child.”

This comes five years on from the Ministry of Justice’s Harm Report, which warned that the family courts were putting children’s safety at risk – yet many of its key recommendations still remain unimplemented. It’s an alarming reality reinforced by Women’s Aid, whose latest report found that 67 children have been killed in the UK in the past 30 years during contact visits with a known domestic abuser.

In the film, Kate also meets with Jess Phillips MP, the newly appointed Minister for Safeguarding and VAWG, to discuss the urgent reforms needed to better protect survivors and their children. Jess tells her, “So much of what happens in the domestic abuse space is so hidden from the public’s view. I think if people knew half of what you and I have seen, there’d be pitchforks… there is absolutely loads to do — it’s so ingrained, whether it’s in the court system or how councils commission local refuge and support services.”

The Ministry of Justice responded to allegations raised in the film: “Any case involving the death of a child is a tragedy, and our sincere condolences go out to the families [affected]. We will see where improvements can be made to the Family Court system to help prevent these awful crimes.” They added that work is ongoing to ensure the family court is safe for children and families, highlighting the Pathfinder pilot to improve outcomes in private law cases.

At the final hearing in January 2024, Griffiths accepted all the findings of abuse found by the family court, except that of rape. However, when asked to respond to this programme he said: “I have always denied the allegations made. The Family Court has a much lower burden of proof and has always been private and confidential.

“The Family Court has failed our child. Publication of salacious allegations can only harm the children. Every child has the right to have both parents in their lives. I will never stop fighting to be a father to my child, and to demonstrate to them just how much I love them.”

Breaking The Silence: Kate’s Story, Sunday 20th July at 10.20pm on ITV1 & ITVX.

For confidential support, call the 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Freephone Helpline on 0808 2000 247 or visit womensaid.co.uk.

Authorities have identified the inmate accused of stabbing incarcerated rapper Tory Lanez with a self-made shank as 41-year-old Santino Casio, who is serving a life sentence for murder.

Casio allegedly attacked Lanez, whose legal name is Daystar Peterson, around 7:20 a.m. Monday in a housing unit at the California Correctional Institute in Tehachapi, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Peterson is serving a 10-year sentence for shooting rapper Megan Thee Stallion in 2020. He was transported to an outside medical facility for treatment and is currently in fair condition, prison officials said Tuesday afternoon.

An Instagram account ascribed to Lanez said the rapper was stabbed 14 times — including seven wounds to his back, four to his torso, two to the back of his head and one to his face. The 32-year-old Canadian artist was said to have suffered two collapsed lungs but was “in good spirits” and “pulling through.”

Casio has been placed in restrictive housing while prison officials and the Kern County district attorney’s office investigate the attack.

The alleged assailant was sent to the California Correctional Institute from Los Angeles County in 2004 after being sentenced to life with the possibility of parole for second-degree murder, first-degree attempted murder, use of a deadly weapon and inflicting great bodily injury, according to the CDCR.

While in prison, Casio has been sentenced for two additional crimes.

In 2008, he was sentenced to six years for assaulting a prisoner with a deadly weapon. Then, in 2018, he was sentenced to two years for possessing a deadly weapon in prison.

Peterson was sentenced in August 2023 for shooting Grammy-winning artist Megan Thee Stallion, whose legal name is Megan Pete. He was convicted in December 2022 of assault with a firearm, illegal possession of a firearm and negligent discharge of a gun.

The “Savage” musician has alleged that Peterson has continued to harass her from prison by directing his fans and online trolls to disparage her online. In January, a Los Angeles judge granted Pete a restraining order against Peterson until 2030.

Staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report