Lammy says Vance's Henry Nowak comments were 'wrong'published at 09:35 BST
Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy says he spoke to JD Vance yesterday "and I told him he was wrong" over his Henry Nowak comments this week.
The US vice-president blamed the death of the 18-year-old British student, who was fatally stabbed last year in Southampton by Vickrum Digwa, on the "mass invasion of migrants" and said the "only response" was "righteous anger".
Migration has come down in the UK and so has murder, Lammy says. "The young man who perpetrated this crime was a Brit," he says, adding that Nowak's family has called for calm.
Asked about policing in the context of Nowak's murder, Lammy says the "starting point" is that "we are all equal before the law".
He says context sometimes matters, with ethnic minorities still "disproportionately in the criminal justice system". But he adds that this cannot eclipse violence or undermine the police's ability to act.
Lammy says he doesn't agree there is "two-tier" policing in the UK.
Asked whether the police is institutionally racist, Lammy says he thinks the country has moved on.
On ceremonial knives - and whether there will be a law change - he says there are over half a million Sikhs in the country and they are "overwhelmingly a peaceful law-abiding community who rejected this killer".


