Politics latest news: Starmer not prepared to face up to dangers facing UK, says Lord Howard

A Labour frontbencher suggested the Tories should conduct an investigation into why claims of lobbying by Natalie Elphicke were “sat on” and not reported and looked into at the time. 

Catherine McKinnell, the shadow schools minister, said she was “baffled” as to why allegations against Ms Elphicke were only coming to light now, following her defection to Labour from the Tories. 

It was alleged at the weekend that Ms Elphicke asked Sir Robert Buckland, the former justice secretary, to interfere in her then-husband’s sex offences trial four years ago.

Sir Robert told her it would be “completely inappropriate”. Ms Elphicke has claimed the allegations are “nonsense”. 

Ms McKinnell told Sky News: “I am really baffled by this because this happened four years ago and he has sat on these concerns that he says are very serious to a newspaper and has not done anything about it for four years. 

“So I am as baffled as anybody else by these assertions. Obviously Natalie says they are not true, it is not her recollection of the meeting and so she says it is nonsense. 

“I just can’t quite understand why, if something is this important and as serious as he is alleging, why it wasn’t addressed at the time. That is very concerning to me. So I think that is something that probably does need to be looked into.”