Harry Farley
Political correspondent

This morning we saw how the political debate following Henry Nowak’s murder is crystallising.

The divide is increasingly on the question of whether the police should take into account the colour of someone’s skin.

It was interesting this morning that the Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, who conducted a review in 2017 into the treatment of black, Asian and ethnic minority people in the criminal justice system, defended the idea that race should be a consideration in the police’s response.

“Ethnic minorities are disproportionately in the criminal justice system,” he told Laura Kuenssberg. “So, context can matter, but it cannot eclipse violence.”

Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf and the Conservatives' Claire Coutinho both rejected that idea.

Coutinho warned treating people differently “will lose trust in policing and public services”.

That debate feeds into a wider fault line - the allegation there is a “two-tier Britain”.

The idea, advanced particularly by Reform UK, is that there is unequal treatment of different ethnic groups, with minorities given preferential treatment.

The government denies that is the case. But it is likely to be a growing theme in British politics in the months ahead.

• We're ending our live coverage now, but you can keep up-to-date with the latest developments in our news story.

Image source, Family Handout

At the heart of this week's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme was Henry Nowak's murder and how the police responded to it, as Conservative and Reform UK politicians have labelled it as an example of anti-racism policies going too far.

The police response to the 18-year-old's murder is being investigated by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) after the force referred itself to the watchdog.

The chief constable of Hampshire police, Alexis Boon, apologised to Nowak's family for the student being handcuffed and arrested as he lay dying.

Boon told the BBC he was "distressed" as others had been by the bodycam footage which showed the 18-year-old repeatedly telling officers that he had been stabbed and could not breathe.

In the footage, police can be seen arresting the teenager after his murderer Vickrum Digwa had falsely claimed he had been racially abused by the victim.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer described it as an "awful, shocking case" and said it was right that the police response was being investigated.

Following a meeting with Nowak's family earlier this week, the PM added: "We will be unflinching in taking whatever action is required to right the wrongs in this case."

Image source, Reuters

As we've heard during the programme, David Lammy has told US Vice-President JD Vance he was "wrong" with his comments on the killing of Henry Nowak.

Lammy and Vance are known to have a friendly relationship, and the pair were pictured fishing together during one of Vance's trips to the UK.

In a post on X earlier this week, Vance 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".

Vance said Nowak had died "the same way a civilisation dies: abandoned and handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him".

The killing had been as "tragic as it is enraging" and Nowak, he said, would still be alive today "if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants".

Lammy has noted that both crime and migration have come down in the UK, and pointed out that Digwa was born and raised in Britain.

Shadow minister Claire Coutinho called for a "rapid review" of what happened to Henry Nowak, and how police dealt with the moments leading up to his death.

She says that "racism is being weaponised, it's being seen as the ultimate sin" across the police system and other public services. These attitudes, she says, have led to police officers fearing being seen as not tackling racism.

Pressed on whether Nowak's murder was an example of two-tier policing, she says her party has called for a review of what happened. However, there was a "discrepancy in how people are being treated".

She continues: "There is something that you cannot deny. In one case there was an accusation of a racist assault, and that was believed, and in the other case there is an accusation of a person saying 'I've been stabbed' and that was not believed."

After saying an anti-racism ideology has spread to public services, she is pressed on the Tory's record in power. Coutinho says: "I think there are more things that we could have done, but like I said, Kemi Badenoch was really at the forefront of that fight."

The shadow minister says there's a leadership problem across institutions, as "very vocal activists, who have very radical views, now have the keys to some of these policies which are having huge impacts across society and causing huge unrest and division".

Reform UK's home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf is also asked about his party's response to Henry Nowak's death - and whether Reform has used it to make a political argument despite the Nowak family saying they don't want his death to cause division.

"The last words Henry Nowak heard on this planet Earth was his rights being read to him, as he was handcuffed, as he bled to death, and his murderer and his family were standing over him," Yusuf says in response.

He adds that an accusation of racism "was taken more seriously by Hampshire Police than Henry's repeated statements that he had been stabbed".

Yusuf describes UK police as "institutionally racist", and says there is "structural anti-white prejudice".

He says Reform's response has respected the family's wishes, "because there is nothing more divisive than two-tier policing" - and Reform is campaigning against that division.

Kuenssberg asks if there is any evidence that the circumstances of Nowak's death were a result of "anti-white racism, rather than just police incompetence".

Yusuf says that when the killer's family called police claiming Nowak had been racist, they were believed, despite there being "zero burden of proof for that claim".

"If you tell police officers that there will be, quote, 'zero tolerance for any form of racism, or defiance of these guidelines, and you must prioritise the concerns of ethnic minorities, and you must not treat everybody the same, and you must not be colour-blind'... then the logical conclusion is what you saw on the bodycam".

Image source, Jeff Offers/BBC

Kuenssberg now turns to the government's defence plan, asking Lammy why the government can't "get its act together".

• For context:The Defence Investment Plan (DIP) was supposed to be published in the autumn but is now due to be released ahead of a Nato summit early next month. A parliamentary committee that scrutinises public spending says delays in publishing the report have undermined the UK's credibility with its allies

Lammy says Starmer is meeting with allies today, and that 1,400 new defence contracts have been signed since Labour came into power, with £270bn to be invested in defence by the next election.

Asked whether he would be happy to give up some of his own budget to ramp up money for defence, Lammy says defence is the "first purpose" of the nation.

The money "will be found" to meet defence commitments, he says.

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".

Laura Kuennsberg opens the show by asking guests how they think each of their parties has handled the response to the murder of Henry Nowak.

Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy credits the government and opposition for coming "together in their response", but says that Reform UK leader Nigel Farage "was found wanting".

In response, Reform's Zia Yusuf says Farage's response "showed enormous courage".

"He has set the agenda, saying look, we've got to call out racism and prejudice in policing and everywhere else, wherever we see it, and he was very courageous to say that white lives matter as much as black lives or anyone else's," says Yusuf.

Conservative Claire Coutinho, meanwhile, says "far too much of the conversation this week has been about political leaders, and not actually what we can do to make sure that this doesn't happen to someone else's child".

It's 09:00 BST, which means Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg has just started.

We'll hear from Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho and Reform UK's home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf.

First up, we'll hear from the panel - former Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, Liberal Democrats MP Josh Babarinde, and broadcaster Kay Burley.

As a reminder, we won't be posting regular live text updates from the programme, but you can watch the show live at the top of this page.

A torrid political argument is raging over Nowak murder casepublished at 08:49 BST

08:49 BST

Laura Kuenssberg
Presenter, Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg

Henry Nowak's mum and dad were being shown round the Victorian maze that is the Houses of Parliament when they heard politicians talking about their 18-year-old son's murder.

What is clear is that the student's family did not want their son's death to provoke an angry conversation about race, or divide the country. They do want answers and accountability for the police's action. They want their son's killer Digwa's 21-year sentence to be reviewed.

And they want the law changed so that large Sikh ceremonial knives are not exempt from the rules on carrying weapons.

There is, of course, an important conversation to be had about modern policing. There is a serious debate to be had about whether fears of causing offence or being accused of prejudice alters behaviour, particularly in the public services on which we all rely.

A torrid political argument is raging, one that's gone way beyond the tragedy of one family – it's a new fault line in British politics.

MPs had rounded on Reform leader Nigel Farage as he repeated his claim that "growing millions" in the UK believe we live under what he has long described as "two-tier policing".

But Reform is overtly using this case aggressively to make their wider arguments about the country, safe in the knowledge that while other politicians, and some of the public, find their arguments repellent and wrong headed, some of their supporters are on side.

• The Nowak murder has lit a match under British politics. This is how we got here

Image source, Reuters

Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy will take the hot seat on this week's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

Shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho and Reform UK's home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf will also be facing questions on the show.

It follows a week of political fallout following the release of bodycam footage showing 18-year-old Henry Nowak being handcuffed after being stabbed by 23-year-old Vickrum Digwa in December 2025.

What happened and why has the case caused national outrage?

During Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage reiterated his stance that the case is indicative of Britain's "two-tier policing" - an idea that the government has rejected.

PM Keir Starmer accused Farage of exploiting Nowak's death to create "grievance and division". And, after US Vice-President JD Vance weighed in on the case, Downing Street hit out at "people trying to interfere with our democracy and seeking to stir up division".

The panel on today's show will be made up of former Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, Liberal Democrats MP Josh Babarinde and broadcaster Kay Burley.

Whilst we won't be bringing you regular text updates, you can watch the programme live right here on this page from 09:00 BST.