Luke Pollard takes “step back” from shadow cabinet role until conference

Keir Starmer has announced that Luke Pollard, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, is taking a “step back” from his shadow cabinet role for a month until Labour conference.

Pollard is the Labour MP for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport. In an event the opposition frontbencher described as “unspeakably awful”, in mid-August six people died in a mass shooting in Keyham, Plymouth.

Announcing the news that Pollard will step back from the Labour frontbench over the coming weeks, Starmer said the environment spokesperson would be taking the time to “support his community” after the Plymouth shooting.

“Today I’ve agreed a request from @LukePollard to take a step back from his shadow environment role for the next month so he can support his community after the shootings in Keyham,” Starmer tweeted this afternoon.

“He will return for #Lab21. While away, @DanielZeichner will look after Labour’s Defra work.” Cambridge MP Daniel Zeichner is already on the frontbench, serving as shadow minister for food, farming and fisheries under Pollard.

Pollard called for a “thorough investigation” into the tragic shooting. Days after it took place, he said: “I think people’s emotions have changed from shock and disbelief into now feeling that profound loss of the five people who were killed.

“But also a sense of anger. Wanting to know the questions as to how was this allowed to happen, why did this happen, and were there opportunities to stop this happening that were not taken?

“We need to get to the answers of those and that will take some time, and police need to be able to have the space to do it. But we need to make sure the community gets those proper answers because they deserve them.

“That means they need to be thorough, detailed and accurate, and not speculative, and that will take some time sadly.”

Starmer said the police had questions to answer over how the gunman obtained a firearms licence – after having it revoked, then reinstated – and said gun licensing laws may need to be urgently tightened.

The Labour Party annual conference, the first to take place physically since Starmer became party leader, will be held this year from September 25th to 29th in Brighton.