Boris Johnson is “not to blame” for the abuse of Sir Keir Starmer outside of Parliament yesterday, a minister has said.

       Chris Philp, the digital minister, did not back calls for the Prime Minister to apologise for his comments where he accused the Labour leader of "failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile" during his time as head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

       “I don’t think you can point to what the Prime Minister said as the cause of that, you certainly can’t blame him for the fact that mob were clearly behaving in a completely unacceptable way,” he told Sky News.

       “You can’t say that what he said promoted, provoked or in any way justified the harassment or intimidation which we saw last night.”

       The minister went on to say that Sir Keir apologised for the failings of the CPS “in the same way that the Prime Minister has apologised for the failings in No 10”.

       It came as at least three Conservative MPs called on the Prime Minister to apologise over the comments, on top of a lobbying row surrounding his new head of communications, Guto Harri.

       It has been reported by the Times that Boris Johnson could reshuffle his ministerial team as early as today, following the appointment of new staff to No 10 after last week’s exodus.

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       Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has described the energy crisis as a "redistribution of wealth from millions of people struggling to pay their heating bills to shareholders of large oil and gas firms".

       Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said: "It just cannot be right that these energy companies are making super-profits without suffering an extra tax while people out there are just too scared to turn their radiators on and are terrified there'll be a cold snap.

       "The way that some diesel and gas companies are using their profits not for investment but to buy back shares is effectively a redistribution of wealth from millions of people struggling to pay their heating bills to shareholders of large oil and gas firms.

       He added: "So far, Rishi Sunak has offered more borrowing, which, I think, is frankly irresponsible."

       The effort to move civil servants out of London are "going backwards", a new report has claimed.

       Since 2018, one in three civil servants has been recruited in the city, meaning the number of civil servants has grown twice as fast in London, at 22 per cent, than it has in regions outside the capital.

       It was also found that more than nine in 10 civil servants employed by the Treasury and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy work in London.

       Further, these departments hired nearly three times as many officials within the capital as outside in the six months from March 2021.

       The findings are included in a report by the Onward think tank that looked at the spread of places where Government decisions are made.

       It states that "despite warm words and good intentions, efforts to decentralise the civil service are going backwards".

       Brendan Cox, the widower of murdered Labour MP Jo Cox, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "When you throw around accusations of people protecting paedophiles or not moving against paedophiles, it creates a viscerality of debate and a violence of emotional reaction.

       "You've seen that in the US, the QAnon conspiracy theory there, initially on the margins, was then put into the centre of politics by Republicans and it led to violence - it led to people turning up in pizza parlours with automatic rifles.

       "Now, our country is a very long way from that and the parallels you can't draw directly across, but absolutely, when you throw around accusations of that moral character, it will have implications that I don't think for a second that the Prime Minister was planning on, on stoking up that level of fury and anger.

       "But I think you have a responsibility, when you're the person in the highest office of the land, to be very careful about the language that you use.

       "And also for the families involved, for the people who will be listening to this whose loved ones were abused by Jimmy Savile, a lack of respect for those individuals and the willingness to use it as a political tool, I think is something that does need to be questioned and challenged."

       Labour MP Dr Rosena Allin-Khan joined calls for Boris Johnson to apologise for the Jimmy Savile smear he aimed at Sir Keir Starmer, after the Labour leader was surrounded by a mob near Parliament.

       The MP for Tooting told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I wasn't there yesterday, I didn't hear what was said, but I would make a general comment that the Prime Minister shouldn't be looking in the dark corners of the internet for lies to smear his opponents but standing up for a better public discourse based on fact not fiction.

       "If the Prime Minister is genuinely sorry for what happened yesterday then he should come to Parliament and apologise unreservedly for his smears, like many of his own MPs have called for.

       "Words have consequences, and without a doubt we need to have more responsible leaders who fight fake news and conspiracy theories, not promote them."

       Kim Leadbeater, the sister of murdered Labour MP Jo Cox, said that harassment of Sir Keir made her "incredibly angry and upset."

       Mr Philp denied that Boris Johnson’s comments were to blame for the abuse of Sir Keir outside Parliament.

       “I don’t think you can say that’s why it happened because some of the people involved in that fracas have previously done similar things to people like Michael Gove and BBC journalist Nick Watt," he told Sky News.

       “I’ve listened to the whole tape, they did mention Jimmy Savile, they also mentioned Julian Assange, they mentioned Covid, they mentioned the opposition more generally.

       “I don’t think you can point to what the Prime Minister said as the cause of that, you certainly can’t blame him for the fact that mob were clearly behaving in a completely unacceptable way.”

       Chris Philp, digital minister, was shown the video footage of Sir Keir being abused, and said: “No one, least of all an elected Member of Parliament, least of all the leader of the opposition should be surrounded by a mob [...] clearly subjecting him to harassment and intimidation.

       He said it has “no place in a democracy” and that all people across the political spectrum should “unreservedly condemn what we saw there”.

       Today will likely see a return for calls for Boris Johnson to retract, or apologise for, his comments about Sir Keir Starmer's time at the CPS, which failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile before he died.

       Chris Philp, the digital minister, is up on the morning media round today and will face questions after at least three Conservative MPs criticised Mr Johnson’s comments following the abuse of Sir Keir.

       The Government and No 10 may also face difficult questions today after a new lobbying row emerged involving the Prime Minister's new director of communications, Guto Harri.

       The Sun reported leaked minutes suggesting Mr Harri asked former chief of staff Sir Eddie Lister which ministers could receive a "nudge" for his client, Huawei, in June 2020.

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