John Healey has said he hopes the Southport killer will spend the rest of his life behind bars following his sentencing of 52 years in prison. The defence secretary echoed Keir Starmer's response that "nothing is off the table" in possible reforms to sentencing and preventative procedures concerning attacks. Speaking at the Rolls-Royce nuclear reactor factory in Derby, Healey announced a £9bn deal for nuclear submarine reactors between the firm and the Ministry of Defence; the biggest ever between the two. Healey dismissed concerns over Trump's leadership, stating "America has always been the UK's closest security ally". Report by Faragt. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00So our plans on defence and defence spending and our commitment to the election well predated
00:05Donald Trump's election and we make that commitment because we must increase defence spending
00:11to meet the rising threats that we face and in terms of Donald Trump's leadership now
00:17of America, America has always been and the UK has been with America the closest security
00:25ally and this is a relationship with a special depth that has lasted decades and we will
00:31work with President Trump to reinforce that because we're stronger together when we meet
00:37those threats together. This is a long term contract over the next eight years, it'll
00:43create an extra thousand jobs, 200 apprentices a year and it is part of demonstrating that
00:50defence is the engine that helps drive economic growth in this Britain. Good for businesses,
00:56good for jobs, good for our nuclear deterrent which gives us the hard power manufactured
01:02here to help keep the country safe. Will you ask how I responded to the court sentencing
01:09and the court reports and quite honestly I struggle to catch my breath when I read those
01:14reports with the savagery and the horror of the attack. He killed Bebe and Alice and
01:21Elsie but he would have killed all 26 young girls in that dance group if he could. The
01:27judge has sentenced him to 52 years, we respect that ruling. The judge has also made it clear
01:33that he doesn't expect him to come out of prison and I for one would hope to see him
01:38stay in prison for the rest of his life. Well in this case it's important also to note that
01:44the scope for the court to impose a whole life sentence is restricted by the age threshold
01:54and the last government did reduce to 18 which is part of international law that threshold
02:02in recent years because the Manchester Arena bomber was too young to qualify. That still
02:08stands but on the other changes that may be required to our laws, to our agencies that
02:15miss the chances to stop this man or the programmes that are there to try and prevent atrocities
02:21like this the Prime Minister has said very clearly no changes are off the table.