Rishi Sunak given fixed penalty notice after being caught not wearing seatbelt
Rishi Sunak has been given a fixed penalty notice after being caught not wearing a seatbelt.
Lancashire Police issued the notice after the prime minister appeared without a belt in a clip on Instagram as he promoted his levelling-up funding in Lancashire.
Mr Sunak has accepted the fine.
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Number 10 said: “The prime minister fully accepts this was a mistake and has apologised. He will of course comply with the fixed penalty.”
The force said: “You will be aware that a video has been circulating on social media showing an individual failing to wear a seatbelt while a passenger in a moving car in Lancashire.
“After looking into this matter, we have today issued a 42-year-old man from London with a conditional offer of fixed penalty.”
Mr Sunak is the second serving prime minister – after Boris Johnson – to be found to have broken the law while in office.
He has previously been fined by the Met Police for breaking lockdown rules.
He and Mr Johnson were fined by the Metropolitan Police over a birthday held in Downing Street for the former prime minister when curbs were in place.
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Labour said the prime minister has been turned into a “laughing stock”.
A party spokesperson said: “Hapless Rishi Sunak’s levelling-up photo op has blown up in his face and turned him into a laughing stock.
“He started the week hoping people would be grateful for a partial refund on the money that has been stripped from them over 13 years of the Tories. But instead he got a warring party and yet another fine from the police.
“Just when you thought this Tory government couldn’t get any more ridiculous, they manage it.”
The party’s deputy leader Angela Rayner added: “Rishi Sunak is a total liability.”
The Liberal Democrats said the prime minister had “shown the same disregard for the rules as Boris Johnson”.
Daisy Cooper, the deputy leader, said: “From partygate to seatbelt gate, these Conservative politicians are just taking the British people for fools.”
Sunak’s slip-ups could be exploited by opponents to brand him out of touch
Downing Street will be hoping that once the PM has paid up, voters and journalists will move on and forget this rather embarrassing unforced error.
To Rishi Sunak’s credit, he put his hands up and admitted the error almost immediately.
But it is a reminder that in the top job, with a permacrisis of strikes, NHS delays and high inflation, mistakes can slip through the Number 10 net.
Failing to wear a seatbelt is illegal, but filming it and publishing the evidence on social media suggests a lack of checks within the PM’s team.
This is the second police fine Mr Sunak has received in nine months, after the Met Police punished him for attending a lockdown-busting birthday gathering for Boris Johnson.
In recent months Mr Sunak has struggled with contactless payments, had an awkward conversation with a homeless man about financial services, and demonstrated a fondness for using private jets to travel around the UK even for relatively short journeys.
Added together, such slip-ups may be exploited by the PM’s enemies to claim he is out of touch.
There is certainly a danger these small missteps distract from Mr Sunak’s attempts to stabilise the economy and sort out seemingly intractable issues like migrant crossings and delayed discharges.
Like many occupants of Number 11, Rishi Sunak was a “submarine chancellor”. Invisible below the waves for months on end, he occasionally rose from the deep to launch a killer economic intervention: his “whatever it takes” COVID budget, the furlough scheme, Eat Out To Help Out.
But as Gordon Brown (the last politician to move from 11 to 10) found, similar manoeuvres are not possible as prime minister.
You are constantly in the spotlight. And it is an unsparing existence.
‘Not a criminal offence’
Sky News’ policing analyst Graham Wettone said he is “not surprised” about the notice, adding that it is the “right and proper” resolution.
“It is exactly what would happen to anybody else if they were to commit a similar offence and the police discovered it.”
Mr Wettone dismissed criticism that the prime minister has been treated unfairly, suggesting the case was “fairly simple” and that the law must be applied “impartially”.
One of Mr Sunak’s Tory colleagues sought to downplay the significance of the notice, however.
“This is something millions of Britons experience every single year,” Scott Benton said.
“The Cabinet Office set out clearly last year that a fixed penalty notice isn’t a criminal offence.”
Another controversy
Downing Street said before the fine that Mr Sunak “fully accepts this was a mistake and apologises”.
A spokesman said: “It was an error of judgment, he removed it for a short period of time to film a clip, which you’ve seen, but he accepts that was a mistake.”
Fines of up to £500 can be issued for failing to wear a seatbelt when one is available.
There are a few exemptions, including when a car is being used for police, fire and rescue services, and for certified medical issues.
Mr Sunak came to office promising “integrity” after the scandals that eventually forced Mr Johnson from office.
Mr Sunak’s premiership has been hit with a series of controversies since he entered No 10 in October, from criticism for reinstating Suella Braverman as home secretary six days after she was forced to step down over a security breach to an ongoing bullying inquiry into Dominic Raab, the deputy prime minister.
Israel will call up 60,000 reservists as it prepares to launch an expanded military operation in Gaza City.
The military said the country’s defence minister Israel Katz has approved plans to begin a new phase of operations in some of the most densely populated areas of the Gaza Strip.
Israeli forces will operate in areas of Gaza City where they have not yet operated and where it believes Hamas is still active, a military official said.
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The city is the main military and governing stronghold of Hamas and Israeli troops will target the group’s vast underground network, the official added.
Although Israel has targeted and killed much of Hamas’ senior leadership, parts of the group are actively regrouping and carrying out attacks, including launching rockets towards Israel, the official said.
It remains unclear when the operation will begin, but it could be a matter of days.
Palestinians at the site of a house struck by Israel in Gaza City. Pic: Reuters
The official said 60,000 reservists will be called up in the coming month and the service of an additional 20,000 reservists currently serving will be lengthened.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the objectives of the war are to secure the release of the remaining hostages and destroy Hamas.
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Gaza hospitals ‘overwhelmed with malnutrition cases’
International criticism of Israel increased after the planned offensive was announced earlier this month amid fears of another mass displacement of Palestinians.
The families of the hostages and former army and intelligence chiefs oppose an expanded operation in Gaza City, with most of the families of hostages wanting an immediate ceasefire.
They worry an expanded assault could threaten prospects of bringing the 50 remaining hostages home. Israel believes 20 of those are still alive.
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The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, killing some 1,200 people and abducting 251.
Many of the hostages have been released in ceasefires and other deals, with Hamas saying it will only free the remainder in exchange of a lasting ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal.
More than 62,000 people have been killed during Israel’s 22-month counteroffensive, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count, but says women and children make up around half of those killed.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Earlier this week, the ministry said 154 adults had died of malnutrition-related causes since the ministry began counting such deaths in late June, and 112 children have died of malnutrition-related causes since the war began.
Thousands have fled parts of Gaza City in recent days amid airstrikes and advancing Israeli troops, new satellite imagery shows.
Israel’s advance comes as it prepares to mount a full-scale invasion of the city, where the UN says around one million Palestinians are sheltering.
Satellite imagery shows that entire tent camps in southeast Gaza City were emptied between 9 and 17 August as families fled the renewed attacks.
The video below shows the moment of an airstrike in southeastern Gaza City on 13 August. Sky News geolocated the footage to a building less than 200 metres from a major tent camp.
Another video, taken on 15 August, shows a strike on a building right next to the camp.
By the following day, almost all the camp’s residents had fled, along with people sheltering at 30 other locations in the area.
Fresh vehicle tracks in the area indicate extensive troop movements on the ground.
The satellite image below, taken on 17 August, shows at least nine military vehicles in the streets surrounding one former tent camp.
Sky News counted 58 military vehicles in the area on 17 August, including 17 bulldozers.
The image below shows four IDF vehicles, including a bulldozer, parked next to the remains of one tent camp. Several nearby buildings had been levelled in the days beforehand.
Between 9 and 17 August, at least 132 buildings were destroyed in less than one square kilometre of the city.
It’s unclear how much of the destruction was carried out by IDF bulldozers and how much was a result of airstrikes.
On Monday, eyewitnesses reported that Israeli tanks had made further advances into eastern Gaza City.
The advances came as Hamas said it had approved a ceasefire deal presented by mediators Egypt and Qatar. Israel has yet to respond to the proposal.
Earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed his country’s military to prepare for a full-scale invasion and occupation of the city in order to “free Gaza from Hamas”.
The UN has said that the invasion risks “catastrophic consequences” for the estimated one million Palestinians sheltering in the city, while UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the plan would “only bring more bloodshed”.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
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