Terrorist material viewed by Southport attacker Axel Rudakubana could inspire another atrocity unless tech companies take action, the home secretary has warned.

In a letter seen by Sky News to TikTok, X, Meta and Google, Yvette Cooper and Technology Secretary Peter Kyle warned the potential consequences of leaving dangerous content online have been “laid bare”.

This week, the court heard how Rudakubana “easily” downloaded an al Qaeda training manual and watched graphic footage of a terrorist knife attack in the hours before he murdered three young girls.

The manual remains available online, despite its inclusion in a Home Office list of illegal material that “may be useful to an individual preparing to carry out an act of mass violence or terrorism”, the letter said.

Graphic footage showing the stabbing of Sydney bishop Mari Emmanuel also remains available in the UK despite being removed by authorities in Australia.

The home and technology secretaries asked the companies to “swiftly remove any unlawful material on this list available on your services, including the material used by Axel Rudakubana”.

“The ease of access to such dangerous, illegal content is unacceptable,” the ministers wrote.

From March, companies will have to remove illegal content, including violent material, from their platforms under the new Online Safety Act.

From the summer, they’ll also have to take action on content that is inappropriate for children.

The two ministers told the tech giants they have a “moral responsibility” to take action on this content now.

“There is no justification for waiting for laws to kick in,” they said.

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Axel Rudakubana received the second-longest life sentence in English history on Thursday after pleading guilty in court.

The 18-year-old was jailed for life with a minimum of 52 years for the murder of Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, in July last year at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.

Rachel Reeves has said “no stone should be left unturned” in the Southport inquiry to stop anything so “appalling” happening again.

The chancellor told Sky News’ Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips the inquiry announced this week into how Axel Rudakubana was able to murder three little girls and injure 10 others last summer was “essential”.

“It is absolutely essential we learn lessons, not just to provide understanding for the families but to stop anything like this happening ever again,” she said.

“No stone should be left unturned.”

Rudakubana was jailed for life with a minimum of 52 years on Thursday after unexpectedly pleading guilty on what was meant to be the first day of his trial.

He had been referred to the Prevent anti-terror programme three times, admitted to carrying a knife into school multiple times and attacked a boy at school with a hockey stick.

Ms Reeves added: “It’s appalling what happened in Southport and the evil, cowardly acts of that man.

“The impact will be felt forever by those families. And it’s right that there’s now a public inquiry to establish what on earth went wrong, that the man was referred three times to Prevent, he had been found carrying a knife on multiple occasions and he’d attacked a boy he was at school with.

“And yet he was able to slip through the system.”

She said she thinks the inquiry needs to establish what Prevent regards as terror because Rudakubana had no apparent ideology, which is why he was taken off Prevent’s list.

“Just because you don’t have an ideological motive doesn’t mean that you can’t be a mass killer and incredibly dangerous,” the chancellor added.

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Ms Reeves defended Sir Keir Starmer and other ministers for not revealing Rudakubana’s past last summer when the attack happened.

“I think it’s really important that when a government speaks, when ministers speak about something before there’s been a trial, that people are very careful about the words that they use,” she said.

“Because if a government of any colour added anything to prejudice a trial, then that minister would never be forgiven. And so ministers do have to use words with caution.”