A senior Conservative MP has said the UK has a “huge problem” with two-tier justice, and that there is an ideology within public services that the government “have to root out”.

Claire Coutinho has been speaking to Sky News about the reaction to the murder of Henry Nowak and how he was treated by police in the minutes before his death. 

Earlier this morning, Treasury minister Lucy Rigby yet again denied for the government that “two-tier policing” exists, saying it is “a slur on the thousands of police officers that go out to work every day”.

But asked if she believes this exists, the shadow energy secretary said: “Yes. I do think it’s a huge problem. 

“There’s a race action plan at the moment which says that the police should treat ethnic minorities differently. That is clearly wrong. It’s something we’ve been campaigning against. 

“But it’s not just within the police, it’s across our public services.”

She explained: “There has been an ideology that has taken hold, which says that racism is the worst thing that can happen, but it’s not the worst thing you’ve seen: cases of murder, cases of child abuse, cases where the people who are meant to protect us from harm have not been able to do that job because they have been frightened of being called racist. 

“So we have to root out that ideology.”

Challenged for evidence that this exists, she cited a number of previous criminal cases.

Coutinho added: “There are a number of these cases now, and it all comes back to this point: We are telling these public services to prioritise being seen to be anti-racist over doing their job. 

“It is clouding their judgement, it’s making their job harder.”

Citing how public services have been identifying differences in the quality of outcomes, she concluded: “I’m afraid the dominant ideology, the real problematic ideology we have, is that the root cause of all of these differences is racism. That is not the case.”