Sir Keir Starmer is not going on holiday this week, Downing Street has insisted amid reports he was set to jet off as rioting sweeps the country.

The Prime Minister will be working from No 10 all week as his Government faces its biggest crisis since he won his election landslide last month.

It comes as Sir Keir faces demands from senior MPs to recall Parliament so that they can debate the Government’s handling of the disorder.

Reports emerged that Sir Keir was planning to go on holiday on Monday, which sparked fierce criticism, including from a frontrunner for the Tory leadership.

Towns and cities across the country have been hit by far-Right riots fuelled by misinformation about the identity of the suspect for the Southport stabbings.

More than 90 people were arrested on Saturday over violent unrest in Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Bristol, Manchester, Stoke-on-Trent, Blackpool and Belfast.

It was claimed on Monday morning that, despite the escalating situation, Sir Keir was still planning to jet off on a family holiday this week.

But it is understood that the Prime Minister will be working in Downing Street and that there were never any plans for him to go on leave on Monday.

It is not clear whether Sir Keir has a break booked for later in August.

Robert Jenrick, the former immigration minister who is a frontrunner to win the upcoming Tory leadership contest, was among those to react to the reports.

He told The Camilla Tominey Show on GB News: “It would be completely wrong for the Prime Minister to holiday while parts of Britain are burning.

“This is a very serious situation and we need the Prime Minister to be leading the country.

“The police need our full support and they need to know that he is there supporting them, making sure that this situation is being handled from the very top.

“This is a situation that is so serious that it needs the Prime Minister’s personal attention.”

A source close to Mr Jenrick described such a break as “Nero-esque” – a reference to the Emperor who reputedly fiddled while Rome burned.

Sir Keir’s reported plans to take a break were defended by one of his own backbenchers, however, who said the Prime Minister “has to have family time”.

Chris Webb, the Labour MP for Blackpool South, said that Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, would be able to stand in for Sir Keir.

He told LBC: “Every Prime Minister has to have that family time and that break but from what I know of Keir he will be continuing to work and monitor the situation wherever he is on holiday.”

The reports came after Dame Priti Patel warned the Government risks being swept away with events rather than maintaining control of them.

The former home secretary said that Sir Keir should recall Parliament so that MPs from across the political divide can condemn the rioting.

She said: “As home secretary I brought forward much stronger protections against disproportionate protest and disorder, in the teeth of fierce opposition.

“But it was the right thing to do and those powers must be used to their maximal extent now.

“Now is a moment for national reflection and solidarity, to pull back from the wave of violence we have seen, to call it out for what it is, without fear or favour, and for Parliament to speak with one voice in condemnation.

“We either believe in the rule of law, or we do not. That is why Parliament must be recalled immediately.”

Lord Walney, the Government’s independent adviser on political violence and disruption, said that Sir Keir may need to recall Parliament.

He told The Camilla Tominey Show on GB News: “If this continues and we are into the space where potentially an emergency suite of powers or changes may be considered, then of course I think Parliament will want to be recalled in those circumstances.”

Sir Iain Duncan Smith, a former Tory leader, also said Parliament should be recalled.

He told The Telegraph: “It does seem to me that if these riots are going to go on, which it looks like they are, he needs to bring people back to explain what he’s doing.

“It looks like he hasn’t done anything so far, and the questions will be what are you doing? There need to be serious questions about the advice they have received.

“Frankly it wouldn’t be a bad idea at all. There seems to be foreign government hands in this, and that therefore requires that we find about this and Parliament is recalled.”

The neonatal unit where Lucy Letby worked suffered an outbreak of bacteria lethal to babies, a leaked risk report shows.

In August 2023, Letby was convicted of the murders of seven newborns and the attempted murders of six other infants. A retrial in July also found her guilty of the attempted murder of another child.

Since the conviction, numerous scientists, statisticians and doctors have expressed their concern about the evidence presented to the jury regarding shift patterns, medical conclusions and the standard of care at the Countess of Chester.

It has now emerged that at the time when infant mortality rates spiked at the Countess of Chester hospital between 2015 and 2016 – the years in which Letby was convicted of killing the infants – the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa had colonised taps in the nurseries of the neonatal unit, including intensive care.

Pseudomonas is known to be lethal to vulnerable babies. In 2012, a premature baby died and 12 others needed treatment at Southmead Hospital in Bristol after an outbreak of a water-borne bacterium.

Three premature babies also died after contracting the bug at the Royal Jubilee Maternity Hospital in Belfast January 2012. In that case, sink taps were found to be the source of infection. A baby had died from the same infection six weeks earlier in Derry.

Bacteria ‘can be lethal in newborns’

David Livermore, professor of Medical Microbiology, at the University of East Anglia said: “Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an environmental organism that likes moisture.

“It can be lethal in newborns, especially premature ones, who lack a properly developed immune system.

“From mid-2015 to mid-2016 there were around 17 infant deaths at the Countess of Chester unit.

“We are asked to believe that this comprised two superimposed clusters, one of seven murders by Lucy Letby, and one where, to quote the crown prosecution expert, they died for the usual problems why small babies die: haemorrhage, infection, congenital problems.

“It is simpler to believe that we are looking at a single spike of fatal infections in a chaotic unit.”

The risk report leaked to The Telegraph, showed that the Countess of Chester hospital had been dealing with Pseudomonas since at least May 2015 when there were fears about transferring babies from nearby Arrowe Park Hospital.

The risk score was reduced in August 2015, when there had been no infections in neonates, but in December 2015, a tap in intensive care tested positive for the bug and had to be replaced.

In the same month a tap in another baby ward also tested positive but the report warned that there was no capacity to replace it, so filters were fitted instead. The report said the filters would remain in place “until we get the all clear”.

Notes show that by the middle of February 2016, staff had still not received this confirmation.

The risk of the bacteria was designated as high and the unit brought in controls to prevent the spread, including limiting visitors and treating all babies “as if they had a severe infection”.

The risk register said that although estate staff were monitoring the taps and testing the water supply frequently it was: “Only as good as the last test and does not guarantee the patient’s/parents/visitors or staff safety.”

The US Centre for Disease Control’s Prevention and Response branch told The Telegraph that Pseudomonas was “an urgent threat” to babies in intensive care, and warned symptoms of an infection could sometimes be subtle, and cause or exacerbate other conditions.

“In our experience mortality rates during Pseudomonas aeruginosa outbreaks can be high,” a spokesman said.

“Neonatal intensive care unit patients often have defects in their immune system and are often subject to large amounts of very invasive care which make them very susceptible to infections with healthcare pathogens and also, when infected, at high risk for adverse outcomes including death and severe infection.

“As neonates have little capacity to compensate for additional stresses, infection can cause other problems in these patients that are not directly related to the infection.”

One mother whose baby was at the unit in 2016 said that she had been told that there was an outbreak of a virus on the ward, and her son was the only infant not infected. It is not known if she was referring to the Pseudomonas bacterial incident or a separate viral outbreak.

Speaking to the Mail’s Trial of Lucy Letby podcast, the anonymous mother said: “A matron came upstairs to me while I was an inpatient for two weeks and said that there was a virus on the unit and all the babies have got to stay in the rooms that they’re in and we’re not accepting any new babies.

“She seemed very panicked and it left me thinking at the time ‘oh my gosh, what is going on’?

“(My son) was the only one that apparently didn’t have this virus. They didn’t want him getting it because he was so small, he was still on the oxygen at the time.”

During Letby’s trial it emerged that there had been major problems with plumbing in the hospital and on one occasion human waste or sewage entered the neonatal intensive care room from the drains of a ward above.

However the bacterial infection problems in the unit were never mentioned, neither during the trial nor in a report by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) who investigated the high mortality rate at the unit in 2017.

Prof Livermore added: “Although the Pseudomonas colonisation was known at the time of the RCPCH report it is not mentioned. Why, especially given the Belfast deaths? Were they told?

“Did they speak to the infection control team, given that infection was such a plausible cause of clustered deaths? These are yet more questions that the Thirlwall Inquiry needs to address.”

The Thirlwall Inquiry has been set up to look at problems at the Countess of Chester during the period where Letby was convicted of murdering babies.

The Telegraph has asked the RCPCH whether it was informed about the Pseudomonas outbreak while it was investigating the high mortality rates, but it said it could not comment while the inquiry was ongoing.

A spokesman for the Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said “Due to the ongoing police investigations and the pending public inquiry, it would not be appropriate to answer or provide advice on the questions asked at this time.”

An elderly woman developed pneumonia and died after being forced to lie on the floor for 14 hours while waiting for an ambulance, an inquest has heard

Marjorie Michael, 93, fell at the residential home in Pontypool, Wales, where she lived on Sept 4 2023.

Carers were advised by the emergency services not to move her because it could worsen any injuries. But it took 14 hours for an ambulance to arrive at Plas-Y-Garn Residential Home, the inquest heard.

Now Caroline Saunders, the Gwent coroner, has raised concerns that attempts to improve wait times are “undermined” by ambulances being held up at hospitals as patients cannot be transferred.

And she has highlighted that the situation has not improved since she last warned of excessive waiting times in January 2023.

Ms Michael was eventually taken to Nevill Hall Hospital, Abergavenny, but died two days later from pneumonia.

Her death was “directly attributable” to the delay in the ambulance’s arrival, Ms Saunders said.

In a Prevention of Future Deaths report, she wrote: “Carers were correctly advised by the ambulance call handlers not to move her on the basis that this could worsen any injury she had sustained.

“As a result, [Ms Michael] lay on the floor for over 14 hours waiting for an ambulance. As per the medical cause of death…[her] death was directly attributable to the delayed ambulance response.”

No ‘material’ improvement since first warning

It is the second warning Ms Saunders has given the Welsh Ambulance Service about their response times.

The first came in January 2023 after an inquest into the death of Dorothy Jones, who died while waiting nine hours for an ambulance her GP had requested should arrive within two or three hours.

Ms Saunders said the situation has not “materially improved” since then and requires further consideration from the Welsh Government’s Cabinet Secretary for Health.

“[Ms Michael’s] death was directly attributable to the delayed ambulance response. Despite ongoing attempts by Welsh Ambulance Service and Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, the delays in responding to emergency calls are not improving,” said Ms Saunders.

She continued: “[The inquest] confirmed the many initiatives undertaken by these services to improve ambulance response times but these continue to be undermined by the delay in releasing emergency ambulances from acute hospitals to attend emergency calls.”

Addressing Eluned Morgan, the Cabinet Secretary for Health, she said: “Your welcome response to my [first] report made on does not appear to have materially improved the situation in Gwent, and I therefore bring this matter to your attention for further consideration.”

A “control freak with a savage temper” who caused a fatal accident by pulling the handbrake while on the motorway has been jailed for more than seven years.

Gary Toomey, 37, and his former partner Victoria Bell, 34, were having an argument as they returned from a festival late at night on Sept 24 2021.

Despite the car travelling at 70mph along the M62 near Liverpool, Toomey, who was in the passenger seat, grabbed hold of the handbrake and pulled it up, causing the car to spin out of control and smash into the central reservation.

Ms Bell managed to get free of the wreckage, but was hit and killed by another vehicle.

Toomey, of Hollin Hey Road in Bolton, later told police that a “feeling had come over him”.

He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and on Thursday was sentenced to prison for seven years and four months at Liverpool Crown Court.

The couple had lived together at Ms Bell’s home in Huddersfield before the relationship broke down.

However, they still occasionally saw each other and on the night of the fatal accident were returning from a festival in Liverpool.

‘Life ruined forever’

Toomey, an HGV driver, told officers that Ms Bell had said she did not want to see him again and that he had begun to shout at her, before pulling up the handbrake.

The Crown Prosecution Service said Toomey had pulled the brake “in temper”, with “tragic ramifications”.

Investigators found that the oncoming vehicle had no time to react to avoid Ms Bell, with poor lighting in the vicinity of the Clock Face Colliery Country Park making it “really hard to see until the last moment”.

In a victim impact statement read out in court, Ms Bell’s mother said: “Your actions have ruined my life forever.”

She described him as a “control freak with a savage temper”.

Toomey was also disqualified from driving.

Det Sgt Kurt Timpson, lead investigating officer from Merseyside Police Serious Collision Investigation Unit, said: “Toomey has destroyed a close family relationship by his shocking behaviour that night.

“Any person travelling at speed in a moving vehicle on a motorway would instinctively know that to pull a handbrake would be highly likely to cause very serious injury or death, to them and other road users. It is simply beyond belief.”

He added: “Merseyside Police will not tolerate any form of domestic abuse or controlling and coercive behaviour.

“We will deal robustly with every report and work with partner agencies to prevent and reduce this type of crime.”