Towns and cities across Britain are “struggling” to deal with extremism being whipped up by Islamists and the far Right, an official report will warn this week.
A review by Sara Khan, the Government’s adviser on social cohesion, has concluded that in some areas there is “no infrastructure in place” to tackle a triple threat of conspiracy theories, disinformation and harassment that poses a threat to democracy.
A cross-Whitehall “cohesion response unit” could now be created by Michael Gove, the Communities and Local Government Secretary, in response to the report, as part of a social cohesion and extremism action plan being drawn up by his officials.
The plan follows the publication of the Government’s new definition of extremism, which sources said was a “first step” needed to tackle extremist behaviour and improve “democratic resilience”, amid concerns about groups attempting to subvert democracy.
Dame Sara’s report states that a cohesion response unit, staffed by policing, education and counter-extremism officials, was needed to tackle “early tensions” and “live flashpoint incidents” in local areas before they spiral out of control. Dame Sara, a former commissioner for countering extremism, is also expected to call for conflict resolution training for local authority officials and councillors, and the hiring of specialist staff who can help councils to improve social cohesion.
Riots broke out in Oldham in 2001 amid racial tensions between white and Asian youths
Credit: PHIL NOBLE/PA
Mr Gove is understood to back the majority of Dame Sara’s 15 recommendations contained in a report for the Communities Secretary and Prime Minister, which is due to be published this week.
They include putting in place a plan to tackle what Dame Sara describes as “freedom-restricting harassment” – threatening, intimidatory or abusive harassment in person or line that is intended to “make people or institutions censor or self-censor out of fear”.
Dame Sara held 30 meetings with local authorities across the country and 46 with civil society groups. Her report states: “During these meetings, [Dame Sara] repeatedly heard how local authorities and responders were struggling to deal with contemporary social cohesion threats, including disinformation, conspiracy theories and evolving extremist tactics.”
The report cites Oldham, Barrow-in-Furness and Stoke-on-Trent as examples of areas struggling with social cohesion and extremism activity, saying that the examples “demonstrate a common problem of a lack of capability and no established infrastructure to help local leaders deal with destabilising activity.”
Systemic problem
It adds: “This lack is representative of a wider systemic problem that leaves similar towns and cities across the country ill-equipped to respond to serious tensions, disinformation and extremism.”
“Despite Stoke-on-Trent having significant extremism activity, it no longer receives counter-extremism or Prevent funding – exposing the gaps in existing social cohesion and counter-extremism strategies.”
Dame Sara cited the town as among several areas suffering from “a common problem of a lack of capability and no established infrastructure to help local leaders deal with destabilising activity. This lack is representative of a wider systemic problem that leaves similar towns and cities across the country ill-equipped to respond to serious tensions, disinformation and extremism.”
Dame Sara was told that “ethnic residential segregation persisted” in the town, where 24.6 per cent of residents identified as Asian or Asian British in the 2021 census.
The town had to deal with “persistent threats to social cohesion”, with “divisive actors” continuing to fuel tensions. In recent years such figures had included Tommy Robinson, the English Defence League founder who visited the area in 2019, along with “direct action” by pro-Palestine groups.
Dame Sara warned that, while the council had been at pains to “prioritise social cohesion efforts... the challenges it faces today from conspiracy theories and disinformation as well as freedom-restricting harassment are undermining local democracy.”
Local leaders said that “massive democratic disruption” was being caused by divisive individuals and groups, “inducing a climate of fear and incitement”.
Despite this, groups flooded the town with leaflets making incendiary claims and in 2021 a former council leader was targeted in an online campaign falsely labelling him a “corrupt paedophile-protecting politician”.
Earlier this month, Baroness Falkner of Margravine, who chairs the Equality and Human Rights Commission, warned that integration appears to be “failing” following a decade of increasing migration.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Lady Falkner, a first-generation Muslim migrant from Pakistan who chairs the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), called for new arrivals to the UK to be required to take an “integration course”, adopting an approach used in Germany.
She also raised concerns about children living “segregated, parallel lives from school upwards”, calling for better education on democracy and rights.
Mr Gove named three Muslim groups and two far-Right groups which will be assessed as to whether they meet the Government’s new definition of extremism. The definition is intended to ensure that the Government does not provide funding to, or hold meetings with, groups that “advance extremist ideologies”.
China has targeted a group of MPs and peers at Westminster in a string of cyber-attacks, it has been reported.
On Monday, the deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, is expected to inform parliament of the attacks.
Meanwhile, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, former Tory education minister Tim Loughton, cross-bench peer Lord Alton of Liverpool and Stewart McDonald, a Scottish National party MP, have been called on to attend a briefing from Alison Giles, parliament’s director of security.
Duncan Smith, Loughton, Alton and McDonald are members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (Ipac), which monitors and scrutinises Beijing.
Foreign secretary David Cameron will also hold a meeting of the 1922 Committee during which the topic of China and security is likely to be discussed, the Sunday Times reported.
The forthcoming China update is believed to be related to the work of the Defending Democracy taskforce, a ministerial committee which monitors and identifies threats and interference in the UK’s elections and democratic system.
At an Ipac meeting on Friday, Luke de Pulford, its executive director, said: “About a year ago the Belgian and French foreign ministries publicly confirmed [Chinese state] sponsored cyber-attacks against our members.
“Other countries have done the same privately. Beijing has made no secret of their desire to attack foreign politicians who dare to stand up to them.”
Last year, a parliamentary researcher was arrested over allegations of spying.
Chris Cash, who denies the allegation, worked for the China Research Group, which was set up by security minister Tom Tugendhat. He was also employed as a researcher by Tory MP Alicia Kearns, who chairs the foreign affairs select committee.
Last summer, a report by the Commons intelligence and security committee (ISC) claimed China was “prolifically and aggressively” targeting the UK and had managed to “successfully penetrate every sector of the UK’s economy”.
People at either end of the age spectrum had the highest proportion of those out-of-work due to ongoing illness, the Foundation's report said.
"Younger and older people together account for nine-tenths of the rise in overall economic inactivity, which could have serious effects both on individual's living standards and career paths," said Louise Murphy, senior economist at the Foundation.
The rise in long-term sickness leaves the UK as the only G7 economy not to have returned to its pre-pandemic employment rate, according to the Foundation.
However, it did add that inactivity figures fell slightly to 2.7 million in December 2023.
It said the upward trend in long-term sickness actually started before the pandemic in the summer of 2019, and has lasted for 54 months.
The longest previous period of increasing economic inactivity due to ill-health was for 55 months, between 1994 and 1998, it added.
As well as looking at ONS figures, the Foundation pointed to Department of Work and Pension (DWP) figures showing claims for disability benefits. It said the rise in claims for PIP, the non-means tested benefit for those with health issues, were "most striking", with claims rising 68% from 2020 to 2024.
In the 16-17 age range, new PIP claims had increased by 138%.
The Foundation said it would lead to "wider strains on the NHS and welfare spending if we fail to improve the nation's health and reduce economic inactivity".
It also examined the DWP's data on medical conditions recorded on Work Capability Assessments and highlighted the fact that many benefit claimants cited mental health problems and musculoskeletal problems.
It said 69% claimed for mental health disorders, and 48% had problems with connective or musculoskeletal pain.
A spokesperson for the DWP said: "Our plan for the economy is working. Inflation [the rate at which prices rise] is down to 3.4%, employment is up, the number of people on payrolls is at a record high, and inactivity is falling.
"We've reduced the number of workless households by one million since 2010. Our £2.5 billion Back to Work plan will help break down barriers to work for over a million more people and our recent Budget measures are estimated to boost the labour force by an extra 300,000 workers."
In order to deal with long-term economic inactivity, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said in November that reforms including stricter fit-to-work tests and jobseeker support would get 200,000 more people into work. Under those plans, the government also wants to scrap the controversial Work Capability Assessment.
"We will reform the work capability assessment to reflect greater flexibility and availability of home working after the pandemic," Mr Hunt said in November. "And we will spend £1.3bn over the next five years to help nearly 700,000 people with health conditions find jobs."
The Foundation's latest report comes after it said in February that people in their early 20s are more likely to be not working due to ill health than those in their early 40s.
Responding to the report, Shazia Ejaz at the Recruitment and Employment Federation (REC), which represents the recruitment industry, said long NHS waiting lists "are a big factor for why not enough people are well enough to work".
She added: "Better infrastructure around transport, childcare and social care will all help tackle the inactivity challenge the UK faces".
Rishi Sunak prepares for last stand to save Tories — and himself
The prime minister is attempting to shift the dial with a series of eye-catching manifesto proposals, but the Tories remain at their lowest level of support since Liz Truss
THE TIMES CHIEF NEWS PHOTOGRAPHER JACK HILL
In times of crisis, Tory grandees cannot resist reaching for martial metaphors.
Sir Geoffrey Cox urged colleagues to take inspiration from the Battle of Rorke’s Drift in 1879, when 150 British and colonial soldiers saw off thousands of Zulu warriors. “We have to remain steady,” he said. “We have to invoke our Rorke’s Drift mentality.”
The former defence secretary Ben Wallace added that his colleagues had no choice but to “march towards the sound of the guns”.
Not all Tory MPs agree. “It’s all right for Ben [Wallace] because he’s standing down,” one former minister said. “But we don’t want to march towards the guns because we will all get shot.”
While the Tory psychodrama calmed this week, there is still significant concern among backbenchers
A leading campaigner from the Waspi (Women Against State Pension Inequality) group has said the prime minister is on a “sticky wicket” asking for the votes of Waspi women during May’s local elections in England unless “he heeds the clear instructions” from an ombudsmen over compensation.
Angela Madden expressed frustration at the unwillingness of politicians to commit to compensation, saying:
Rishi Sunak will be on a sticky wicket asking for Waspi women’s votes at these local elections – and at the coming general election – unless he heeds the clear instructions of the ombudsman that Waspi women should be compensated.
MPs of all parties signed up to the case for £10,000 compensation each. The prime minister has the power to bring legislation before parliament which would deliver that, and that is what 1950s-born women now rightly expect.
Asked about the issue earlier during a local election campaigning event in Derbyshire, the prime minister promised “a considered and thoughtful response” to the report, but stopped shy of promising that the government would commit to setting up a compensation scheme.
Sunak said “hopefully people will appreciate that we’ve only just received the report yesterday. It is very long and detailed, and the right thing for us to do is to go through it carefully, and then come back with a considered and thoughtful response.”
This block was amended at 16.01 GMT. Due to a transcribing error, it originally said Sunak had promised a “considerate”, not “considered” response.
We will shortly be closing the blog for the day. Here are the headlines …
Rishi Sunak said his government would give a “considered” response to a report saying Waspi women deserved compensation, without promising when any response could be expected. Leading campaigner Angela Madden said he was on a “sticky wicket” asking for votes from the women affected unless “he heeds the clear instructions of the ombudsman that Waspi women should be compensated”. Labour’s Emily Thornberry said they would await the government response before making any committment themselves.
Sunak was in Derbyshire launching the Tory local election campaign for England and Wales, in which the government are expected to suffer heavy losses. He criticised local Labour councils for failing to balance their books after over a decade of Conservative governments reducing central funding to local councils.
The prime minister, who was appointed to the role by the Conservative party seven weeks after losing a leadership contest to Liz Truss, urged voters to send a message to Keir Starmer during May’s local elections. Sunak said the Labour leader was “arrogantly taking the British people for granted” and “assuming that he can just stroll into Number 10 without saying what he would do”.
Environment secretary Steve Barclay has come under scrutiny for failing to declare a potential conflict of interest over a proposed waste incineration plant in his constituency. The minister has now recused himself from the process, but No 10 refused to say when that had happened.
A private member’s bill by a Conservative MP, backed by the government, which was attempting to overturn London’s elected mayor’s Ulez expansion team failed to pass a second reading in the House of Commons.
Plaid Cymru have begun their spring conference. Leader Rhun ap Iorwerth has attacked both the current government and any future Labour government for failing to provide the investment he says Wales needs. He said “a new Welsh first minister coupled with a likely Starmer-led government in Westminster” would lead to “more stagnation, more managerialism, more cuts to public services”
Former Channel Islands data commissioner Emma Martins will lead the external review into the use of WhatsApp and mobile messaging in the Scottish government.
Thank you for all your comments today. I do try to read them all and find them helpful. I hope you have an enjoyable weekend.
Zoe Williams is on sketching duties today while we wish John Craceall the best with his recovery. She watched Rishi Sunak’s English local election campaign launch in Derbyshire:
Rishi Sunk wanted to talk about Labour-run councils – Nottingham, “effectively bankrupt”. After having a fire-sale of assets, they still can’t balance the books, in contrast to the extraordinarily well-run Conservative Nottinghamshire county council; Birmingham, and the scandal of its bankruptcy. A 21% rise in council tax for residents, decimated services, mismanaged finances.
I find it quite hard to imagine anyone being taken in by this. Everyone knows that local authorities have taken savage hits to their spending power, due to cuts by central government. Say what you like about the Conservative party and their messaging, everyone is reasonably clear on one thing: that austerity was their idea.
Nobody’s going to need more councils, of varying political hues, also going bust, to realise that the problem is a little more systemic. Every local authority is now like Schrödinger’s cat: it could be alive or dead, but if you open the box and look in, it’s dead. This is Sunak’s unlovely task of 2024, to keep the box closed until he’s out of office.
Rowena Mason, Kiran Stacey, Peter Walker and Eleni Courea all share a byline on this campaign preview going into the May local election campaign in England:
Launching his party’s local election campaign, the Rishi Sunak is six weeks away from a moment of maximum danger for his premiership. Qualms about the prime minister’s leadership are rumbling on, with talk of installing Penny Mordaunt or Tom Tugendhat in his place, but those calls may become more public and louder from some Conservative MPs if the party loses mayoralties in Tees Valley and the West Midlands on 2 May.
Few political experts anticipate anything other than a resounding victory for Labour in the 107 council contests on that date, but the possibility of Keir Starmer’s party getting a clean sweep when it comes to mayoral polls in London and 10 other areas is what is really causing jitters in Conservative party headquarters.
Senior Tories say they will measure success or failure mostly by a handful of mayoral contests, rather than how many councillors they lose. One cabinet minister said: “We are at risk of losing both the Teesside mayoralty and West Midlands. If we can hold one or both of those, we will have done well.”
The cabinet minister added, however: “The polls currently have us 20 points behind. If that were to be repeated at the locals, we would do well to hold on to a single council.”
Labour dismisses such suggestions as setting unrealistically low expectations in order to outperform them come election night. One shadow minister said: “They’ll easily hold both of those mayoralties. But that won’t eclipse the hammering they will get in local authorities.”
Plaid Cymru have been having the first day of their spring conference today, and Rhun ap Iorwerth has attacked both the current government and any future Labour government for failing to provide the investment he says Wales need.
Sunak and Starmer’s HS2 betrayal only keeps Wales in the slow lane. And the Labour-Tory coalition on lifting the bankers’ bonus cap only goes to prove whose side they are really on.
That is why Plaid Cymru will be unapologetic in demanding fair funding for Wales from whoever holds the keys to 10 Downing Street by the end of this year. Decades of chronic underinvestment must come to an end.
What does a new Welsh first minister coupled with a likely Starmer-led government in Westminster mean for us? My fear is that it’s be more of the same.
More stagnation, more managerialism, more cuts to public services.
I mentioned earlier that parliament had been debating a private member’s bill aimed at curbing the London mayor’s Ulez expansion scheme. It didn’t get voted on before the 2.30pm cut-off time, and so at present would be expected to be debated again on 19 April.
London’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan’s team had warned that ministers risked “fundamentally undermining devolution” if they started “seizing powers from directly elected mayors”.
Labour’s Nottingham South MP Lilian Greenwood spoke for 33 minutes, a move criticised by Conservatives in the chamber as an attempt to talk the bill out.
During her speech, Greenwood accused the bill of trampling over devolution, saying:
The whole purpose of devolution is for local people to determine the policies that are needed for their area. The Government has set the targets for air quality, it is for democratically elected mayors and local authorities to run their cities or their counties in the way that works best for their area.
Transport minister Guy Opperman had said: “The government supports this particular bill.”
Not everybody is in full sympathy with the Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi) campaign. Ross Clark writes at the Telegraph:
How bizarre it would be if women, after being told they can have equal pay, equal opportunities for promotion and everything else, had continued to be allowed to swan off at age 60 while their male colleagues had to continue to work for several more years.
They tell us that the decision of John Major’s government to equalise state pension ages has ruined carefully planned retirements. Yet somehow that detailed planning didn’t seem to extend to looking up at what age they would retire?
Women were given more notice than I received about my pension age rising to 67. Not that I am complaining. I fully accept – as should everyone – that as longevity increases so must the length of our working lives.
The government doesn’t give remotely as much notice of other fiscal changes as it did the change of the women’s retirement age. When the Chancellor jacks up taxes we usually get little notice – even though it can have serious consequences for our future financial lives.
There may be slightly less sympathy for Clark in some quarters on account of this payoff line though, where he writes “For many of us with private pensions the age at which we think we have enough to retire goes up and down daily with the stock market.”
She said “We also want to hear what a Labour government would do if they were in office. Labour MPs have long supported the Waspi cause. At this critical moment, we want to see the Labour leadership step up that support, not step back.”
In her media round appearance this morning, Labour shadow cabinet minister Emily Thornberry said her party would not be making any commitments until the government had put forward its response, telling Sky News viewers:
It has to be done in the right way. At the moment, we have to make sure that the government doesn’t wriggle out of this. The government has to make a decision about what is the appropriate way of compensating these women, and then they have to make a decision about how we make sure that Whitehall never makes this mistake again.
During the 2019 election campaign, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour manifesto committed to a £58bn compensation package, which would have involved an average of £15,380 being paid to each of those affected. The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) has recommended payouts of between £1,000 and £2,950.
A leading campaigner from the Waspi (Women Against State Pension Inequality) group has said the prime minister is on a “sticky wicket” asking for the votes of Waspi women during May’s local elections in England unless “he heeds the clear instructions” from an ombudsmen over compensation.
Angela Madden expressed frustration at the unwillingness of politicians to commit to compensation, saying:
Rishi Sunak will be on a sticky wicket asking for Waspi women’s votes at these local elections – and at the coming general election – unless he heeds the clear instructions of the ombudsman that Waspi women should be compensated.
MPs of all parties signed up to the case for £10,000 compensation each. The prime minister has the power to bring legislation before parliament which would deliver that, and that is what 1950s-born women now rightly expect.
Asked about the issue earlier during a local election campaigning event in Derbyshire, the prime minister promised “a considered and thoughtful response” to the report, but stopped shy of promising that the government would commit to setting up a compensation scheme.
Sunak said “hopefully people will appreciate that we’ve only just received the report yesterday. It is very long and detailed, and the right thing for us to do is to go through it carefully, and then come back with a considered and thoughtful response.”
This block was amended at 16.01 GMT. Due to a transcribing error, it originally said Sunak had promised a “considerate”, not “considered” response.
With impeccable timing, just as Rishi Sunak is out and about on a transport-themed day launching the Conservative local election campaign, Conservative MPs in Westminster have been debating to try to override the Ulez expansion in London.
Gareth Johnson, Conservative MP for Dartford, has tabled the Greater London Low Emission Zone Charging (Amendment) bill in a bid to give ministers the power to overturn the expansion.
Johnson said the expansion was “unfair” on people who lived outside London as they had “no say on who the London mayor is” but may have to frequently drive into the city.
He said he continues to be “contacted by people sharing examples of financial hardships, collapsed businesses and the negative social consequences.”
Walthamstow’s Labour MP Stella Creasy reminded MPs that the London mayoral election takes place on 2 May, adding voters will “have an opportunity to express an opinion at the ballot box” in connection with Ulez expansion. She questioned if the bill suggested Tory MPs have “no confidence in their mayoral candidate being able to win that argument”.
Labour’s shadow energy minister Kerry McCarthy said the bill was “a desperate last-ditch attempt to try to boost the Conservative vote, and I think we know how that will turn out. We’ve seen some sort of quite depressing attempts to make it part of these cultural, anti-woke wars against net zero, to try to sort of say that net zero comes at a cost. We saw the secretary of state for transport buy into the whole conspiracy theory about 15-minute cities at party conference, which again is incredibly depressing.”
Rishi Sunak has claimed that his government is “doing everything it can” to try to support the Alstom train-making plant in Derby, which has recently said it might close, threatening thousands of jobs, as it has an 18-month gap until its next orders.
Visiting the company as part of his campaigning trip today to launch the Conservative local election campaign for May, the prime minister said:
I know it will be a concerning time for everyone, both in the plant and more generally. That’s why we’ve set up a dedicated cross-government taskforce to make sure there is appropriate support in place for all the workers.
More generally, without obviously being able to comment on commercial conversations, as you’ll appreciate, the government is doing everything it can to support the supply chain and make sure there is a good pipeline of work to do.
An IT worker who fatally poisoned a couple with the opioid painkiller fentanyl and rewrote their will has been jailed for a minimum of 37 years.
Stephen Baxter, 61, and his wife Carol, 64, were found dead at their home in West Mersea, Essex, in April 2023.
Luke D'Wit, 34, used fake identities to manipulate the couple before he laced their medication with the drug, a trial at Chelmsford Crown Court heard.
D'Wit, from West Mersea, will serve at least 37 years of a life sentence.
Det Supt Rob Kirby, the head of major crime at Essex Police, said he had "absolutely no doubt" that D'Wit would have committed further murders had he not been caught.
He said the defendant was "one of the most dangerous men" he had seen during his policing career.
Family handout
The trial heard D'Wit secretly laced the Baxters' medication with fentanyl and made sure they consumed it when he visited their house in Victory Road on 7 April 2023.
Mr and Mrs Baxter's daughter, Ellie, found her parents dead in their conservatory when she visited two days later on Easter Sunday.
D'Wit arrived soon after and described himself as a "friend" to a 999 call handler, before calmly giving a false account as Miss Baxter was heard in distress in the background.
Reading her victim impact statement at Chelmsford Crown Court, Miss Baxter described D'Wit as a "man so manipulative he hacked his way into our lives over a decade ago, schemed and thoroughly planned my parents' demise".
She said her parents had "looked after Luke", adding: "They just decided he was lonely, especially after Luke's dad died. They took him under their wing and would let him join in."
Describing the moment she found them dead, she said: "I have never known an emotional pain to physically hurt so much.
"It was like my insides were on fire. I screamed and I screamed."
John Fairhall/BBC
The defendant first met the Baxters between 2012 and 2013 after he was asked to build a website for their shower mat company, Cazsplash.
The court heard the day after they were found dead, D'Wit rewrote their will so he could seize control of the business.
Tracy Ayling KC, prosecuting, said the murders were the culmination of years of manipulation by D'Wit, mostly focused on Mrs Baxter but also - at times - her daughter.
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Mrs Baxter had befriended D'Wit through the business and trusted him to help her manage her thyroid condition, Hashimoto's disease.
'Desperate'
The jury was told D'Wit had 80 electronic devices and some of them had been used to create more than 20 false personas "to manipulate" Mrs Baxter.
D'Wit posed as a doctor on one of the devices and offered her advice "with no clinical basis", while also pretending to be fellow Hashimoto's sufferers. the court heard.
Miss Baxter, 22, told the trial: "There was just this set of rules we had to follow.
"I think mum got a bit desperate and she got to a point where she would do anything to get better."
However, Miss Baxter said her parents had become "irritated" that D'Wit was so frequently at their house in the months leading up to their deaths and they thought the computer science graduate was "nerdy weird".
They were taken by the defendant who had installed a "mobile security surveillance application" on the device, she said.
This allowed him to monitor a camera from another device where, at some point between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, he was "watching them die", the prosecutor added.
During the trial, D'Wit gave evidence from a wheelchair, which Ms Ayling alleged was an effort to attract sympathy from the jury.
She said following his arrest, a bag containing both opened and unopened fentanyl patches was found at D'Wit's home, which he shared with his mother.
"There can only be one purpose for having these and that's to fool someone into believing they were taking a proper dose when they were actually taking four times the amount," Ms Ayling added.
Metal tacks, which police believe were the same ones found during a scan of Mrs Baxter's stomach when she was alive, were also discovered in the bag.
Toxicology reports later showed fentanyl was a factor in both deaths, with carbon monoxide poisoning quickly ruled out and no evidence to suggest either death had been caused by the couple themselves.
During his defence, D'Wit claimed the fake personalities messaging Mrs Baxter were Stephen Baxter's idea.
The defendant said: "The actual mechanics was me, but it was instructions from Stephen."
D'Wit denied there was a "sinister" motive for the false identities, and said they were used by Mr Baxter to improve his wife's health and their relationship.
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