Re-signalling work over the bank holiday means there will be no Gatwick Express between the airport and London Victoria.

It will also affect Southern Rail including travel to and from Brighton.

Passengers are being urged to check National Rail’s website when planning journeys.
https://www.nationalrail.co.uk

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Conservative MP Crispin Blunt has apologised for a statement defending fellow MP Imran Ahmad Khan, who was convicted of sexual assault.

Wakefield MP Khan was found guilty on Monday of assaulting a 15-year-old boy in 2008.
Mr Blunt had called the verdict a “dreadful miscarriage of justice” in a statement on his website.
But he has deleted the message after Tory bosses said it was “wholly unacceptable” and has also apologised.
The Reigate MP said: “I am sorry that my defence of him has been a cause of significant upset and concern not least to victims of sexual offences.”

He has also resigned as chair of a cross-party committee of MPs that campaigns for LGBT+ rights around the world, after several members of it quit in protest at his statement.
The official Conservative Party LGBT+ group has suspended him, pending an investigation and a membership vote.
In a statement, the group said: “We are supportive of our judiciary and trial by jury, including the right to appeal, but present circumstances are that an MP has been found guilty of a grotesquely inappropriate sexual assault on a child.

“Regardless of whether comments have now been retracted, Crispin Blunt’s statement of yesterday [Monday] was inappropriate, misjudged and in the present circumstances we do not feel it is appropriate for Crispin to remain one of our patrons.”

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer accused the Conservative Party of being “mealy-mouthed” in its response to Mr Blunt’s “abhorrent” statement on the verdict, adding that it should have come down “much harder” on the MP.
The BBC has contacted Mr Blunt for a comment, but he is not expected to say anything further at this stage.
Khan was thrown out of the Conservative Party after Southwark Crown Court delivered its verdict on Monday but he has said he will appeal against his conviction.

Mr Blunt, a friend of Khan who attended some of his trial, said in his now-deleted statement that he was “appalled and distraught” by the verdict, calling it “an international scandal, with dreadful wider implications for millions of LGBT+ Muslims around the world”.
He claimed that the case against Khan had “relied on lazy tropes about LGBT+ people that we might have thought we had put behind us decades ago”.
“I hope for the return of Imran Ahmad Khan to the public service that has exemplified his life to date,” he added.

He did not explain in any detail why he believed Khan’s conviction had been a miscarriage of justice.
His statement was rejected by the Conservative Party as an attack on the independence of the judiciary.

Labour called Mr Blunt’s criticism of the verdict “disgraceful” and said he should be suspended from the Conservative Party.

In his apology, Mr Blunt said he did not condone any form of abuse and believed in the “independence and integrity” of the justice system.

During his trial, Khan denied groping a teenager at a party in Staffordshire in January 2008.
Southwark Crown Court heard he forced the boy to drink gin, dragged him upstairs, and asked him to watch pornography before assaulting him.
Khan is set to be sentenced at a later date.

Before Mr Blunt’s apology, several members of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) for global LGBT+ rights, which Mr Blunt chairs, had either resigned or said they would do so.
Labour’s Kate Osborne, and three SNP MPs, Stewart McDonald, Joanna Cherry, and Martin Docherty-Hughes, also resigned from the group.

During the trial, the victim, who is now 29, said he was “not taken very seriously” when he made an allegation to the Conservative Party press office in December 2019, days before Khan was elected as Wakefield’s MP. The victim went to the police days after the election.
Conservative sources told the BBC the party had found no record of a complaint being made about Khan in the run up to polling day.

Khan tried and failed to ban media reporting of the case, with his lawyers arguing that his life could be at risk, as the consumption of alcohol and homosexuality are strictly prohibited within his faith.
But a risk assessment by West Yorkshire police counter-terrorism security advisers concluded that there was “no objective threat to defendant’s life that would arise from being named as the defendant in these allegations”.

On reflection I have decided to retract my statement defending Imran Ahmad Khan. I am sorry that my defence of him has been a cause of significant upset and concern not least to victims of sexual offences. pic.twitter.com/rzcnJbdT0g

— Crispin Blunt MP (@CrispinBlunt) April 12, 2022

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Worker shortages mean Gatwick and other airports as well as ports are facing a “very difficult summer”, a border staff union has said.

Lucy Moreton, from the Immigration Services Union, warned that Border Force was “catastrophically under-staffed” and that it took nearly a year to fully train new officers.

Meanwhile, one aviation recruitment expert said it would take at least 12 months for shortages to settle down.
Some travellers have seen long queues and cancellations over Easter.

The travel industry cut thousands of jobs during the pandemic, but as demand for flights has returned, it has struggled to recruit, carry out security checks and train new staff quickly enough.
“For the first time in living memory, Border Force is no longer attracting enough candidates to fill the vacancies that they’ve got,” Ms Moreton told the BBC.
“Combined with the fact it takes nearly a year to fully train a Border Force officer, we’re going into not just this summer but this weekend catastrophically under-staffed, with people beginning to travel again.”
While she said it was right that no corners were cut with training and security clearances, Ms Moreton said more resources would help.
She said cash incentives were being offered for working shifts at London’s Heathrow Airport, while staff from Scotland and Northern Ireland were also being brought down to provide cover.
However, she added: “This is a very expensive proposition that resourcing it properly in the first place would have avoided.”

The Aviation Recruitment Network, which is working with airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Manchester, said it currently had more than 300 live vacancies – a record for this time of year.
Kully Sandhu, the organisation’s managing director, told the BBC he believed it would take at least 12 months for recruitment problems to be resolved.
“Brexit has not helped with the issues we’re facing at the moment because we had a natural attraction of individuals from the European market who would apply for vacancies within UK airports,” he told the BBC.
“We no longer have that talent pool to recruit from and we are relying on individuals within the UK.”
Heathrow has said security checks and training mean it can take three to six months before new recruits can start working.
It is aiming to have 1,000 new security officers recruited and in their posts by the summer.

On Monday, Heathrow admitted resources were “stretched”, as it revealed March was its busiest month since the start of the pandemic.
The airport warned of “congestion in check-in areas at peak times” and said it was “working closely with airlines and ground handlers to make sure this increase in demand can be met while keeping passengers safe”.

Last week, Ken O’Toole, the deputy chief executive of Manchester Airports Group, said staff shortages meant long queues at security could continue for four to six weeks.
Meanwhile, airlines have been hit by Covid-related absences, with EasyJet and British Airways cancelling flights as a result.

EasyJet chief executive Johan Lundgren said the company had seen absence rates of 20% in some cases.
But he said delays in processing security checks for new airline crew were also contributing to flight cancellations.
Mr Lundgren said the airline was waiting for the Department for Transport to give permission for around 100 new members of staff to start work.
However, the company said it had flown 94% of its planned schedule in the past seven days, with around 1,500 flights a day – four times higher than this time last year.
It added that cancellations had been made as early as possible to enable the majority of customers to rebook onto flights departing the same day.
EasyJet said it was seeing strong demand, with summer bookings over the past six weeks above pre-pandemic levels.

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