What the papers say - April 8

After a week that saw concerns mount over a surge in violent crime in London, many of the Sunday papers look at the political implications of the issue.

There are also the latest lines on the Salisbury spy poisoning and news of a new political party that has been under secret development.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd has come out strongly against suggestions that a bloody crimewave is due to cuts to frontline policing in an article in the Sunday Telegraph.

The Mail on Sunday says emergency plans to increase the use of stop-and-search powers to combat the problem marks a U-turn for Theresa May, who reduced their use during her time as home secretary.

The Sunday Times reports that Russian former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia will be offered new identities in the US after the pair came back from the brink following their poisoning with a nerve agent.

Meanwhile the Sunday People says Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, taunted Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson with an infamous picture of the England football team giving a Nazi salute at the 1938 World Cup.

A new political party that has been in development for more than a year has £50 million of backing by a network of philanthropists and entrepreneurs, The Observer reports.

The Sunday Express says the number of patients going for private medical treatment overseas has quadrupled in four years as NHS waiting times reach record levels.

And The Independent says polling suggests the overwhelming majority of Britons would forgo a post-Brexit trade deal with the US in order to protect high food safety standards.

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