David Lammy set to face media as Tories accuse him of ‘dereliction of duty’ over prisoners released by mistake
Good morning. Except it isn’t if you are David Lammy, the deputy PM and justice secretary. Or Alex Davies-Jones, a junior justice minister, who has been doing the morning media round. Lammy took PMQs for the first time yesterday, but the coverage is a nightmare, partly because it coincided with news about two more prisoners being released by mistake, even though Lammy recently required governors to do extra checks to stop this happening, and partly because he dodged questions about this in the chamber.
The overnight Guardian version of the story is here.
For the Conservatives, this is like Christmas has come early (even though their spokesperson, James Cartlidge, who was deputisting for Kemi Badenoch at PMQs, messed up his questions, as John Crace explains here). Crudely put, their assumption is: people don’t like criminals, people don’t like migrants, so migrant criminals are doubly bad, and Labour are letting them out. As they have been commenting on this over the past 24 hours, Kemi Badenoch, Chris Philp, Robert Jenkins et al have found it hard to conceal the glee.
As ever, the reality is a bit more complicated. Of all public services, the prison service is probably the most dysfunctional, and has been for years. The accidental release of prisoners, though deplorable, is not that unusual; Lammy told the Commons recently that under Tories they were happening at a rate of 17 per month. Under Labour, the numbers have gone up sharply, but that has coincided with the government implementing a huge early release scheme because, when it came into office, the prison service was days away from not being able to take any more inmates because of over-crowding. The Algerian released by mistake from Wandsworth prison last week was not an asylum seeker, as the Tories originally claimed. He is a sex offender – on the basis of an indecent exposure conviction, for which he got an 18-month community order. He reportedly has other convictions too. A few days after he was mistakenly released, a white man from Surrey who had been jailed for almost four years for fraud offences was also let out by mistake, but the Tories don’t seem so interested in that error.
Here is a round-up of the latest developments on this story this morning.
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Prison governors in England have been summoned to an urgent meeting with ministers to discuss release errors, Davies-Jones has revealed. Here is our story, by Eleni Courea.
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The Ministry of Justice has said that Lammy did not tell MPs about the accidental release of the Algerian offender in the Commons yesterday because he did not have full information about it. In a statement released last night, an MoJ spokersperson said:
The crisis in the prison system this government inherited is such that basic information about individual cases can take unacceptably long to reach ministers.
On entering the house, facts were still emerging about the case and the DPM had not been accurately informed of key details including the offender’s immigration status. No media story about the individual case was yet in the public domain and it was and remains subject to a live police investigation.
The DPM was asked questions about the release of an asylum seeker. As was confirmed after PMQs by the Home Office, the individual was not an asylum seeker.
The DPM waited until after PMQs and further facts had emerged before making a statement.
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Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, has accused Lammy of a “total dereliction of duty” over this affair. Referring to the accidental release of the Algerian, Jenrick told the Today programme:
It took six days for the prison service supposedly to even become aware that this had happened and inform the Metropolitan police, who are now a week behind in the manhunt to find him.
Then the justice secretary is informed about this on Tuesday night, didn’t come clean.
He spent the next morning, we’re told, going out shopping for a suit, rather than taking charge of his department.
He then comes to parliament and doesn’t answer five straight questions about this. I think it’s a disgrace. It’s a total dereliction of duty.
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Lammy will be speaking to the media later today, Davies-Jones has said. In her Today interview, she said that Lammy was visiting a prison this morning, “doing his day job”, and that he would be “speaking to the media”. When it was put to her that Lammy should be answering questions, she said he would be.
Here is the agenda for day.
Morning: Gordon Brown, the former prime minister, gives a speech on child poverty at Somerset House.
Morning: David Lammy is due to speak to the media during a prison visit.
Noon: The Bank of England releases its latest interest rates decision. Graeme Wearden is covering this on his business live blog.
Lunchtime: Kemi Badenoch is on a visit in Staffordshire.
And Keir Starmer is in Brazil for the Cop30 summit.
The Commons is not sitting because there is a mini recess.
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