Keir Starmer ‘angry and frustrated’ at mistaken prison releases

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said he was “angry and frustrated” over the mistaken release of two prisoners from London’s Wandsworth Prison.

One of the men, Billy Smith, surrendered on Thursday, but Algerian sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif remains at large.

Speaking publicly for the first time about the releases, the Labor prime minister attributed the pressure on the prison system to “failures” under the previous Conservative government but added: “I recognize it is our duty to step up and fix this.”

Describing the situation as a “complete mess”, Conservative shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said the government “needs to get a handle on it”.

Justice Secretary David Lammy promised “strongest checks ever” to prevent further errors Following the accidental release of migrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu from Chelmsford prison in Essex last month.

Speaking at the COP30 environment summit in Brazil, Sir Keir said the inaccurate publications that emerged this week were “unacceptable”.

He said an investigation had been carried out to establish what “went wrong”, adding: “There must be systems in place to prevent this from happening again.”

Dame Lynne Owens, a former deputy commissioner of the Met Police, has been tasked with determining why Kebatu was released and will make recommendations to prevent wrongful releases in the future.

In a video posted on social media, Lammy said a “digital rapid response unit” would be installed in all prisons within 48 hours.

He said the unit will focus on “using the latest technology to reduce some of the human error” in the release process.

Although the wrongful release of prisoners has been a problem for some time, the number has been increasing in recent years.

According to the latest figures, 262 prisoners were mistakenly released in England and Wales in the year to March 2025; This figure reached 115, an increase of 128% compared to the previous year.

The police manhunt continues for Kaddour-Cherif, 24, who was found guilty of indecent exposure in November 2024.

He is understood to have entered the UK legally on a visitor visa in 2019 but has overstayed and is in the early stages of deportation.

Kaddour-Cherif was mistakenly released from HMP Wandsworth on October 29 but police were only notified on Tuesday.

Sources told the BBC that the prison governor was not at the prison on the day Kaddour-Cherif was released because he was handling the investigation into how Kebatu was accidentally released from HMP Chelmsford.

Meanwhile, Smith, 35, who was sentenced to prison for fraud on Monday, was mistakenly released from Wandsworth prison the same day due to a court clerical error.

Surrey Police said he was taken back into custody after surrendering.

On Wednesday, before news of released prisoners emerged, Conservative James Cartlidge asked Lammy, who replaced Sir Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions, five times whether another “asylum-seeking criminal” had been released from prison by mistake.

Lammy has come under criticism from the Conservative Party for refusing to answer this question, even though he knew at that point that Kaddour-Cherif had been released by mistake.

Lammy, speaking while visiting the construction site of a new prison in Leicestershire on Thursday, said he did not have “all the details” when faced with questions in the House of Commons and did not want to risk “misleading” MPs.

He acknowledged that the “error rate” was “too high” and added: “It needs to come down.”

“We had 800 mistakes under the last government, now this continues for a generation,” Lammy said.

“Our prison system is in crisis, so we need to get on top of that, but we have a mountain to climb.”

Asked why his new controls did not prevent releases, Lammy said Kaddour-Cherif was released without stricter rules being implemented.

However, speaking in the House of Commons last Monday, Lammy said these checks came into force immediately, two days before Kaddour-Cherif was unjustly released.

Asked about the discrepancy on Thursday night, the prime minister said: “David Lammy can speak for himself on that. And I am absolutely clear that he has set out the facts to the best of his knowledge and that is the right thing for him to do.”

Justice Department sources say Lammy did not misrepresent and that the department believes the errors that triggered Kaddour-Cherif’s release occurred in late September, before new checks began Oct. 27.

The Prison Governors Association said the number of prisoners mistakenly released was “extremely worrying” but that it was happening “under the watchful eye of every government”.

“Achieving a zero-defect outcome will require significant investment in staff training, modern IT infrastructure and recruitment – ​​all within a system already strained by competing priorities,” the association said in a statement. he said.

“Successive governments have accepted this level of risk for decades. In this context, it feels disingenuous to see politicians seeking political gain from a prison system in crisis.”

Alex Chalk, the Conservative government’s justice minister, told the BBC: “It’s clear that governments of all stripes tend not to prioritize the justice system compared to the NHS or education.”

He added that the Department for Work and Pensions spends the equivalent of the Ministry of Justice’s annual budget “on a fortnight”.

He also said senior leaders in prisons “need to do more to put their houses in order”.

Jenrick accused Lammy of “dereliction of duty” for refusing to answer questions put to him during PMQs, even though he knew Kaddour-Cherif had been released by mistake.

The shadow justice secretary also criticized his opposite number for going shopping for a new suit before PMQs “rather than keeping his own department busy”.

“I bought a new suit this morning because my godmother said she’d be watching,” Lammy told MPs on Wednesday in an attempt to explain why he wasn’t wearing the Commemorative poppy at the start of the session.

Sources close to Lammy said he did not shop on Wednesday morning and bought his new suit earlier in the week.