Lammy set to face media as Tories accuse him of ‘dereliction of duty’ over prisoners released by mistake – UK politics live | Politics

Good morning. But if you are it’s not like that David LammyDeputy Prime Minister and Minister of Justice. Or Alex Davies-JonesA justice minister doing his morning media tour. Lammy received PMQs for the first time yesterday, but the news was a nightmare, partly because it coincided with news that two more prisoners had been released by mistake, despite Lammy having recently asked governors to carry out extra checks to stop this happening, and partly because he dodged questions about it in parliament.

Here’s the nightly Guardian version of the story.

For the Conservatives, it’s like Christmas has come early (although their spokesman James Cartlidge, standing in for Kemi Badenoch at the PMQs, mixed up their questions, as John Crace explains here). Roughly speaking, their assumption is that people don’t like criminals, people don’t like immigrants, so immigrant criminals are twice as bad and Labor lets them go. Kemi Badenoch, Chris Philp, Robert Jenkins and others who have been commenting on this issue over the last 24 hours have had difficulty hiding their joy.

As always, the truth is a little more complicated. Of all the public services, the prison service is probably the most dysfunctional and has been for many years. While the accidental release of prisoners is deplorable, it is not that uncommon; Lammy said House of Commons lately He said under the Conservative Party these were occurring at a rate of 17 per month. Within the scope of the Labor Party, numbers increased rapidlyHowever, this coincided with the government implementing a major early release plan because when he took office, the prison service was days away from being able to take any more prisoners due to overcrowding. The Algerian who was mistakenly released from Wandsworth prison last week was not an asylum seeker as the Conservatives initially claimed. He is a sex offender; He was sentenced to 18 months in prison for indecent exposure. He reportedly has other convictions. A few days after he was mistakenly released, a white man from Surrey who had been in prison for almost four years for fraud was also mistakenly released, but the Conservatives don’t seem to care much about that mistake.

Here’s a summary of the latest on this story this morning.

• Davies-Jones revealed that prison governors in England have been called to an emergency meeting with ministers to discuss release failures. Here is our story, Eleni Courea.

• The Ministry of Justice said Lammy did not tell MPs about the accidental release of the Algerian criminal in the House of Commons yesterday because he did not have full information about it. In a statement published last night, Ministry of Justice spokesperson in question:

The crisis in the prison system inherited by this government means that basic information about individual cases can take unacceptably long to reach ministers.

Once the home was entered, the facts of the case were still emerging and DPM was not properly briefed on key details, including the criminal’s immigration status. No media reports regarding the individual case have yet been made public and it has been and remains the subject of a live police investigation.

DPM was asked about the release of an asylum seeker. This person was not an asylum seeker, as confirmed by the Home Office following PMQs.

DPM waited for the PMQs and other facts to emerge before making a statement.

• Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick accused Lammy of “complete dereliction of duty” over the incident. Referring to the accidental release of the Algerian, Jenrick said to the Today programme:

It took six days for the prison service to even become aware of the incident and notify the Metropolitan police, who were now a week behind in the manhunt to find him.

Later on Tuesday night, the minister of justice was informed about this, but he did not come clean.

We are told that he spent the next morning shopping for a suit rather than taking charge of his department.

Then he comes to parliament and does not answer five direct questions about it. I think this is a shame. This is a complete dereliction of duty.

• Davies-Jones said Lammy would speak to the media later today. He said in the Today interview that Lammy had visited a prison this morning, was “doing his day job” and was “going to speak to the media”. When he was told that Lammy would have to answer the questions, he said he would.

Here is the agenda of the day.

Morning: Former prime minister Gordon Brown gives a speech about child poverty at Somerset House.

Morning: David Lammy will speak to the media during his prison visit.

Afternoon: The Bank of England announced its latest interest rate decision. Graeme Wearden explains this on his business live blog.

Lunch time: Kemi visits Badenoch, Staffordshire.

Keir Starmer is also in Brazil for the COP30 summit.

The House of Commons is not sitting because there is a mini recess.

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