Under-fire David Lammy was not being ‘evasive’ over prisons scandal | Politics | News
David Lammy was not being “evasive” in withholding information about botched prison releases, a cabinet colleague has insisted.
Culture Minister Lisa Nandy said the Justice Secretary was “considering what information” she would share during public hours after learning that Brahim Kaddour-Cherif had been mistakenly released from HMP Wandsworth.
Asked on Sky News’ Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips whether his evasiveness made it difficult to trust Government ministers on this issue, the Culture Secretary said: “I don’t accept that he is being evasive.
“I was in the House of Commons, I was there, sitting next to the Home Secretary, and I could see him considering what information to release.
“He was asked about an asylum seeker, the case in question was not an asylum seeker.
“And I think we all have an obligation as ministers when we talk about issues that are of such importance to the public and when we make information public, we do so carefully and make sure that all the facts are presented.”
During the session, shadow defense secretary James Cartlidge asked the Justice Secretary whether any more asylum seekers had been released by mistake since last month’s blunder, which triggered a two-day manhunt for child sex offender Hadush Kebatu.
At this point police had been alerted to the release of Algerian sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif after he was mistakenly released from HMP Wandsworth the previous week.
Mr Lammy said he learned of the mistake on Wednesday morning, but the details were revealed immediately after he finished answering questions.
He faced further questions after he told MPs last Monday that tighter security checks had come into effect immediately, two days before the unjust release on October 29, and later claimed Kaddour-Cherif had been released before such measures began.
On Saturday, it was discovered that two prisoners known to be still at large were mistakenly released last year, while two other prisoners who were mistakenly released in June 2025 are missing.
Ms Nandy said on Sunday: “According to the figures released, the publicly available figure is four, but I have not had any discussions with the Minister for Justice (David Lammy) about this this morning.
“I can tell you that under the last government there was an average of 17 false discharges over a long period of time. Under this government that number has increased to 22.
“This is absolutely unacceptable. It was unacceptable before and it is unacceptable now.”
“Even one is too many, and the Justice Secretary is getting that under control by appointing Dame Lynn Owens, the former director of the National Crime Agency, to make sure we really address this issue, starting with the antiquated paper-based system developed in the 1980s and still in use, building new prisons and making sure we have additional checks to ensure people are not released by mistake.”
Mr Lammy admitted on Friday he had “a mountain to climb” to deal with the crisis in the prison system after police searched for Kaddour-Cherif following his release from Wandsworth last week, which was only reported to Scotland Yard on Tuesday.
Fellow prisoner Billy Smith, 35, who was accidentally released from the same prison on Monday, surrendered on Thursday, while Kaddour-Cherif was also arrested in Finsbury Park on Friday.
The mistakes intensified pressure on Mr Lammy following the mistaken release of Kebatu, who was arrested for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman while living in an asylum hotel, sparking protests in Epping, Essex.
Stronger security checks for prisons have been announced and an independent investigation has been launched into faulty releases after a now-deported Ethiopian national was accidentally released from HMP Chelmsford on 24 October.
Some 262 prisoners were mistakenly released in the year to March 2025, up 128% from 115 in the 12 months to March 2025, according to the government’s latest figures.
In total, 90 of the wrongful releases belonged to violent or sexual offenders.
Kaddour-Cherif was serving a sentence for trespassing with intent to steal, but had previously been convicted of indecent exposure.
It is understood his visitor visa to the UK expired after arriving in 2019 and he is in the process of being deported.
Mr Cartlidge said the Justice Secretary’s refusal to confirm whether other asylum-seeking criminals had been released by mistake was a “profound mistake” that needed to be “examined”.
“All I knew was that we received a tip that there was another case like this, we didn’t know for sure,” he said.
“You won’t know for sure unless you run the department and he stands up and answers my questions.
“He had the facts at his fingertips and he was in front of Parliament, there was a Ministerial Code that was supposed to be transparent and he never answered questions.
“And my view is that, whatever that means in terms of his adherence to the Ministerial Code, it is a huge mistake and a disrespect for Parliament.”
Meanwhile, chief inspector of prisons Charlie Taylor said the errors were both a result of an “overly complex” sentencing framework and symptomatic of a “system close to breaking point”.
“The increasing frequency of these embarrassing and potentially dangerous mistakes is not just the result of an overly complex sentencing framework – it is a symptom of a system close to breaking point,” he wrote for the Telegraph.
Mr Lammy said on Friday: “We have inherited a prison system in crisis and I am appalled by the rate of erroneous releases this has caused.
“I am determined to tackle this problem, but it cannot be solved overnight, there is a mountain to climb.
“So I ordered strict new release controls, launched an independent investigation into systemic failures and began overhauling the outdated paper-based systems still used in some prisons.”
