Lammy claims he made ‘proper judgment’ in dodging prisoner query at PMQs as a result of he didn’t have ‘all the small print’
David Lammy has recorded a pooled interview concerning the prisoner launch errors reveaved after yesterday’s PMQs. There have been three principal strains in the excerpt available up to now.
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Lammy, the deputy PM and justice secretary, defended his choice to dodge questions at PMQs yesterday about whether or not there had been one other prisoner let loose by mistake. The Conservatives have strongly criticised him for this, with Chris Philp, the shadow residence secretary, saying that Lammy’s non-answer was “dishonest”, and Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, saying Lammy’s PMQs efficiency was “a shame” and “a dereliction of responsibility”. (See 9.34am.) Lammy was requested if he knew of one other asylum seeker being launched by mistake; on the time he knew {that a} overseas prisoner had been launched earlier, however it’s claimed that he didn’t know the total particulars of the offender, who turned out to not be an asylum seeker, it later transpired. Requested if he accepted that he ought to have given MPs extra data, Lammy replied:
I first came upon about this [the prisoner release error] on Wednesday morning. I used to be within the division, each studying from officers, but additionally making ready for prime minister’s questions.
On the dispatch field I didn’t have all the particulars. That element was truly launched simply later after I had completed at prime minister’s questions.
I took the judgment that’s vital when updating the home and the nation about critical issues like this that you’ve all the particulars. I used to be not geared up with all the element.
And the hazard is you find yourself deceptive the home and most of the people. So that’s the judgment I took. I feel it’s the precise judgment.
(It’s laborious to see how Lammy would have misled the Commons if he had caught to telling MPs what info he did know, and what he was nonetheless ready to study.)
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Lammy claimed the overseas prisoner referenced at PMQs (Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, an Algerian), had been launched by mistake from Wandsworth jail earlier than the extra prisoner release checks ordered by Lammy have been launched. Lammy launched these checks after the previous asylum seeker Hadush Kebatu was wrongly free of HMP Chelmsford jail. Lammy mentioned:
We’ve got came upon that the discharge that has triggered concern this week was truly earlier than I introduce these checks only a few weeks in the past, following the discharge of Kebatu.
And the opposite prisoner [Billy Smith] was a courtroom mistake, not the truth is a jail mistake.
That is odd as a result of the MoJ announced on 27 October that these new checks have been coming into pressure “from at present”, however yesterday it was reported that Kaddour-Cherif had been let loose accidentally on 29 October. I’ve requested the MoJ for an evidence.
The reality is, I’ve been in put up two months. The speed of launch by error is just too excessive. It has to come back down.
That’s why I’ve requested Dame Lynne Owens to have a look at this, a former deputy Met commissioner, to evaluate this and are available again to me as rapidly as she’s in a position to do.
And this can be a paper-based system that clearly entails human error.
We had 800 errors underneath the final authorities. That is now gone on for a technology. Our jail system is in disaster. So now we have to bear down on this. However now we have a mountain to climb.
Key occasions
Educating unions in England inform authorities they’re ‘extraordinarily involved’ proposed pay award not correctly funded
Richard Adams
Richard Adams is the Guardian’s schooling editor.
England’s educating unions have written to schooling secretary Bridget Phillipson warning that the pay award she lately provided – worth 6.5% over three years – shall be swiftly eroded by inflation and trigger extra lecturers to give up the occupation.
The joint letter, from the final secretaries of the Nationwide Training Union, the NASUWT, the Nationwide Affiliation of Head Lecturers and the Affiliation of Faculty and School Leaders, says they’re “extraordinarily involved” that Philipson’s supply depends on over-optimistic inflation forecasts and won’t be funded by authorities, that means it’ll eat into college budgets.
The unions have urged Phillipson to resubmit proof supporting “totally funded, above-inflation awards” to the unbiased physique that makes pay suggestions.
The letter says:
Any award that isn’t totally funded will inevitably lead to additional cuts to staffing and important provision, undermining the flexibility of colleges to ship high-quality schooling for all pupils …
Over 1,000,000 pupils are already taught in lessons of greater than 30, the very best quantity in a technology.
Daniel Kebede, the NEU’s common secretary, added:
The federal government has created anxiousness amongst the occupation by placing ahead proof that means a below-inflation pay award that’s to be funded out of present budgets. We anticipated higher from Labour.
The years of pay cuts since 2010 have already triggered extreme recruitment and retention issues and hit instructor dwelling requirements laborious. Additional pay cuts will make issues even worse.
Lammy claims he made ‘proper judgment’ in dodging prisoner query at PMQs as a result of he didn’t have ‘all the small print’
David Lammy has recorded a pooled interview concerning the prisoner launch errors reveaved after yesterday’s PMQs. There have been three principal strains in the excerpt available up to now.
-
Lammy, the deputy PM and justice secretary, defended his choice to dodge questions at PMQs yesterday about whether or not there had been one other prisoner let loose by mistake. The Conservatives have strongly criticised him for this, with Chris Philp, the shadow residence secretary, saying that Lammy’s non-answer was “dishonest”, and Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, saying Lammy’s PMQs efficiency was “a shame” and “a dereliction of responsibility”. (See 9.34am.) Lammy was requested if he knew of one other asylum seeker being launched by mistake; on the time he knew {that a} overseas prisoner had been launched earlier, however it’s claimed that he didn’t know the total particulars of the offender, who turned out to not be an asylum seeker, it later transpired. Requested if he accepted that he ought to have given MPs extra data, Lammy replied:
I first came upon about this [the prisoner release error] on Wednesday morning. I used to be within the division, each studying from officers, but additionally making ready for prime minister’s questions.
On the dispatch field I didn’t have all the particulars. That element was truly launched simply later after I had completed at prime minister’s questions.
I took the judgment that’s vital when updating the home and the nation about critical issues like this that you’ve all the particulars. I used to be not geared up with all the element.
And the hazard is you find yourself deceptive the home and most of the people. So that’s the judgment I took. I feel it’s the precise judgment.
(It’s laborious to see how Lammy would have misled the Commons if he had caught to telling MPs what info he did know, and what he was nonetheless ready to study.)
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Lammy claimed the overseas prisoner referenced at PMQs (Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, an Algerian), had been launched by mistake from Wandsworth jail earlier than the extra prisoner release checks ordered by Lammy have been launched. Lammy launched these checks after the previous asylum seeker Hadush Kebatu was wrongly free of HMP Chelmsford jail. Lammy mentioned:
We’ve got came upon that the discharge that has triggered concern this week was truly earlier than I introduce these checks only a few weeks in the past, following the discharge of Kebatu.
And the opposite prisoner [Billy Smith] was a courtroom mistake, not the truth is a jail mistake.
That is odd as a result of the MoJ announced on 27 October that these new checks have been coming into pressure “from at present”, however yesterday it was reported that Kaddour-Cherif had been let loose accidentally on 29 October. I’ve requested the MoJ for an evidence.
The reality is, I’ve been in put up two months. The speed of launch by error is just too excessive. It has to come back down.
That’s why I’ve requested Dame Lynne Owens to have a look at this, a former deputy Met commissioner, to evaluate this and are available again to me as rapidly as she’s in a position to do.
And this can be a paper-based system that clearly entails human error.
We had 800 errors underneath the final authorities. That is now gone on for a technology. Our jail system is in disaster. So now we have to bear down on this. However now we have a mountain to climb.
Authorities will discover it ‘extraordinarily tough’ to fulfill its schooling priorities inside funds set, IfG thinktank says
Richard Adams
Richard Adams is the Guardian’s schooling editor.
The federal government’s spending plans are leaving it struggling to enhance situations in England’s colleges, akin to addressing the disaster in particular academic wants and disabilities (Ship) provision or recruiting extra lecturers, based on a brand new Institute for Authorities report.
In accordance with the IfG, it will likely be “extraordinarily tough for the federal government to fulfill its schooling priorities throughout the funds it has set” over the approaching parliament.
The report finds that two-thirds of state particular colleges are actually working above capability, whereas spending on Ship has risen from £6.7bn in 2012-13 to £11.1bn in 2025-26, a 66% enhance.
Training, well being and care plans (EHCPs), on the centre of the federal government’s possible plans to reform Send provision, value £1,000 extra on common than the funding supplied to fulfill the wants described.
Amber Dellar, the report’s creator, mentioned:
With no clear technique to reform the Ship system or sort out workforce shortages, the federal government is struggling to maintain its schooling priorities on observe. That leaves youngsters with particular academic wants and people from low-income backgrounds with out the assist they want, as gaps in attendance and outcomes widen.
in Belém, Para State, Brazil, to attend the Cop30 summit at present. {Photograph}: Ben Stansall/AP
Gordon Brown says two-child profit have to be abolished in full for Labour to fulfill objective to deliver youngster poverty down
Patrick Butler
Patrick Butler is the Guardian’s social coverage editor.
Gordon Brown has renewed his name for the two-child profit cap to be totally abolished, calling it a “stain” on the UK’s status and warning ministers off potential compromise measures that might hold the coverage in place.
The previous Labour prime minister, talking at a reception in London to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Child Poverty Action Group charity, mentioned the coverage needs to be “banished from the statute e-book as quickly as potential”.
Brown mentioned:
It’s the two-child rule that yearly is accountable for the numbers of kids in poverty rising … With out abolishing the two-child rule the federal government is not going to meet its goal to have poverty coming down on the finish of the parliament, decrease than at first.
The federal government faces a vital choice over whether or not to retain the coverage – a lot hated by Labour MPs as a turbo driver of household hardship and relic of Tory austerity – when it publishes its youngster poverty discount technique within the subsequent few weeks.
The Treasury is worried concerning the £3.5bn a 12 months value and is known to be contemplating measures to maintain the coverage in place whereas watering down its impact akin to by extending the restrict to a few youngsters.
Brown mentioned solely full abolition would successfully reverse the upward pattern of kid poverty. There are 4.5 million youngsters within the UK in relative poverty – a determine at the moment anticipated to rise to a historic excessive by the top of the last decade.
Little one Poverty Motion Group was created by campaigners in 1965 to push for will increase to household allowances and has develop into a number one voice within the welfare rights and anti-poverty motion.
Starmer says world consensus on local weather change ‘gone’, however UK ‘all in’ on web zero transition
Keir Starmer will admit the “consensus is gone” on local weather change however insist Britain is “all in” on web zero in a speech to the UN Cop30 summit, PA Media reviews.
Addressing the local weather change convention in Belém, the town gateway to the Brazilian Amazon basin, Starmer is predicted to say:
Ten years in the past, the world got here collectively in Paris … united in our willpower to sort out the local weather disaster. A consensus primarily based on science that’s unequivocal.
And this unity was not simply worldwide – it was there inside most of our international locations too. There was cross-party consensus within the UK. The one query was how briskly we may go.
At the moment nevertheless, sadly that consensus is gone.
However Starmer may even problem sceptics calling for a slowdown on local weather motion, telling the summit:
Can power safety wait too? Can billpayers wait? Can we win the race for inexperienced jobs and funding by going gradual? In fact not.
He’ll describe inexperienced insurance policies as a “win-win”.
The larger our collective ambition, the extra progress we make in tackling the local weather disaster, and the larger the alternatives we create.
Only for UK companies … offering items and companies for the worldwide web zero transition might be price £1tn by 2030.
So look – my message right here is that the UK is all in.
As a result of we all know, you don’t shield jobs and communities by sticking with the established order, you don’t meet a problem like local weather change by standing nonetheless.
You do it by embracing change, embracing the alternatives, and doing so collectively.
As PA reviews, Starmer is travelling to Belém on Thursday together with power secretary Ed Miliband and the Prince of Wales on Thursday, having attended William’s Earthshot Prize ceremony final night time.
The PM is predicted to have a couple of bilateral assembly with counterparts, although it was unclear on Thursday morning who he would come head to head with as groups search to carve out time throughout the one-day go to.
Tories accuses Reeves of treating drivers as ‘money machine’ as authorities hints EV pay-per-mile tax coming in funds
The Conservatives have responded to reports that Rachel Reeves could introduce a pay-per-mile tax for electrical automobiles (EVs) within the funds by accusing Labour of treating motorists “as a money machine”.
Richard Holden, the shadow transport secretary, mentioned:
We now have the grotesque chaos of a Labour authorities – that got here to energy and not using a plan – now utilizing taxpayers’ cash on the one hand to subsidise folks to purchase overseas made electrical vehicles and alternatively now desires to tax them for doing so in addition to hit all different drivers with a gas responsibility enhance.
Britain can’t afford a spineless authorities that fairly than standing as much as its personal backbenchers to cease the exponential progress in welfare funds as an alternative treats motorists as a money machine to plug the holes Rachel Reeves and Sir Keir Starmer are creating.
Households usually are not an ATM for Rachel Reeves, but underneath Labour, everybody who depends on a car is being lined up for one more shakedown.
There was hypothesis concerning the authorities introducing a brand new tax on electrical vehicles for a while as a result of, as folks change from petrol vehicles to EVs, the federal government is predicted to lose about £15bn a 12 months by 2050 in misplaced gas responsibility.
However at present the Telegraph has splashed on a detailed report by Ben Riley-Smith saying Reeves is because of announce a plan to cost EV customers 3p per mile, on prime of different taxes. He says:
The scheme, set to kick in from 2028 after a session, will imply the common driver faces paying an additional £250 a 12 months.
The Treasury will make the transfer amid falling gas responsibility income as people move from petrol to electric cars. As much as six million individuals are set to be driving EVs by the point the tax is available in.
Ministers will body the transfer as one in every of equity, as drivers of petrol vehicles at the moment pay £600 a 12 months on common in fuel duty.
They may even argue that it’s totally different from conventional pay-per-mile schemes, with a charge taken every year on estimated journey and no mass digital monitoring of actions.
The federal government has not confirmed the small print of the report, however it has said in a press release that it believes the way in which drivers are taxed must be made “fairer” to account for the very fact the EV drivers don’t pay gas responsibility.
‘Extra clowns than Billy Good’s circus’ – Reform UK underneath fireplace as Kent council holds 1st full assembly since video leak
Ben Quinn
Ben Quinn is a senior Guardian reporter.
The embattled Reform UK chief of Kent county council, Linden Kemkaran, was in combative type throughout a full assembly of the social gathering’s ‘flagship’ council at present, likening her expertise to that of her son, who she mentioned had simply completed section one in every of navy coaching and had been “crushed up and ambushed.”
She in contrast the drop-out charge amongst his fellow recruits to the axing of former Reform councillors in Kent, telling the assembly:
Alongside the way in which some had give up as a result of they couldn’t hack it. Others had been thrown out for unhealthy behaviour or have been merely unwilling to simply accept self-discipline.
“It did make me replicate alone troops,” mentioned Kemkaran, who had earlier answered with single phrase “sure,” when an opposition councillor requested if she believed her personal behaviour was according to the Nolan rules setting out recognised requirements in public life, and Kent’s personal code of conduct.
This morning Reform additionally confronted repeated stress from opposition councillors over the query of whether or not it could be elevating council tax after promising financial savings in leaflets to voters within the native elections. A senior member of Reform’s Kent crew let slip earlier final month that charges could must rise by the utmost of 5%.
Brian Collins, a member of the Reform cupboard, mentioned no choice had been made on council tax because the native authority was awaiting the result of a authorities funding evaluate. Final month, a fellow cupboard member had mentioned she believed Kent would increase council tax by 5% – the utmost permitted – as councils attempt to honour their authorized responsibility to verify spending provides up earlier than budgets are set for subsequent 12 months.
“You might be working away from residents on the subject of the query of what you’ll do on council tax,” mentioned Alister Brady, a Labour councillor. Whereas he didn’t agree with earlier Tory administration of what’s one in every of Britain’s largest county councils, which has a £2.5bn annual funds, Brady mentioned that at the very least the Conservatives had managed to get collectively spending plans by this level.
Harry Rayner, the Tory chief, mentioned the Reform council was now “mired within the penalties of self-inflicted injury” and he had seen nothing to rival it in 40 years of native authorities expertise. He mentioned:
This council has been made a laughing inventory with extra clowns on show since I noticed Invoice Good’s final circus.
This was the primary full assembly of the council because the ruling Reform UK group was thrown into chaos by a video leak to the Guardian of a meeting revealing bitter internal tensions.
. {Photograph}: PA Photos/Alamy
Newest suspension means Reform UK has now misplaced 9 of its 57 Kent county councillors elected in Could
Ben Quinn
Ben Quinn is a senior Guardian reporter.
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has suspended one more member of its ‘flagship’ county council in Kent because it held its first full assembly because the social gathering’s councillors have been thrown into disaster by a leaked meeting revealing bitter internal tensions.
The departure of Isabella Kemp, who has additionally been working as a knowledge safety officer at Reform’s HQ, implies that Reform has misplaced 9 of the 57 councillors elected throughout the native elections in Could.
The newest turmoil comes after the Guardian published a recording of an incendiary internal meeting through which the council chief, Linden Kemkaran, instructed dissenting Reform UK colleagues they needed to “fucking suck it up” in the event that they didn’t like her selections.
4 Reform councillors have been suspended shortly after the leak, whereas a type of and one other who had been suspected over separate allegations have now fashioned an “Unbiased Reformers” group on the council.
Kemkaran confronted questions at a full assembly of the council on Thursday concerning the real-world impression of the suspension of Kemp, who had been chair of the grownup social care and public well being cupboard committee.
The Liberal Democrats, who’re the second largest group with 12 councillors, appealed to Kemkaran to revive Kemp, who now sits as an unbiased, as chair of the vital committee.
Spike in jail launch errors linked to new guidelines for jails and early launch scheme, Jail Service says
Here’s a Ministry of Justice chart illustrating the “spike” in jail launch errors that David Lammy was referring to.
And that is what the HM Jail and Probation Service’s annual digest says about these figures.
Within the 12 months to March 2025, 262 prisoners have been launched in error. It is a 128% enhance from 115 the earlier 12 months, and the very best within the time sequence. Of the 262 releases in error, 233 of those releases in error occurred from jail institutions, whereas 29 have been launched in error on the courts. Releases in error from institutions may be a results of errors by the courtroom.
Releases in error stay rare. The rise is believed to be linked to the requirement on Offender Administration Items to digest and implement a variety of operational and legislative adjustments. The rise on this 12 months additionally partly displays quite a few offenders who have been launched in error within the first tranche of SDS40 resulting from a difficulty with a repealed Breach of Restraining Order offence, which was swiftly recognized and corrected with laws. These offenders have been all rearrested and returned to custody.
SDS40 is the early release scheme launched by the federal government in September final 12 months, in response to the jail overcrowding disaster.
In a footnote to this passage, the HMPPS report says;
As a result of comparatively low numbers, year-on-year adjustments needs to be interpreted with warning. The variety of releases in error needs to be thought-about within the context of the variety of releases in the identical time interval and adjustments within the operational surroundings.
