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Minister defends Lammy amid pressure over mistaken prisoner releases
Good morning and welcome to our coverage of UK politics as questions continue over David Lammy’s handling of a mistaken prisoner release, with a sex offender still on the run.
The deputy prime minister and justice secretary has been criticised over the freeing of Algerian Brahim Kaddour-Cherif from Wandsworth prison. Yesterday the deputy prime minister and justice secretary said the government has “a mountain to climb” to tackle the prisons crisis and insisted he was “not equipped with all the detail” when questioned in parliament on Wednesday about the issue.
But there has been apparent disquiet from colleagues, with The Times quoting anonymous senior ministers as saying he was “cowardly” and guilty of “rank incompetence”.
Keir Starmer, while at the Cop30 summit, backed his deputy by saying it was “right” he was “setting out the facts to the best of his knowledge”. He is travelling back from Brazil today.
Meanwhile Steve Reed dismissed criticism of Lammy from fellow ministers as “anonymous tittle tattle”. The housing secretary told Times Radio:
The problem is we’ve got a broken system, and you are going to see failings when you have a broken system. The key is to make sure we have a digital system so that no prisoner is ever released by mistake.
There is not an acceptable number for [mistaken releases], but the way to fix it is not tittle tattle about David Lammy in the newspapers, it’s to get on and do the work and put in the investment that will digitise the system.
David has already had the prison governors in his office yesterday, I imagine they felt pretty hauled over the coals given what’s been going on, but he was also making sure that they’re getting all the support they need to carry out the much tougher checks that will be required to make sure that the repeats of this are at an absolute minimum.”
Stay with us for all the developments as well as pre-Budget speculation with the new Labour deputy leader, Lucy Powell, saying that Labour should stand by its manifesto commitment not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT, in a challenge that will put pressure on the chancellor, Rachel Reeves. You can read our story here
