Contribution
So we are back here again. At least the Justice Secretary is getting some use out of his new suit. But where has Wednesday’s bombast and bravado gone? “Get a grip, man!”, he thundered last week, without even a hint of irony. There was none of that today, was there? Why is that? It is because, like increasing numbers of criminals in our jails, the Justice Secretary just does not know whether he is coming or going. Even his colleagues in government are turning on him, some with unbridled contempt. “The handling is terrible”, was the verdict of a Cabinet Minister; “just rank incompetence”, “cowardly”, and “frankly pretty dodgy” was the verdict of another. Before long, the Prime Minister will be saying that he has full confidence in the Justice Secretary, and we all know what that means.
Two weeks ago, the Justice Secretary told the House that he had put in place the strongest checks ever to stop releases in error. Forty-eight hours later, another prisoner with a history of sex offences was released in error. Seven days later, a fraudster was let out, on the very day he was sentenced to 45 months inside—and today, the Justice Secretary admits that he lost another prisoner on that same day. They are Lammy’s lags, a whole new category of criminal who can just waltz out of prison despite the “strongest ever checks”, introduced by this Justice Secretary.
The public are being endangered as this circus rumbles on week after week, with no end in sight. When will the Justice Secretary put a stop to it? He cannot hide behind the inquiry that he has commissioned. He could not even get the name of the head of the review—Lynne Owens—right last week. “Anne Owens, Anne Owens,” he bellowed. Well, I looked her up, and the only “Anne Owens” I could find was a panto performer who recently appeared in “Alice in Wonderland”. Perhaps she was the one who gave the Justice Secretary tips on his performance at the Dispatch Box last week.
The former chief inspector of prisons says that the issue was caused, at least in part, by the “confusion” created by Labour’s botched early release scheme. Does the Justice Secretary now concede that there is a link between the doubling of the number of prisoners accidentally released in the last year and the introduction of Labour’s standard determinate sentence 40 scheme, or is it just an extremely unlucky coincidence? Do not take us for fools!
When will the Justice Secretary finally come clean? He will not provide details in answer to parliamentary questions. He will not answer even when he is here for Prime Minister’s questions. He will not respond to letters—but perhaps that is because they were not addressed to “the Deputy Prime Minister”. He has now been dragged here, kicking and screaming, to admit that one prisoner has been on the run from this Labour Government for 14 months, and 91 have been accidentally released over the last seven months. However, the Justice Secretary is so clueless that he has literally lost track of how many prisoners he has lost. He has said today that a prisoner “may” have been accidentally released last Monday. Well, has he looked? The prisoner is either in his cell or he is not.
What a complete and utter farce the Justice Secretary is presiding over. As we all suspected, the crisis on his Government’s watch is even bigger than he dared to admit. That is why he would not say anything last week. Prisoners are being accidentally released nearly every other day, putting our constituents—his constituents—at risk.
At this rate, he is on track for 156 prisoners to be accidentally released this year, which would be a record, were it not for the doubling that his Government managed to achieve last year.
In his statement today, the Justice Secretary posed more questions than he managed to answer. How many crimes were committed by those prisoners while they were on the run? Why can he not tell us who these 91 prisoners are? Who is the foreign criminal, and who is this mystery fourth offender whom he “may” have lost? How can he possibly be found if, unlike in the case of Cherif and Kebatu, the public do not have his face or his name?
The public deserve to know the truth, and this situation could not be any more serious. There has been a ninefold increase in the number of violent offenders accidentally released in the last year. On the Justice Secretary’s watch, the criminal justice system has been made to look a total mockery. The public are being put at risk. In his own words, it is time for him to “get a grip”—or go.