Good morning. Except it’s not if you are David Lammythe Deputy PM and Secretary of Justice. or Alex Davies-Jonesa minister of Junior Juest, who does morning media rounds. Lammy took the PMQs for the first time yesterday, but the coverage was a collision of the night, partly because it was accompanied by news released by those who were quite in the people who were going on, and partly because he asked about it internally.
The Overnight Guardian version of the story is here.
For the Conservatives, it was like Christmas early (even their spokesman, James Cartlidge, deputizing for Kemi Badenoch at PMQS, as John Crare explained). Covered by Cridde As they commented about the last 24 hours, Kemi Badenoch, Chris Philp Robert Jenkins et al al al alas found it difficult to hide the glee.
As it turns out, the reality is a bit more complicated. Of all the public services, the prison service is perhaps the most efficient, and for many years. The accidental release of prisoners, though regrettable, is not uncommon; Lammy said The Commons are new that under the staff they happened at a rate of 17 per month. Under the job, the The numbers hitbut that accompanied the government implemented a great secle exmeme in the first release because when he came to the office, the prison service was far before attracting many electorates. The Algerian who was mistakenly released from prison in Wandsworth last week was not an asylum seeker, as the tourists initially claimed. He is a sex offender – based on a bad conviction, for which he received an 18-month community order. He also reported other convictions as well. A few days after he was wrongly released, a white man from Surrey who was imprisoned for almost four years for the offenses of frauds is not very interested in the wrong mistake.
Here’s a round-up of the latest developments on this story this morning.
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Prison governors in England have been summoned to an urgent meeting with ministers to discuss the errors in the release, revealed Davies-Jones. Here is our story, through Eleni Coerea.
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The Ministry of Justice said that Lammy did not tell the MPs about the accidental release of Algerian Disease in the Commons yesterday because he did not have full information about it. In a statement released last night, one MoJ SPOCKERSONSONS said:
The crisis in the prison system inherited by the government is that key information about individual cases may not be received by ministers.
Upon entering the house, the facts are still emerging about the case and the DPM is still unaware of key details including the immigration status of the offender. There is no media story about the individual case in the public domain and it is and remains subject to a live police investigation.
The DPM was asked about the release of an asylum seeker. As confirmed after the PMQ at the home office, the individual is not an asylum seeker.
The DPM is waiting until after the PMQS and more facts emerge before making a statement.
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Robert Jenrick, the Secretary of John Justice, accused Lammy of a “total dereliction of duty” in this agreement. Referring to the accidental release of the Algerian, Jenrick told today’s program:
It took six days for the prison service to know that it had happened and to inform the metropolitan police, who are now searching for him for a week.
After the secretary of justice was informed about this on Tuesday night, it was not cleaned.
He spent the next morning, we’re told, going out shopping for a suit, instead of managing his department.
He then came to Parliament and did not answer five straight questions about it. I think it’s a shame. This is a total dereliction of duty.
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Lammy will speak to the media later today, Davies-Jones said. In his current interview, he said that Lammy was visiting a prison this morning, “doing his day job”, and that he would “tell the media”. When it was put to him that Lammy should answer the questions, he said he would be.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: Gordon Brown, the former prime minister, gave a speech on child poverty at Somerset House.
Morning: David Lammy for speaking to the media during a prison visit.
Noon: The Bank of England has released its latest interest rate decision. Graeme Werarden covers this in his business live blog.
Dinner Time: Kemi Badenoch is on a visit to Staffordshire.
And Keir Starmer is in Brazil for the Cop30 Summit.
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