David Lammy MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 11 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Gentleman knows that that email, which was sent in error, referred to women. He knows that when we are talking about women offenders, the system must understandably consider the fact that many of them are mothers and many have been the victims of men who have groomed them, who have pimped them and who have abused them. That is why public policymakers understandably look at alternative ways to deal with women in the community. None of us in this House should make any apologies for that.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I said last week that I was keen to meet with the family, and I will meet with them when they meet with the Prisons Minister, I hope, in the coming weeks.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Can I just remind the right hon. Gentleman that, just before the general election in July 2024, his Government had three different versions of their early release scheme? We inherited a situation, as he knows, where prison capacity was completely unsustainable. Successive former Justice Secretaries under the previous Government have said this in the last week. We brought forward our early release scheme, and it was important to do that to put capacity into the system, but it is the Sentencing Bill that will begin to deal with this issue in a comprehensive way.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Since the last Justice oral questions, I am proud to have taken the next steps towards putting a landmark Hillsborough law on to the statute book, with the Second Reading of the Public Office (Accountability) Bill. There has also, understandably, been widespread interest in the number of releases in error from prisons. I can tell the House that in the year to March 2025, there were 262 releases in error and my Department has today published data showing that from April to the end of October this year, there were a further 91 mistaken releases. I am clear that we must bear down on these numbers, and I look forward to updating the House in my oral statement later today on the steps that the Government are taking to reverse this trend.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I am very happy to look at that and ensure that a Minister meets with the right hon. Gentleman.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We recruited over 1,000 staff last year and 1,300 this year—we must retain them. Key to that is reducing caseloads, and that is why I am introducing AI.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I saw the Northern Ireland Secretary’s statement last week. The right hon. Gentleman will know that there has been considerable lawfare and that the scheme proposed by his Government was largely thrown out by the courts. That is why the Veterans Minister has listened very keenly to not just military families but all those who were victims of the troubles in Northern Ireland.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  We do publish statistics in the usual way after they have been properly analysed. We have to make sure that all facts are verified, and we have done that in the same way that the last Government did.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend did a valiant job as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, constantly revisiting these issues. She will have noticed how successive Justice Secretaries under the last Government have said that they cut the numbers, they failed to invest, violence was up, and now we have junior staff making very important decisions.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman knows that successive Governments have made data releases. Those data releases have to be analysed properly. We make no excuses for voting in the appropriate way.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Prisoner Releases in Error · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her question. She is absolutely right; we have to grip the system. I did that by chairing a performance board in the Department yesterday, and I have done it by asking Dame Lynne Owens to look at this closely. There does now need to be an urgent query process working between courts and prisons so that we are not seeing those mistakes between the two systems. I think that ultimately it will take digital technology to fix this, but I have started that with £10 million to expand the digital rapid response unit so that we can at least start to raise flags in and across the system so that those working in our offender management units can spot where there might be a problem. I am pleased that the Sentencing Bill, which has now been through this House, will simplify the system greatly, because it is too complex at the moment.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Prisoner Releases in Error · Hansard source

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  I know that the Victims Minister has met her. The right hon. Gentleman will also know that under the Sentencing Bill restriction zones can restrict the movement of those who have committed crimes such as the one he refers to.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Prisoner Releases in Error · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to my hon. Friend, because she emphasises punishment that works, and that has to mean skills, education and employment so that people do not go on to reoffend. We have inherited a system where recidivism rates are beyond 60%, which means that the system is not working even though it is overheated. We have to look at those issues in time. The Sentencing Bill is the beginning of the story, but we will have to return to those issues if we are serious about reducing reoffending.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Prisoner Releases in Error · Hansard source

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  Was the hon. Gentleman not listening? I discussed the cases just a few moments ago, and I discussed how those cases emanated prior to those checks—many of them—and that one of the errors in those cases started in the court system. It is also the case, and I have been crystal clear about this with the House, that in a paper-based system in which it is often the most junior people in our OMUs who are dealing with this, we cannot eradicate all human error. Any Secretary of State who stood at this Dispatch Box and said that we could would be telling a mistruth.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Prisoner Releases in Error · Hansard source

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  This is a crisis that we inherited in our prison system. [Interruption.] That is worthy of sober reflection, because the shadow Justice Secretary knows that when the Conservatives were in government, 17 prisoners were released in error every month. He knows that. A former Conservative Justice Secretary said in respect of this issue last Friday: “We essentially run our prisons regime very hot. We are very close to capacity. We have seen a big increase in the prison population over the last 20 years, and resources have not necessarily matched that. That is the first problem.” Another former Justice Secretary, Alex Chalk, said: “Part of the issue is we can’t hold on to prison officers…Without that expertise, errors creep in.” The shadow Justice Secretary himself challenged the Conservatives’ record in office, so he knows that this is a cross-party issue—one which, of course, we have to grip. I said that I had put in place those checks, and I stand by the checks that I put in. I also said in my statement that many of the cases that we are uncovering occurred before those checks were in place, and another case involved an error in the court system. That is why the new query process is very important indeed. We had to introduce SDS40, and the right hon. Member knows why that is the case: because his Government, just in their last few months in office, made three different changes to their early release scheme, so worried were they about prison capacity—a prison capacity issue that we inherited. In their 14 years in office, they built only 500 extra places in the prison system, while we have pledged 14,000 by 2031. The right hon. Member also knows that, as night follows day, if Governments cut officers by almost 50%, as the Conservatives did in office, and then recruit new officers, as we have attempted to do, those are then very junior people. They are working hard, and I thank them for all that they are doing, but in those circumstances mistakes will be made. I have asked Dame Lynne Owens to look at this—that is really important. I have put in place the digital team, because, as the right hon. Member also knows, this is a system based on human beings and there will therefore be errors; only technology will fix this issue over time. I have also now put in place that double check between the court and prison systems.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Prisoner Releases in Error · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right. That is one of the reasons that I asked Dame Lynne Owens, as she looks at this issue, to meet the victims—particularly the victims of Kebatu’s crime—and to keep them in mind. Notwithstanding the errors made, we have to ensure public confidence in the system. It is important to assert, once again from this Dispatch Box, that 57,000 people are released from prisons every year and there is no error at all in the vast majority of those releases.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Prisoner Releases in Error · Hansard source

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  As I have just said, William Fernandez went on to commit an horrific crime but the last Government never came to the Dispatch Box about that. By definition, if we got to the situation that we did in 2024, when 17 releases in error were happening, of course it is possible that people can go on to commit crimes. That is why I am hugely grateful—I know it involves police resource—for the efforts of our police to re-arrest these individuals. Some of them, as we saw last week, hand themselves back in when they realise that their release was in error. Our job is to minimise risk, but in a paper-based system we can never eradicate risk in time.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Prisoner Releases in Error · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member is right to put at the heart of his question getting back to historic levels before we started to see the increase back in 2021. That is my intent: to get back to much lower levels than we see now. This afternoon I have set out the measures that we are taking immediately. More will follow the review by Lynne Owens, but of course this will take investment across the prison system.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Prisoner Releases in Error · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend puts it beautifully. I suspect that it is why the shadow Justice Secretary said last week that the state of the Prison Service has been unacceptable for a very long time, including under the Conservative Government. I suspect it is why William Hague, a former leader of the Conservative party, said that the Government failed to grasp this—they did not build more prisons, and they did not have enough people in our prisons—and that this has been a long period of real failure.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Prisoner Releases in Error · Hansard source

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  I can give my hon. and learned Friend that undertaking. That is why we have brought forward the sentencing review and increased the removal of foreign national offenders to 5,000. All of that has been done in the last 16 months, when the Conservatives never did it once.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Prisoner Releases in Error · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The best way to deal with this issue is to move to a system that is based on technology; to use the AI that is out there to properly compare records, whether they come from the court or from early release. That will take significant time, but I have found £10 million to at least begin that process. And that process begins as a result of these recent high-profile cases.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Prisoner Releases in Error · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right: not once did the previous Government make a statement. Even when William Fernandez was released in error under them and went on to commit an horrific crime, not once did a Minister come to this Dispatch Box. Not once did the previous Government release extra detail, which I have done today.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Prisoner Releases in Error · Hansard source

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  I recognise the sensitivity of this issue in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and that many will have looked closely at today’s decision in court. He knows that under the last Government £9 million a day was spent on housing people in hotels, he knows that the Government are committed to a new programme and that we are looking, for example, at military bases to see where can house people, and he also knows that we have increased the amount of foreign nationals leaving this country and returning to the countries they are from.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Prisoner Releases in Error · Hansard source

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  As I said, I have released more data today than ever before. The hon. Member knows that the data is most often released in July. I will look closely at his prison to see. If 17 prisoners in 2024 were released in error every month, he will recognise that that will touch many prisons across the country, but he will also recognise that there are differences in terms of the category of prisons and prisoners, particularly those prisons that have a lot of churn and are letting people out on a more frequent basis than others.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Prisoner Releases in Error · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and we are looking at that recommendation. There are significant workforce issues. We are asking our prison officers to work in a system that the prison inspector himself has said is cracking and at “breaking point”, and we must invest in our workforce.