Calamity Lammy is presiding over a clown show. Under his leadership at the Ministry of Justice, it’s been one farce after another. Last week, we had the spectacle of an illegal migrant sex offender, Hadush Kebatu, accidentally released from prison and turned away from the authorities five times when he tried to return.
On Monday, a prisoner was accidentally released from prison – the very day he was sentenced to 45 months in prison for fraud. And on Wednesday, it emerged that another migrant here illegally was accidentally released and, unbeknownst to the Metropolitan Police, has been on the run for six days.
It’s a shambles. The British people are being put at risk because of the sheer incompetence of the Government. And the victims of crime are being relentlessly failed.
Instead of answers and actions, we’ve had evasion and inaction from the Deputy Prime Minister
At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, he refused to say on five occasions that other prisoners had been accidentally released, despite knowing it to be the case.
That wasn’t a one-off either. He has consistently refused to answer my basic questions about prison security. In fact, last week he laughed from his seat as I raised the case of Kebatu in Parliament, as if it were a joke. His department’s incompetence put Kebatu’s victim in danger, yet Lammy didn’t even bother to reach out to her or her family.
But Lammy won’t be able to laugh this latest shambles off. Since taking office, this Government has presided over a doubling in the number of prisoners mistakenly released. This problem is only going to get worse until he finally fronts up and grips it.
But right now Lammy won’t say how many prisoners have been released accidentally, how many of them are violent or sexual offenders, and how many are still at large.
The British people deserve to know the truth. And they deserve solutions.