PM needs to stop the early release of prisoners, says shadow minister
Shadow Cabinet Office Minister Mike Wood has called on Andy Burnham to scrap the early release scheme for prisoners.
He told The Camilla Tominey Show on GB News: “We need Andy Burnham to actually revoke this commencement order in total. Because although he’s done a partial U-turn to make sure that most rapists, most child grooming perpetrators won’t be eligible, too many will.
“Then there are other offences like manslaughter and actually other sexual offences, domestic abuse offences as well. That those that those criminals will be let out as soon as just over three weeks’ time. So he needs to revoke. He needs to revoke that, then have emergency legislation once we return in Parliament to make sure that this doesn’t happen.
“But he needs to follow the Conservative plan. Obviously, build the prisons and prison places. We also need to look at where we can use prison places abroad. Sweden’s just using 400 prison places in [Estonia], we could do that as well.
“There are thousands available, but above all, we also need to look at the 11,000 foreign nationals in our in our prisons and actually deport those, get them out of our prisons, get them back to their home countries, and actually free up those 11,000 places – far more than the 4,000 that the government’s looking to free up from this early release scheme.”
Asked if the previous Conservative administration bore some responsibility for the lack of spaces, he said: “Kemi Badenoch, obviously has been very open that we made a number of mistakes for various reasons, and there’s no point in making the excuses to why those mistakes were made in government. The important thing is having learned from those mistakes.
“That’s what’s behind our plan for energy. What’s behind our plan for borders, and it’s what’s behind our plans not only for the Prison Service but also obviously for freeing up 7 million hours of police time to leave police officers more time for tackling crime instead of filling in paperwork.”
