Government should be keeping people safe not releasing violent offenders, says Matt Vickers

Conservative shadow policing minister Matt Vickers has slammed the government for allowing the release of two of the killers of PC Andrew Harper and failing to build enough new prison places.

He told GB News: “I remember Lissie Harper campaigned day and night, put herself forward to get justice for Andrew Harper. She’s got it, and this government’s rejecting it.

“This Labour government have done terrible things, but to release these people early, for those Labour MPs across the country who walk through those lobbies to support this – it is astounding. It is disgraceful. It is disgusting.

“And actually, the other part of this is killers are being released early. He said that he’s exempting serious child sexual offenders. Well, what sexual offence against a child isn’t serious, and how is he going to pick?

“In my view, any sexual offence against a child is serious. Any killing is serious, and those people should be locked up and follow the sentences they were given by a judge.”

He added: “They’ve released 60,000 people early already. What do you think’s happened to the number of places in our prison service in the last year? It’s gone down by 450. So they’re releasing these people. Are they prioritising building more places? 450 less places.

“We’ve heard about that contract where a builder went bust and went into administration. It took them 18 months to pick up the building 3,500 places. There are three ways you solve this. The first thing is to leave the ECHR and deport all foreign national offenders. That’s about 10,000 prison places.

“The second thing is that you actually manage the process competently. You don’t have 18-month delays in the building of 3,500 prison places. And the other thing you do is actually to prioritise this. They haven’t approved any plans to build any additional prison places beyond what was already expected. Instead, they’re spending money.

“We know where the money is going. We are paying record levels of tax. There are less police on our streets, less teachers in our schools, less places in our prison. But this year, that welfare budget is going to go up by 18 billion pounds.

“This needs to be a priority for the government. They need to keep the British people safe. They need to keep these vile offenders locked up for their full sentence.”