Prisoner Releases in Error

Lord Keen of Elie Excerpts

Thursday 13th November 2025 Lords Chamber

Fourthly, I am accelerating upgrades. I stood up a digital rapid response team last week to reduce human error with cutting-edge technology. Over the next six months, we will provide up to £10 million to deliver artificial intelligence and technology solutions, which will help front-line staff avoid mistakes and support them in calculating sentences accurately. Finally, I am simplifying the release policy. One of the aims of the Sentencing Bill is to standardise how cases are treated, and following Dame Lynne Owens’s review, we will consider whether amendments to operational policy are required. These are the initial steps to address this issue, but I will update the House where further changes are necessary. I commend the Statement to the House”.

[Lord Keen of Elie (Con)]

My Lords, on Wednesday last week, the right honourable David Lammy, Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Justice, appeared at Prime Minister’s Questions to not answer questions about inadvertent prisoner release. The Speaker in the other place sought his recall. On Tuesday this week, the Secretary of State for Justice gave himself up and returned to the Parliamentary Estate, where—despite what was, no doubt, his officials’ careful preparation—he told Members in the other place that the previous Government had inadvertently released prisoners at the rate of 17 per month. This would have involved the release of 2,856 prisoners. The true figure, as recorded in the Ministry of Justice’s own official record, is 860, or about three each month—three too many, but a fraction of the number that the Secretary of State for Justice gave to his colleagues in the Commons. Can the Minister reassure this House that the most stringent measures will now be taken to prevent the inadvertent release of any further erroneous statistics by the Secretary of State for Justice, given the alarm that these are liable to engender in the general public?

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, the release in error of Kaddour-Cherif from Wandsworth and all other such accidental releases, which have been far too numerous, are symptomatic of a system woefully prone to error. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, has seriously criticised the answer given by the Deputy Prime Minister to the House of Commons on 5 November. It may be that the Deputy Prime Minister made the wrong call in withholding more detail because he felt he did not have the full picture, and it may also be that there were errors in the detail of his response, but if he made a wrong call on that decision to give less detail, I accept that it was a difficult call and a call made in good faith. Of itself, it has had no consequences. The more important question is how and in what timescale we improve the system now.

We on these Benches applaud the appointment of Dame Lynne Owens to conduct a full review. Accidental releases and the systems for avoiding them are very important, not just of themselves but for the confidence of the public in our systems. The Statement says that Dame Lynne’s report will come at the end of February, three months from now. I have to say that we think that is a long time. Is there scope for an interim report? Within days of Mr Kebatu’s release, the MoJ took some urgent steps, set out in the Statement, to tighten up the system and introduce, for one measure, a more robust checklist. May we ask for a further action plan, pending Dame Lynne’s final report, from her and her team if possible?

We expect, as I think the Minister does, that much of the improvement required will involve the introduction of more robust digital procedures—initially, no doubt, alongside strengthened paper procedures. Will he give an undertaking that the implementation of those of Dame Lynne’s recommendations that the Government accept will be treated with the greatest urgency? Only in that way and with that urgency can the serious loss of public confidence in our prison security that flows from these accidental releases be recovered.