Early Release of Prisoners

Ashley Fox Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Hayes]

My right hon. Friend is right. We are perfectly entitled to make that request of Government, as he has done in eloquent terms. It seems to me that the plan to release up to 6,000 criminals in September needs to be stalled, so that we can think again. There is a good argument for removing sex offenders, rapists, those guilty of manslaughter and those involved in grooming children from the list of those to be released. That is the least that could be done, and the opportunity is there to do it. If I may say so, the fact that a Member as senior as my right hon. Friend has made that suggestion should in itself carry significant weight.

[Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend recall that when the Government put forward their proposals, they said that the most serious and heinous crimes would not be affected by the scheme? The reason we are in this position is that statements made at the Dispatch Box were, to put it mildly, inaccurate. In fact, very serious and heinous criminals will be released in September unless, as he suggests, the scheme is paused, and paused it should be.

[Sir John Hayes]

As my hon. Friend will know, the Sentencing Act facilitated early release. Did we not ask then for clarity about what that meant, in the terms that he describes? What kind of criminals would be released? What damage might they do? What assessment had been made of the risk of this policy? It is not as if the Government were not pressed on all those things, but there has been a remarkable lack of clarity—for example, the Prime Minister said, “It is impossible to say who will be released, where and when.” Frankly, you cannot get less clarity than that, can you, Madam Deputy Speaker?

We need to know that more innocent people will not be put at risk. The very least we should do is deal with the issue of serious sexual offenders and, in particular, those responsible for abusing children. I make no apology for quoting particular cases. Shabir Ahmed, the Pakistani ringleader of the Rochdale grooming gang, was freed despite warnings that he was “unsafe” to be released into the community. He was jailed for 22 years for 30 child rape offences. The parole documents that reveal that he was deemed unsafe for release into the community include his belief that it was

“acceptable to sexually abuse children”.

That is a chilling thought, and I know that decent people across this House, and across this country, will be shocked by it.

A woman groomed and raped as a child by a friend of her family has appealed to the Government to abandon their plans to free him nearly two years early. Jade Belgrove waived her anonymity to describe the Government’s early release scheme as an “absolute disgrace”. Her case highlights that women and children are at risk from rapists and sex offenders who are freed early. She was raped aged 14. She deserves justice, if justice is indeed “truth in action”, as Disraeli said.

I differ from the Minister on the purpose of criminal justice. I believe that the treatmentist perspective that has dominated for a very long time needs to be challenged; I believe that just retribution should be at the core of how we deal with the wickedness that I have outlined. However, let us put all of that to one side. Those are issues of principle, and although there may be differences of principle between us, the Minister did not come to the Chamber to advocate for a principle. He did not say, “We are doing this because of some high-minded view about how we should deal with crime”; he said, “We are doing this because we can do nothing else—because of practicalities.” Therefore, as we are dealing with practicalities, let us look at what can be done to fix the problem, and let us do so early, so as to find a solution to it before September.

In doing so, let us broadcast a message from this House today that people need not walk in fear because dangerous people are going to be released on to the streets of their village, town or city; Parliament has said that that cannot be so. If we were to do that, public faith in Parliament would be a little stronger, a little restored. That is the request that I make of the Minister, because I stand by and for the people, having been chosen by the people to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

It is a privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), whose incredibly powerful speech gave voice to the victims and the impact that the horrific abuse has had on them. He has led on this issue consistently in this House, and his words should carry incredible weight.

Today we are debating what should be an uncontroversial motion: to exclude from the Government’s automatic early release scheme anyone convicted of a serious offence against a child or an adult, including rape, and anyone convicted of attempted conspiracy or incitement to commit such offences. By any definition, those are some of the most serious crimes. I find it very difficult to understand how anyone would oppose the common-sense position that sex offenders should not benefit from the Government’s early release scheme.

Sadly, it has been necessary to bring forward this motion, because Labour Members and Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords voted down our amendments to the Sentencing Act that would have done precisely that: prevent the early release of such offenders. Now it seems that there will not be a vote and our motion will simply be accepted. That is very welcome if it reflects a shift in policy, but the Minister who opened the debate was not clear whether he accepted that shift in policy or was simply making a tactical retreat on a vote that the Government knew they would lose. He repeatedly set out the rationale for the changes, as he had done earlier today to the media.

The urgency is clear. Thousands of victims have received letters—my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley spoke about the offensive nature of those letters and their dreadful impact on victims—telling them that in September the first wave of criminals will be released. Others will not yet have been informed. The Minister once again failed to give the basic figure for the number of sex offenders who will be released under the provisions. Surely he must know—it is his job to know—and he should be honest and up front with the House.

We can already picture the unedifying scenes of bottles of champagne being opened at the prison gates when these offenders are released. Meanwhile, the survivors of their crimes will—as they told every Member of this House in the letter to which the shadow Justice Secretary has referred—be feeling scared, heartbroken and angry that their perpetrators are not facing justice.

The Minister once again rolled out the Aunt Sally argument that without these measures the justice system would have fallen over, but it is now two years since the general election; two years in which the Government have chosen to let people out early rather than take action on prison places. There are 16,000 people on remand in our prisons, yet the Government are failing to ensure that our courts are used to the maximum capacity.Today, for example, 14% of the Crown courts are not sitting. Where is the commissioning of emergency prison capacity? Where is the greater use of the rapid deployment cells that the previous Government rolled out, including at HMP Norwich in my county? Where is the urgency? That should be a national priority.

[Sir Ashley Fox]

Does my hon. Friend agree that in tackling the Crown court backlog, the Government were far too slow in uncapping the maximum number of sitting days for Crown court judges and that they are also wasting a great deal of time and effort in trying to curtail the right to jury trials, which will have no appreciable effect on the Crown court backlog? That is in fact wasting parliamentary time and civil service time on a reform that we know the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) will most probably junk.

[James Wild]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. The Lady Chief Justice appeared before parliamentary Committees to tell MPs that she could have more sitting days if only the Government would produce, I think, about £20 million of funding—a fairly minimal amount in the scheme of the £1.3 trillion that the Government spend every year—rather than go down the route of removing people’s right to jury trials in certain cases.

The prison places coming online are those commissioned by the last Government. Yes, I accept that we should have commissioned more, but the Minister has confirmed in parliamentary answers that no new prisons have been planned or approved by this Government since the general election. Politics is about choices, and Ministers have chosen early release and softer sentencing rather than ensuring public protection and punishment. That is despite Ministers saying that the most serious and violent offenders would be excluded from this change. Anyone who has listened to the testimonies shared with the House by my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley could not consider that they do not represent the most serious and violent offenders.