Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between David Lammy and Bradley Thomas

Tuesday 11th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for raising this issue. It was important that we exceeded our target of 1,000 officers last year, and we have to get those 1,300 officers in place. The £700 million must be spent by the end of the spending review. It is important that we bear down on getting AI across the service and that we introduce new technology, because it is only by doing so that probation officers can do what they want to do: get back to face-to-face and personalised care.

[Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

4. What steps his Department is taking to help support the Probation Service to manage repeat offenders who cross jurisdictional boundaries to avoid supervision.

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[Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

T8. Why did the Government vote against releasing migrant crime data?

[Mr Lammy]

The hon. Gentleman knows that successive Governments have made data releases. Those data releases have to be analysed properly. We make no excuses for voting in the appropriate way.

Prisoner Releases in Error

Debate between David Lammy and Bradley Thomas

Tuesday 11th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for centring the importance of probation. It is why one of the first things I did when I took office was to visit the Probation Service in Islington, and it is why I was recently in Chatham in Kent with probation officers. Investing in technology is hugely important to reduce their caseloads. Investing in more staff is hugely important —we recruited more than 1,000 staff last year, with 1,300 to come. Probation needs more resource, and that is why we have committed to £700 million by the next spending review. I am sure that we will return to these issues because I have no doubt that the decisions made by former Justice Secretary Chris Grayling were a travesty for probation and criminal justice.

[Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

Can the Justice Secretary tell the House whether in the last 16 months any prisoners have been accidentally released from Hewell Grange prison in Worcestershire and, if so, how many?

[Mr Lammy]

As I said, I have released more data today than ever before. The hon. Member knows that the data is most often released in July. I will look closely at his prison to see. If 17 prisoners in 2024 were released in error every month, he will recognise that that will touch many prisons across the country, but he will also recognise that there are differences in terms of the category of prisons and prisoners, particularly those prisons that have a lot of churn and are letting people out on a more frequent basis than others.