Prisoner Release Checks

Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts

Wednesday 29th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by thanking the Metropolitan Police, Essex Police and the British Transport Police for their prompt work in returning Mr Kebatu to custody. I am also grateful to the Home Office for eventually finalising Mr Kebatu’s departure and deportation last night. Most importantly, my thoughts and deepest sympathies remain with the 14 year-old victim and her family. I cannot imagine the anxiety and distress that engulfed their home last weekend.

Three points arise out of this sorry tale. First, it is a scathing indictment of this Government’s competence—or, I should say, incompetence—that it took a national outcry before they finally managed to deport Mr Kebatu, perhaps the only small-boat migrant who actually wanted to be deported. He returned to Chelmsford prison five times, asking to be taken home, and was turned away on every occasion. Only after his mistaken release and the public scrutiny that followed did the Government at last do what should have been done months ago. It has now emerged that the Home Office authorised a discretionary payment of £500 to Mr Kebatu as part of his removal, reportedly to discourage him from claiming asylum. The briefing has been put out that this was nothing to do with Ministers; officials used their own cashcards, we are told, to take the money out.

This is remarkable. I remember that under Prime Minister Blair the proposal was that criminals were to be made to pay their debt to society before they might be deported. The public officials would be marching the criminals to the ATMs. Under Prime Minister Starmer, we have the farce that offenders liable for deportation are forcing public officials to come with them to the cashpoint to take out cash in an attempt to prevent their causing more problems prior to deportation. This is a reversal of justice. It is hard to find words adequate to reflect this breakdown in basic operational competence.

There is a serious point here. I do not know whether the Attorney-General, who, I am afraid, is not in his place, has sanctioned this payment of public funds to Mr Kebatu in the hope that it would encourage him not to mount a legal challenge. If he has not, I would be interested to know whether the Attorney-General supports the use of public funds to encourage people not to make legal points in court. That seems to be a matter not only of a misuse of public finances but a real problem for the rule of law.

It is rather odd: we have the farce of a Government paying foreign offenders to leave our territory, and the same Government paying foreign states to take our territory. At the same time, in a few weeks that Government will be taxing everybody to pay for all these costs.

This failure appears in the context of the Government’s general failings to deport asylum seekers. The flaws of the one in, one out scheme have been exposed; the migrants sent to France returned to our shores within weeks on another small boat; and the flagship plan to smash the gangs was undone as soon as it started. It is little wonder that over 50,000 people have arrived on small boats this year, the highest number ever recorded. Only time will tell whether Mr Kebatu will soon be among them. If Mr Kebatu comes back, will the Government commit to sending him back again to Ethiopia, or will he be another litigant who relies on the ever-expanding jurisprudence of the ECHR? The public, and Parliament, deserve an honest answer.

The second point is the ineffectual release scheme. The Kebatu incident is not merely one man wrongly released but is symptomatic of profound problems in the prison system. The Government released at least 262 prisoners early, more than double the number the year before, and are yet to clarify how many remain unaccounted for. Will we get that figure this evening? We have not had it yet.

Only this summer, HMP Pentonville released 10 prisoners early in error, while 130 inmates, around 20% of those eligible for release, were held beyond their sentence because staff failed to calculate release dates correctly. It is simply not good enough to put it down again and again to human error. It is only now, when we have a public outcry, that the CEO of HM Prison and Probation Service is going to conduct a review on release checks. Why was that not done after the Pentonville fiasco earlier this year? The Chief Inspector of Prisons served an urgent notification on Pentonville for its inability to calculate release dates, but no action was taken. There has been no inquiry into the 262 mistaken releases, and, as a result, another sex offender was allowed to roam our streets. This belated review comes far too late. No amount of promises of future action should disguise the scale of the failure of this Government or absolve them of responsibility for the chaos that they have created.

The third point is in the context of the Sentencing Bill, which the Government are now going to present to this House, assuming that it gets through the other House. It is telling that the Government, and the Lord Chancellor in particular, have repeatedly expressed remorse at Mr Kebatu’s release, saying that every effort was taken to locate him. We are told that Mr Lammy was livid—that was the word used—when he was told of Mr Kebatu’s release from custody, and the Home Secretary referred to him as a “vile child sex offender”. She is right about that. But this Mr Lammy, who was livid about Mr Kebatu being released, is the same Mr Lammy under whose upcoming Sentencing Bill Mr Kebatu would probably never have gone to prison in the first instance because he was given a sentence of only 12 months. Under the new Sentencing Bill, if you get a sentence of only up to 12 months, you are presumed to serve a suspended sentence, which would have exposed him to the public rather than to a prison cell.

What is the Secretary of State’s position with regard to people like Mr Kebatu? Is the Secretary of State “livid” when they are not held in custody, or does he support his own Sentencing Bill, under which people such as Mr Kebatu would never have gone into custody in the first place? He cannot have it both ways. The truth is that the Sentencing Bill is not the silver bullet that will fix this Government’s mismanagement of prisons.

The Minister will no doubt say, as he often does, that they inherited a crisis. But when will the Government take responsibility for their own record? Since they came to power, the number of prisoners incorrectly released has doubled. How can those failures be anything but the responsibility of this Government? Just over a year into office, they have slashed prison education budgets by an average of 20% and sometimes by as much as 60%, which undermines rehabilitation, fuels reoffending and places further strain on a broken system. I know that the Minister, who I respect personally immensely, knows this, and I am sure that he is fighting the good fight within government. However, on the facts as we see them, I am afraid that he is losing that fight, and losing it badly.

The early release of Mr Kebatu should never have happened. The Government were given warnings and they were ignored. We deserve a Government who can keep order in our prisons and who will maintain integrity in our justice system. Until the Government accept responsibility and take decisive action, we cannot have confidence that those who commit crimes will be properly punished or that the rule of law will be upheld.

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

My Lords, I echo the thanks of the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, to the authorities that finally apprehended and deported Mr Kebatu, and, indeed, the sympathy that he expressed to the young victim of Mr Kebatu’s offending.

The Secretary of State’s Statement was made on Monday 27 October, following Mr Kebatu’s mistaken release into the community on Friday 24 October. I fully understand the Secretary of State’s inability on Monday to give full details of what happened, but, with two further days, I ask how much more the Minister can say about how this mistaken release actually happened.

As we have heard, the Secretary of State apparently said that he was livid and he described the release as a blunder—and we accept entirely that he was right in both those things—but saying so solves nothing. At least there is now to be an inquiry into how Mr Kebatu came to be released and what the failures were, to be chaired by Dame Lynne Owens, former Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and Director-General of the National Crime Agency. But setting up an inquiry does not solve the problem, nor does it answer the central questions that Parliament and the public are entitled to have fully answered now. First, what is the system and what are the safeguards currently in place for ensuring that only prisoners intended for release are in fact released? Secondly, what is the system and what are the safeguards for ensuring that prisoners destined for deportation are in fact deported and not released into the community?

As the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, said, the issue of mistaken releases is serious—and it is as serious as it is absurd. The number of mistaken releases has risen sharply: between April 2024—I remind the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, that that was before the general election—and March 2025, it rose to 262 in a year, up from 115 the previous year, an increase of well over double. But this is a problem that simply should not exist at all. We are now told that a new checklist has been introduced for prison staff to follow before a prisoner is released. How can there not have been a satisfactory checklist system in place before this occurred?

Certainly, morale and the ability of the Prison Service to cope have fallen to an abysmal level, but that is not entirely the fault of this Government—it has happened over years under the previous Conservative Government. But this case and these figures demonstrate the scale of the challenges that the service and the Government face if we are even to approach getting these things right, and the resources and willpower required to repair our collapsed penal system, which are far greater than ever we envisaged.

There is the further issue of the £500. We now hear from the BBC that Mr Kebatu was paid £500 apparently for not making trouble and not disrupting his deportation to Ethiopia after he had threatened to do so. We are told that the payment was made by the removal team as an alternative to a slower and more expensive process that would have meant the cancellation of his flight and the arrangement of a new one. That is according to a spokesperson for the Prime Minister.

Apparently, a parallel was drawn by No. 10 with the so-called facilitated return scheme, whereby a foreign national who agrees to leave the UK voluntarily can be paid £1,500 so to do. That is an entirely false parallel that was drawn. Apparently, Mr Kebatu had attempted to apply for the facilitated return scheme but was not permitted to do so. No doubt that was because he was liable to be immediately deported anyway, quite apart from the embarrassment that all this caused. I ask the Minister to confirm that and to answer questions about that payment.

How did that payment to Mr Kebatu come to be made, since it was not under the facilitated return scheme? Is there some kind of what can only be described as a slush fund that can be used to buy people’s compliance with their deportation? If so, on whose authority is it expended? One can understand that it might cost a great deal more than £500 if a flight has to be cancelled and a potential deportee cannot therefore be deported, but surely Downing Street can see that paying off one deportee for not making trouble will lead to a whole number of others taking the same course.

Who makes the decisions in any particular case? What controls are there over such payments? How is this not rewarding troublemaking? Who decides in any given case the amount that is to be paid out, if not £1,500? Is it discretionary? Can it be more? Must it be less? These are serious questions about what I am afraid has the smell of being an arbitrary, uncontrolled, unprofessional and unacceptable system. Will the Minister please explain?

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Timpson) (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lords, Lord Wolfson and Lord Marks, for their contributions on these incredibly important issues. I will of course respond to as many of the points raised as possible.

I begin by thanking the Metropolitan, Essex and British Transport Police for their swift response in apprehending Mr Kebatu. My particular thanks go to Essex Police for the support they have offered to the victims, all of whom were contacted following the release in error. I can tell noble Lords that Mr Kebatu has now been deported and arrived back in Ethiopia this morning; nevertheless, his victims are, rightly, outraged and the Government regret the hurt and anguish this incident will have caused them. They deserve better, the public deserve better, and, as the Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary said in the other place on Monday, Ministers expect better from a public service which plays a huge role in the first duty of any Government, to keep the public safe.

We are clear that any release in error is one too many. Immediate changes have been made to the release process so that there is more senior accountability, including a new checklist for duty governors to complete the night before releases happen. Noble Lords who have concerns about the arrangements currently in place should be in no doubt that these are the strongest release checks the Prison Service has ever had. This incident will throw releases in error into stark relief, but the reality is that they have been rising year on year since 2021. In 2023, there were around nine per month, but by the period January to June 2024, that had increased to 17 per month. This is clearly too high and we have work to do.

While I appreciate that noble Lords will be concerned that more focus is needed to address the issues, we have now commenced an independent investigation. It will be led by Dame Lynne Owens, with her years of experience as a former deputy commissioner of the Met and director-general of the National Crime Agency. Dame Lynne will establish the facts in this case, and the Government have been clear that there must be accountability for what happened. What I will say is that prison staff work incredibly hard, often in difficult circumstances, so we will of course take account of the training and technology available to support the release process when the incident took place. What is important now is that due process is allowed to happen. In addition, Dame Lynne will make recommendations to support the Prison Service to avoid such errors in the future. I look forward to receiving her report so that the Government can agree changes as soon as possible with HMPPS’s senior leadership.

When it comes to foreign national offenders, this Government stand on our record. In the year to July, we sent 5,179 FNOs back to their countries of origin, which represents a 14% increase on the previous 12-month period. This is no small feat. In July, I visited HMP Huntercombe to see for myself the operational challenges around foreign national offenders, the deportation delays and the ongoing issue of space inside prisons. As I have set out to noble Lords many times, our prisons continue to operate close to their maximum capacity. This puts us at risk of a total collapse of the criminal justice system, in which victims and the public would pay the price. With the prison system in its current state, it is, sadly, no surprise that releases in error such as that of Mr Kebatu can happen.

This Government have been clear about the changes needed to create a better, more sustainable prison system. The Sentencing Bill that is currently making its way through the other place and will soon come to your Lordships’ House will ensure that we never run out of prison places again. It will incentivise offenders to behave in prison to avoid longer spells in custody and put a greater emphasis on robust community sentencing which addresses the causes of crime. The Bill will deliver punishment that works to cut crime and keep the public safe. To those noble Lords who are concerned that Mr Kebatu would never have gone to prison under the Bill and would therefore have remained in the community, I gently point out that they may wish to examine Clause 42 of the legislation, which will extend the automatic deportation rules to include any FNO who gets a suspended sentence of at least 12 months.

On a few points that were raised by both noble Lords, the £500 that was paid was an operational decision to get Kebatu on a plane without any delays. It was far cheaper than booking more flights, and far cheaper than him being in a cell for another year, which would cost £54,000. I also think that it was a sensible decision by civil servants: to use a golfing analogy, if someone wants to give you a putt, you take it. He needed to get on a plane and get back to Ethiopia. As for Mr Kebatu returning to the prison five times, this will be part of Dame Lynne Owens’ investigation into what exactly happened.

The reference by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, to Pentonville is quite right. Immediately after the notification, I visited the prison and there were 10 releases that were incorrect: all of them had remained in prison for too long. There are problems at that prison, which we are addressing, and I am working on an action plan with colleagues, but it is clear that this is symptomatic of a prison system that is under a huge amount of pressure. I reiterate that prison education budgets are actually up by 3%, but the amount of education we can deliver has gone down because of the increased cost of delivering that service. As the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, will know, I cannot pre-empt the annual publication of these statistics. We are a lot more transparent than the previous Government, especially on the early release scheme, where 10,000 offenders were released in a cloak and dagger way. With the SDS40 scheme that we took on, we very much told everybody what was going on.

I reiterate to the noble Lord, Lord Marks, that the extra checks that I insisted on will make sure that release processes are far more robust. Far from being soft on crime, this Government are taking the robust decisions needed to protect the justice system. Prisons are and have been in crisis for far too long, but we are putting in the work to build stability. Victims are and always will be our paramount concern when it comes to an issue such as this, and this Government stand on our record of deporting increasing numbers of foreign national offenders, as the public expect.

Again, I thank the two noble Lords for their contributions today and I will continue to engage with them and colleagues more broadly on this important issue as the Government address releases in error so that we can continue to uphold our first duty, to keep the public safe from harm.