Lammy says at least three, and potentially four, prisoners released in error still at large
Lammy says there are three mistakenly released prisoners currently at large. None are sex offenders, he says.
And he says the Prison Service is investigating a further case of a potential release in error, from 3 November.
Of the confirmed cases, Lammy says one person was in jail for failing to surrender to the police and was released in error in December 2024, one was a person in jail for a class B drug offence and released in error in August 2024, and the third was in jail for aggravated burglary and released in error in 2025.
Two are British nationals, and one is a foreign national offenders.
Lammy says he will not be providing further details.
Key events
Lammy apologises to victims affected by prison release mistakes
Lammy says prison release systems are ‘archaic’, and officers operating ‘under relentless strain’
Lammy says at least three, and potentially four, prisoners released in error still at large
Lammy said error that led to Kaddour-Cherif being let out happened before new checks took effect
David Lammy defends his non-answer about prisoner release errors at PMQs last week in statement to MPs
Patrick Vallance, science minister, unveils plan to cut animal testing through greater use of AI
Davie rejects suggestion being BBC director general is ‘impossible job’ – as hunt starts for his successor
MoJ releases figures saying 91 prisoners released by mistake between April and October, implying error rate reducing
Davie defends BBC against ‘weaponisation’ of criticism
Defence minister warns of division between military and civilian population being ‘greater than it has ever been’
Epping hotel can continue to house asylum seekers, high court rules
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Davie avoids discussing Trump lawsuit threat, or giving transition timeline, in call with BBC staff
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Racism returning to UK politics – and people are very scared, says Starmer
Davie urges staff to carry on doing the work – ‘that speaks louder than any newspaper, any weaponisation’
What lawyers and commentators are saying about Trump’s threat to sue BBC
Tim Davie tells BBC staff ‘this narrative will not just be given by our enemies’
Trump’s legal action against BBC will benefit ‘community as a whole’, his lawyer claims
Huddleston criticises those trying to ‘hound out’ Robbie Gibb from BBC
Tory culture spokesperson Nigel Huddleston says BBC should apologise and ‘grovel’ to Trump over Panorama broadcast
Starmer all but confirms that two-child benefit cap will be fully abolished in budget
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How Trump has track record of using the law to threaten media organisations
Minister suggests BBC should apologise to Trump over editing error – but doesn’t comment on his $1bn lawsuit threat
Lammy set out steps being taken by the government to address this problem.
He says criminal court performance is going to be reviewed every month. The first meeting took place yesterday.
He says he has ordered a review into the release of Hadush Kebatu. That wil concluded by February next year, he says. That will consider the data, and he expects that to uncover “additional incidents”.
He says he has asked data scientists to review what is going wrong with the figures.
He says he has called for an urgent inquiry into how court errors are contributing to mistaken releases.
He says he had appointed a digital response team to investigate how technology can be used to improve the release system.
And he says the government’s sentencing reforms should make the system more effective.
He ends saying these are only initial steps. There will be further measures, he indicates.
Lammy apologises to victims affected by prison release mistakes
Lammy says there were 860 releases in error under the Conservatives.
He apologise to all those victims affected by these mistakes.
And he urges Robert Jenrick, his opposite number, to join him in this process.
He says the release system needs a thorough overhaul.
Lammy says prison release systems are ‘archaic’, and officers operating ‘under relentless strain’
Lammy says the state of the prison service has been unacceptable for a long time. He goes on:
Prisons today are still struggling with violence.
The safety in custody statistics show an 8% rise in the rate of assaults in the year to June 2025.
Systems are archaic. Every prisoner’s sentences is worked out on paper, considering the type of offence and the legislation covered by it.
There are more than 500 pages to sentence management guidance.
I pay tribute to prison officers doing an incredibly important job. But as the Prison Officers’ Association has said, prisons throughout the country are underfunded, they’re understaffed, and they’re operating under relentless strain.
Frontline prison officers were cut by a quarter between 2010 and 2017. That’s around 6000 fewer people and means that there are less experienced staff, which places more pressure on the system.
Lammy says, of the 262 prisoners released in error in the year ending March 2025, 87 were offenders whose main offence was violence against a person, and three were people whose main offence was a sexual offence.
Lammy says at least three, and potentially four, prisoners released in error still at large
Lammy says there are three mistakenly released prisoners currently at large. None are sex offenders, he says.
And he says the Prison Service is investigating a further case of a potential release in error, from 3 November.
Of the confirmed cases, Lammy says one person was in jail for failing to surrender to the police and was released in error in December 2024, one was a person in jail for a class B drug offence and released in error in August 2024, and the third was in jail for aggravated burglary and released in error in 2025.
Two are British nationals, and one is a foreign national offenders.
Lammy says he will not be providing further details.
Lammy says there were around 57,000 routine releases in the year ending March 2025.
At the same time, there were 262 releases in error.
He says data out today shows that from April to October this year, there 91 releases in error. (See 2.29pm.)
He says the department was not planning to release this information today. But he put it out because “we recognise the public interest in being transparent about the overall number”.
Lammy said error that led to Kaddour-Cherif being let out happened before new checks took effect
Lammy says that, after the release in error of Hadush Kebatu (the asylum seeker convicted of a sex offence in Epping), he put in place stronger release checks.
But he says the error that led to Kaddour-Cherif being released by mistake happened in September, before those new checks came in. He goes on:
He was charged with burglary at Snaresbrook crown court and a warrant was issued to HMV Pentonville for his remand.
Contrary to the set down process, it was then forwarded by email to HMP Wandsworth, where Mr Kaddour-Cherif was transferred.
However, staff did not pick it up and he was released on the 29 October.
Mr Kaddour-Charif was taken back into custody on the 7 November by Haringey police.
David Lammy defends his non-answer about prisoner release errors at PMQs last week in statement to MPs
David Lammy, the deputy PM and justice secretary, is making is statement to MPs about prison release errors.
He says he takes responsibilities to parliament seriously. This is a reference to claim that he misled MPs with his answers at PMQs last week.
He was asked repeatedly if any asylum seeker had been released in error.
He says at the time he knew that Brahim Kaddour-Cherif had been released in error.
But he did not know his asylum status. He says it was only confirmed later that that that he was not an asylum seeker.
He says his judgment was that it was better to wait, “rather than give an inaccurate or incomplete or misleading picture”.
He says other MPs may have handled the situation differently.
He says he inherited a system where the release of data is “painfully slow”.
Jake Berry, the former Conservative party chair who has now defected to Reform UK, has claimed that the BBC’s error editing a Donald Trump speech for a Panorama documentary last year amounted to election interference. In an interview with GB News, he claimed:
That [Panorama] documentary wasn’t just a mistake. It was an attempt at international election interference. Of course it was.
They mashed up Donald Trump’s speech to pretend that he’d called for an attack on the Capitol building. It was completely untrue.
It may not have been successful election interference, but it was still an attempt at election interference.
Patrick Vallance, science minister, unveils plan to cut animal testing through greater use of AI
Animal testing in science would be phased out faster under a new plan to increase the use of artificial intelligence and 3D bioprinted human tissues, Patrick Vallance, the science minister, has said. Jamie Grierson has the story.
Here is the strategy paper released by Vallance explaining how animal testing can be phased out more quickly. And here is the news release explaining what it says.
David Lammy, the deputy PM and justice secretary, is taking justice questions in the Commons. He has just confirmed the latest prison release error figures put out by the MoJ earlier. (See 2.29pm.)
He said that, in his statement later, he will set out what measures the government is taking to address this problem.
Davie rejects suggestion being BBC director general is ‘impossible job’ – as hunt starts for his successor
Frances Mao
Frances Mao is a Guardian reporter.
Tim Davie will stay on for now as caretaker director general, running the BBC while the board scrambles to find his successor.
Chair Samir Shah told staff this morning he’d “cleared the decks” to go into “full succession stage” – it has become the top priority for him and the rest of the board.
He said he’d told the board yesterday: “The first thing is to really drive down that search of who are the candidates, and talk to them and find out who’s the potential.”
He warned it would take time – “this is not an easy job to fill”- citing as his first reason, the inevitable criticism and scrutiny the director general receives as the BBC’s public figurehead. “I have to be honest – I think the way we, as a country, attack people really personally is not good,” Shah said.
But it was at this point that Davie also jumped in, saying:
It’s one of the greatest jobs in the country, if not the world. I really mean that.
He conceded it’s a “hard” job with “lots of stresses”. Earlier in the call he had already identified the “relentless” nature of the job as one of the reasons for his departure. But he added:
But it’s not an impossible job, just to be clear. It’s not. And it’s a job that I believe is one of the best. I wouldn’t change a thing. I have no regrets.
Who could take on this big, bruising role? Former BBC directors as well as executives from ITV, Channel 4, Dow Jones, Amazon and Apple have all been floated.
David Allen Green, the lawyer and commentator, has written a particularly thorough analysis of the validity of Donald Trump’s legal claim against the BBC on his Empty City Substack. But, in his conclusion, he says this is not just a matter of law.
For Trump, civil litigation is a form of deal-making – the promotion of his political and business interests by other means.
One should not approach his legal manoeuvres as if they are cases that will go all the way. They are skirmishes intended to force a deal, a compromise, a back-down by the other side.
A confident BBC would admit a mistake and move on without admitting legal liability.
But we do not have a confident BBC …
The litigation letter may be weak, but Trump’s underlying practical position is strong: the BBC made a mistake, and he knows how to take full advantage of it.
The full post is well worth reading.
MoJ releases figures saying 91 prisoners released by mistake between April and October, implying error rate reducing
The Ministry of Justice has just released figures saying 91 prisoners in England and Wales were released in error between 1 April and 31 October this year. It has not said any more about who they were.
This sounds a lot, but in the year ending March 2025 262 prisoners were released in error, or an average of about 22 per month.
These figures suggest releases in error (RiEs, in prison jargon) are now happening at the rate of 13 per month, which implies a big improvement.
But the MoJ report also says that the RiE figures get revised over time, normally upwards. That is because some mistakes may not yet have been noticed yet. It says:
Data on releases is based on the information available at the time. It may be the case in some circumstances that information on a case is brought to light that either confirms or disproves a release in error. Consequently, figures for recent months may change over time, as there has been less time for such cases to be detected. In the past, these revisions have tended to be upwards.
The HM Prison and Probation Service annual digest for 2024 to 2025 said that, of the 115 RiEs reported for the year ending March 2024, 87 were reported within that period and 28 were reported later.
There are three ministerial statements in the Commons today.
At 3.30pm, after justice questions, David Lammy, the deputy PM and justice secretary, will make a statement about prisoners released in error.
After 4.30pm, Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, will make a statement about pensions. We don’t know what it will say, but there is speculation that it will related to the call for compensation for Waspi women.
And that means that Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, will not make her statement about the BBC until after 5.30pm, perhaps closer to 6pm.
