0:00
And Julia Lopez from the Conservatives
0:02
The Justice Secretary, he was in the chamber. We only learned about this a few moments ago
0:07
So he didn't know, presumably, and that's fair enough, presumably. It's classic calamity, Lammy, isn't it
0:14
And your viewers will have picked up that he refused very clearly
0:18
to answer the question, I think, five times. He's put a lot of personal capital into solving this issue
0:26
It's only a couple of weeks. All he had to answer was, was he confident that in a couple of weeks, There hadn't been any further releases and he wasn't able to answer
0:33
And instead of actually dealing with that directly, he chose to sling mud, got very agitated in the chair
0:39
Now, I appreciate these things are always... Hang on, Dio Lopez, because he made the point, he says, we inherited a system from you, Lord, a prison system in absolute chaos
0:49
You wouldn't deny that that is the case. We have a major prison building programme underway
0:53
And unfortunately, during the pandemic, that got hit. And so whilst we would have been delivering 20,000 extra prison places by now
1:00
unfortunately that did get delayed and that is a challenge. But Labour's solution on this was early release
1:04
And they have not been able to get a hold on the prison system
1:08
at the same time as they're not getting a hold on the borders. And this combination of factors is leading to absolute chaos there
1:16
And as I say, the Deputy Prime Minister placed a lot of political capital into getting this sorted
1:20
Apparently he hit the roof, he briefs out that he hit the roof, that this wouldn't happen again
1:24
and he was not able to assure people that there are not serious prisoners placing people in danger anymore
