Tuesday, November 11, 2025

David Lammy, the justice secretary, tried to recover from his disastrous performance at Prime Minister's Questions last week by making a statement in parliament about prisoners released in error. 

He managed to stay calm and sound reasonable, but he was left making too many excuses and not enough apologies for a system that is still letting too many offenders out by mistake. 

He said he inherited a system in crisis; it is a paper-based system; and there are 57,000 routine releases every year, as if that made 91 releases in error in the past six months acceptable. 

He repeatedly said he would "bear down" on the problem, and it is true that 91 releases in half a year is fall in the error rate of 262 in the full year to March. But it did not help that he started his statement by saying that the Prison Service didn't yet know if a prisoner released on 3 November should have been let out or not. 

Of the nine deputy leaders of the Lib Dems, four became leader: can you name them?

Answer at the bottom of today's email 

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I wouldn't be telling you that we're going to drive down child poverty if I wasn't clear that we will be taking a number of measures in order to do so

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