3 hours ago
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It was a message of defiance. A show of strength from the justice department. The system may be in crisis but there was leadership at the very top. There was one prisoner who was most definitely not getting an accidental early release. And that was the justice secretary himself.
After his distinctly disastrous showing – he had the shadow defence secretary, James Cartlidge, to thank for it not being far worse – while standing in for Keir Starmer at prime minister’s questions, David Lammy has been kept banged up on 15-minute observation watch by civil servants and advisers inside the department. Allowed out of his office only under electronic tag for toilet breaks.
We had been promised that Lammy would be giving a short interview to broadcasters some time on Thursday morning. Both to reassure us that he was still alive and possibly to update us on the two prisoners who had gone awol. Assuming he had any idea of what was going on. And not forgetting any others who had been mistakenly released in the past 24 hours. It’s hard to keep an up-to-date checklist these days.
But by lunchtime there was still no sign of the justice secretary. Not even a press release from the department to announce a new policy of accidentally jailing people. This could prove a lifesaver for the Labour government. It would be catnip to the rightwing media, and Robert Jenrick and Chris Philp would be kicking themselves for not having thought of it.
And it would all be so simple. Just send round vans to pick up foreigners and then put them in prison for years for any unsolved crimes. What could go wrong? Fewer migrants and a reduction in the crime statistics. A double whammy.
It wasn’t until the afternoon that we had our first sighting of David. A short, grainy TikTok clip clearly filmed by ITV while Lammy appeared to be on the run. Surely the justice department hadn’t lost track of its boss already? That would be a disaster. But at least that would make it one in, one out. For while we had been waiting for Lammy, one of the missing prisoners had handed himself in. Knocking on the door of Wandsworth nick, begging to be allowed back in. Anything to escape the clutches of GB News.
Step forward William “Billy” Smith. A good, old-fashioned con. The type of inmate who makes you proud to be British. Obviously you can’t trust him with your credit card – or anyone else’s, for that matter – as he is a convicted fraudster, but you can still trust him to do the right thing. In a Guy Ritchie film, the SAS would have lifted him out of prison to trick the German government into revealing their plans to invade Poland.
Good old Billy. Saving everyone the effort of finding him. Not like the Algerian sex offender who had managed to go missing for six days before anyone had noticed he had gone.
That still left Lammy with a couple of minutes of awkward questions. “No comment” and “You’ll never take me alive” clearly weren’t going to cut it. Instead we got a few clipped sentences, accidentally released through gritted teeth. And surprisingly, it turned out nothing that had happened on his watch had been his fault.
There had been another David Lammy running around masquerading as the justice secretary. It had even been a doppelganger who had taken his place at PMQs. He had been out and about, minding his business while buying a new suit to impress his godmother. Big Dave could look the camera in the eye and declare that Big Dave was innocent. OK?
It was like this. The Algerian sex offender, Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, had been accidentally released before Lammy’s new improved measures to make sure that even more prisoners were accidentally released had been put in place. What the country needed to understand was that it was a long and noble tradition of the British justice system that at least one prisoner was accidentally released every other day.
A kind of national lottery for cons. An incentive scheme to give prisoners a sense of purpose. A reason to get out of bed each day and not riot about the conditions inside. A scheme that had been started by the Tories, so it was a bit rich for Honest Bob to choose today to start complaining. This was what the country had voted for. Given the choice, the electorate wanted to underfund the Prison Service to make sure it was on the point of collapse. After all, no one wants their taxes to be spent on a load of cons. Though they might now make an exception for Billy.
So why, if he had been briefed on Tuesday night about Kaddour-Cherif, had Lammy not updated the house when asked at PMQs? Dave looked puzzled. Although he had been updated on Tuesday night it was only on Wednesday morning that he had remembered he had been updated on Tuesday night.
These things have a habit of happening when you’re in government. One minute you’re just minding your business choosing the fabric for a new suit and the next, 12 hours have slipped by without you noticing. A la Recherche du Temps Perdu.
In any case, people just had to learn to manage their expectations. Dave had been in the job for just a couple of months and the country shouldn’t expect miracles. He had his work-life balance to consider. If his predecessors couldn’t get the department into shape then there wasn’t that much point in him having a go. It would be a waste of effort. And there was so much detail involved.
That’s why he had stalled at PMQs. Cartlidge had gone on about an asylum seeker without getting round to naming him, so he had got confused. As anyone might. The Tories might have been referring to another prisoner.
And it just so happened that he had been given all the information the moment PMQs had ended. Coincidentally, at the same time the media had worked out what was what. And he hadn’t wanted to go back and update the house because it was lunchtime and he was quite tired. At which point Lammy’s parole officer called it a day. The justice secretary was only out on day release.
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A year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar. On Tuesday 2 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back with special guests at another extraordinary year, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here
