Shabana Mahmood to set out emergency measures, which could include reducing the time before some prisoners are automatically released
Prime minister Keir Starmer has said the state of the prison service in England and Wales his government has inherited from Rishi Sunak is “unforgiveable” and shows the “gross irresponsibility of the outgoing government”.
He accused them of failing to provide “a basic function of government”, noting that “I can’t build a prison in the first seven days of a Labour government.”
The crux of the problem we face at the moment, and it is a terrible problem, is that we’ve got far too many prisoners for the prison places that we’ve got and we soon will have.
That is gross irresponsibility of the outgoing government. It is a basic function of government that you should have enough places for your prisoners that judges are sending to prison.
