David Lammy, the UK justice secretary, is under mounting pressure after two more prisoners, including a convicted foreign sex offender, were mistakenly freed, days after he introduced stringent checks for jails.
Lammy had refused multiple times to say whether any more prisoners had been released in error in a bruising session of prime minister’s questions (PMQs), having been ambushed with a string of pre-planned questions on the issue.
On Wednesday evening, the Ministry of Justice said Lammy had not been “accurately informed of key details” when he was asked about missing prisoners.
Almost immediately after the exchange at PMQs it was revealed that Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, a 24-year-old Algerian who had overstayed his visa, had been wrongly released from Wandsworth prison in south London last Wednesday, with the Metropolitan police informed only on Tuesday.
The same prison also accidentally freed the fraudster William Smith, AKA Billy, 35. Described as white, bald and clean-shaven, he was sentenced to 45 months for multiple fraud offences on Monday and freed in error the same day.
The latest errors come just days after Hadush Kebatu, an Ethiopian national, was accidentally freed from Chelmsford prison despite convictions for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman days after arriving in the UK in a small boat.
Lammy had ordered five pages of new checks for prison governors after the release of Kebatu, who was supposed to have been removed to an immigration detention centre. He was arrested in north London and deported after being given a £500 discretionary payment.
The Guardian understands that Kaddour-Cherif was in prison for trespass with intent to steal but was convicted in November 2024 of indecent exposure linked to an incident in March of the same year. He was sentenced to an 18-month community order.
Cherif is understood to have entered the UK legally on a visitors’ visa in 2019 but overstayed. An “automatic probable overstayer” case was created by the Home Office in February 2020 and he is, sources say, in the initial stages of the deportation process. Questions will be raised as to why he was not removed from the UK five years ago, after overstaying his visa.
The Met was informed of Kaddour-Cherif’s release shortly after 1pm on Tuesday, giving him a six-day head start. He has links to the Tower Hamlets area, but is also known to frequent the Westminster area.
A Met spokesperson said: “Shortly after 13.00 on Tuesday 4 November, the Met was informed by the Prison Service that a prisoner had been released in error from HMP Wandsworth on Wednesday 29 October.”
Surrey police, meanwhile, put out an appeal to find Smith. He had appeared in Croydon crown court via a live video link from HMP Wandsworth, before being released in error.
The Prison Service is examining the possibility that officers did not have a warrant to hold the men in custody. There has been an increasing number of cases in which prisoners are being moved between jails and courts and warrants are being lost and misplaced in the process. This forces prison staff to allow prisoners to walk free.
Downing Street said Kaddour-Cherif was “a concerning case”, with Keir Starmer’s official spokesperson adding: “It’s unacceptable, and the circumstances behind it will be forensically looked at … It’s clearly a developing situation, and it’s important to establish the facts.
“One mistaken release is too many, as we saw in the Kebatu case. That is why we’ve ordered the review led by Lynne Owens. I think it’s fair to assume that this case will form part of that review.”
The Labour MP Rosena Allin-Khan, whose constituency includes Wandsworth prison, said after hearing of Kaddour-Cherif’s release: “I’m horrified to learn that someone was mistakenly released from Wandsworth prison.
“Local residents will quite rightly be deeply concerned. We urgently need answers from the government and Ministry of Justice as to how this was allowed to happen.”
In tense Commons exchanges, the Tory frontbencher James Cartlidge, standing in for Kemi Badenoch at prime minster’s questions, clashed with Lammy, who was standing in for the prime minister, who is in Brazil for the Cop30 summit.
Cartlidge asked repeatedly whether any asylum-seeking offenders had been accidentally let out of prison since Kebatu. He is understood to have been aware of at least one release when he asked his questions.
He said: “He’s the justice secretary. He’s responsible for the justice system. He needs to take responsibility … Can he reassure the house that since Kebatu was released, no other asylum-seeking offender has been accidentally let out of prison?”
Lammy said: “We know that there have been spikes since 2021 under his watch. When did he come to this house and apologise? Let me just remind him that he was a justice minister that allowed our prisons to get to this state in the first place and it’s now for us to fix the mess that we’ve got into.”
In the year to March 2025, 262 prisoners were accidentally released, up from 115 the previous year. The Labour government has attacked the Tories repeatedly for leaving them a broken justice system.
Reacting after PMQs, Lammy said he was “absolutely outraged”. He added: “The Metropolitan police is leading an urgent manhunt, and my officials have been working through the night to take him back to prison. Victims deserve better and the public deserve answers.
“That is why I have already brought in the strongest checks ever to clamp down on such failures and ordered an independent investigation, led by Dame Lynne Owens, to uncover what went wrong and address the rise in accidental releases, which has persisted for too long.”
Lammy said the latest incident exposed “deeper flaws” across the criminal justice system and that Owens’s review would leave “no stone unturned” to identify the problems so they could be fixed.
The Conservatives called on Lammy to return to the Commons to make a statement. A spokesperson said: “If we knew, we can only assume the justice secretary knew.”
In a statement late on Wednesday, a Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “The crisis in the prison system this government inherited is such that basic information about individual cases can take unacceptably long to reach ministers.
“On entering the house, facts were still emerging about the case and the DPM [deputy prime minister] had not been accurately informed of key details including the offender’s immigration status.
“No media story about the individual case was yet in the public domain and it was and remains subject to a live police investigation.
“The DPM was asked questions about the release of an asylum seeker. As was confirmed after PMQs by the Home Office, the individual was not an asylum seeker.
“The DPM waited until after PMQs and further facts had emerged before making a statement.”
The Prison Officers’ Association (POA) called for an “entire overhaul” of the sentencing calculation and discharging process and warned Lammy not to seek to blame individual officers for systemic failures.
Mark Fairhurst, the POA’s national chair, said: “This latest releasing error highlights the immense pressure placed on the system and the need for an entire overhaul of the sentencing calculation and discharge process.
“Staff on the frontline should not become scapegoats when the leaders of the service have failed to address this problem for at least the last 12 months.”
