‘Even one is too many,’ culture secretary Lisa Nandy tells Sky News
In her interview with Sky News, Lisa Nandy rejected suggestions that the under-pressure justice secretary David Lammy had been “evasive” in his handling of the news a prisoner was wrongly released from HMP Wandsworth, saying he had been “weighing up in his mind” what information to share.
Asked whether his evasiveness made it more difficult to trust ministers on the issue, the culture secretary said:
I don’t accept that he was being evasive. I was in the House of Commons chamber, I was there, I was sitting next to the home secretary, and I could see that he was weighing up in his mind what information to release.
He was asked about an asylum seeker. The case in question was not an asylum seeker.
What I can tell you is that under the last government, for quite some time, there were, on average, 17 wrong releases.
Under this government that has risen. It’s 22 – that is completely unacceptable. It was unacceptable before, it’s unacceptable now.