Mike Rolfe has hit out at Justice Secretary David Lammy for blaming the previous Conservative Government for the accidental release of Epping hotel migrant Hadush Kebatu.

Speaking to GB News, the General Secretary of the Criminal Justice Workers Union criticised Labour for being “slow to react” to issues within the prison system and making “rash policy decisions”.

Following the re-arrest of Kebatu, Mr Lammy blamed the error on Labour inheriting a “collapsing system” which the Tories faced “no scrutiny” over.

He added: “There are a lot of junior officers now in the prison system. All of that needs a close look to ensure that the public are safe.”

Criticising Labour’s handling of the mistaken release, Mr Rolfe told GB News: “I think we need to wait for the inquiry to absolutely understand what went wrong, but I don’t think blaming the previous Conservative Government is the full truth either.

“I think Labour have been really slow to react since they’ve taken power. They did inherit a few issues, there’s no denying that.

“I’m sure the Conservatives would admit that themselves, in terms of prison capacity and other issues that were going on.”

He added: “But certainly, all we’ve seen from Labour since they’ve come into power who’s just making rash decisions around sentencing, releasing prisoners early and bringing new schemes in to try and reduce the prison population.

“And that really does also focus in on foreign nationals, which is where this case becomes particularly complex in Labour moving the goalposts quite a few times since they’ve come into power.”

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:

• ‘GROW UP!’ Watch moment David Lammy heckles Robert Jenrick in the Commons over calls to resign
• David Lammy announces urgent probe into ‘farcical’ Kebatu release amid overhaul of release rules
• David Lammy says Epping migrant ‘to be deported THIS WEEK’ as he’s grilled over 45 hours in London

Stressing the lack of investment in the prison service, Mr Rolfe declared it a “crisis” that needs addressing by the Government.

He said: “This is a service that’s had a lack of investment. There’s been no technology for the sentence calculations, that’s still being done manually on a piece of paper by basic grade admin staff. This is a service that is absolutely not being looked at.

“It’s a crisis is like this that then makes make people react, but what the reaction here is they’ve just thrown in another tier, another layer of bureaucracy that doesn’t really actually solve the problem.”

He explained: “It’s not really looking at the issue in the back room staffing numbers, why people don’t want to work in prisons anymore, why the service is falling apart.

“And actually, it is becoming embarrassing, and that’s that’s really sad to see for a lot of prison staff that worked in the service for most of their career and really put a hard shift in want to protect the public, really care about how this impacts the public.

“This is embarrassing to them as well, they don’t want to see this happen.

“They don’t want to see their colleagues make mistakes, but the Government has created environment that allows for these mistakes to happen by just making it impossible to do the job they’re doing.”

Suggesting how HMP Chelmsford could have mistakenly released Kebatu, Mr Rolfe told GB News: “If the Home Office hadn’t issued the paperwork to say that this guy needed to remain in detention and the prison hadn’t received that, the prison may have looked for that and said, ‘well, we’ve not received this, we’re at risk of holding this guy illegally, his time has expired, we are due to release him’.

“And it could be a simple error in the paperwork that never came from the Home Office.

“The Home Office had meant to give the prison 30 days notification of anyone that’s to remain on detention following the conditional release date.

He concluded: “But quite regularly, because the Home Office is such a shambles, what’s happening is the paperwork isn’t coming through on time, and it’s sometimes not coming through to the day of release.

“How can anyone in that environment operate efficiently and, you know, have effective communication in order not to make these mistakes?”