David Lammy’s first PMQs as deputy prime minister will be remembered for a question that wasn’t even part of the actual session. Did the government know that, as Lammy was speaking, a police manhunt had been launched for an asylum seeker wrongly released from HMP Wandsworth last week?
This story was published by the Telegraph towards the end of the session. It explains the frankly bizarre exchange that kicked off PMQs, with Lammy facing the shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge. Cartlidge began by asking Lammy to apologise to the family of the 14-year-old girl sexually assaulted by Hadush Kebatu in Epping, who was mistakenly released last month. His five subsequent questions were all the same: could the justice secretary confirm that, since Kabatu was released, no other asylum seeking offender had been wrongly let out of prison.
Lammy could not – and now we know why. The result was a stand-off. The deputy PM attempted to go on the offensive and throw the Conservatives’ record on criminal justice back in his opponent’s face. He accused Cartlidge of being a justice minister in a Tory government that allowed prisons to get into such a terrible state in the first place. He talked about the system Labour had inherited, with prisoners “let out on the sly”. (HMP Wandsworth, which reportedly released the asylum seeker currently being sought, is the same prison from which Daniel Khalife, convicted of spying for Iran, managed to escape in 2023.) In short, he tried the tactic Starmer employs each week when pressed on why the Labour government is struggling.
And when that didn’t work, Lammy lost his temper. “Get a grip, man,” he shouted at Cartlidge the third time the question was put to him. “I did a hell of a lot better than he’s just done,” he retorted the fourth time. The fifth time, Lammy sneered that he was looking forward to facing Robert Jenrick next time instead. (As shadow justice secretary, Jenrick would be the obvious choice to deputise for Kemi Badenoch against Lammy. But for whatever reason Cartlidge was chosen instead. Read into that what you will.)
The result was far from edifying. Cartlidge, somewhat woodenly repeating his demand for Lammy to reassure the house that there had not been another jaw-dropping Kabatu-like error in the Justice Department and prisons systems, did not have a huge amount of flair. But he didn’t need to. By the end of the session, the news had broken and Cartlidge was able to make a point of order, asking if Lammy had known this when he refused to answer his question five times. Fresh from having to answer questions in Parliament about how Kabatu had been released in the first place, Lammy now has another crisis on his plate. (To wrongly release two migrant offenders from prison looks like carelessness, as Oscar Wilde might have said.) Either no one had bothered to tell him about the story, despite the Met being informed yesterday, or he did know and dodged the questions. Neither is a great look. It all puts the peak-Westminster row over Lammy turning up to the chamber without a poppy ahead of Remembrance Sunday and being frantically handed one by a colleague into perspective.
The rest of the session was brawl. Daisy Cooper asked a perfectly reasonable question about the possibility of tax going up in the Budget later this month, and was met with an attack line about the Liberal Democrats being part of the coalition government that enacted austerity with the Conservatives. That isn’t a place Starmer usually goes when facing Ed Davey. With the fracturing of the political landscape that is seeing the Lib Dems and the Greens eat into Labour support, expect more ammunition to be thrown to the left, rather than just Reform.
Not that Reform was ignored, of course. While Nigel Farage didn’t get a question, two Labour MPs offered Lammy chances to take aim at him. Tristan Osborne, MP for Chatham and Aylesford in Kent, asked about the Reform-led Kent Council being a “shop window” for the party’s offering. That gave Lammy the chance to call out comments made by Sarah Pochin about seeing non-white people on TV: “The disgraceful, racist language that we heard from a Reform MP last week belongs to the dark ages.” Farage could be seen smirking, but it’s worth noting that Pochin was nowhere to be seen at his big economic press conference on Monday, and was not namechecked when Farage listed colleagues he said were part of his “broadening team”. Pochin is clearly not in his good books.
Reform question two came from Adam Thompson on the minimum wage. It was a chance for Lammy to both remind the House of Farage’s many lucrative other jobs (“He’s making quite a lot out of gold bullion,” Lammy pointed out; Farage responded with a thumbs-up), and try to cement Labour’s position as the party of workers. His answer contained a reference to “the two other parties” – the second being the Conservatives, who Labour are starting to pay more attention to in parliament. Realisation is dawning that making Reform not just your main opponent but your only one comes with risks.
Finally, we should flag Tom Rutland’s question on what the government is doing to improve maternity services, which cited today’s harrowing in-depth report by the New Statesman’s Hannah Barnes. Lammy didn’t have a lot to say on it beyond reiterating his support for Baroness Amos, who is conducting a review. We can only hope other MPs of all parties are also taking note.
[Further reading: Keir, they’re watching you]
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