{"id":51699,"date":"2026-08-10T09:29:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T09:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=51699"},"modified":"2026-08-10T09:29:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T09:29:07","slug":"labour-says-farage-has-no-serious-answers-to-prisons-crisis-uk-politics-live-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=51699","title":{"rendered":"Labour says Farage has \u2018no serious answers\u2019 to prisons crisis \u2013\u00a0UK politics live | Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Key events<\/p>\n

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Green leader Zack Polanski accuses government of ‘gross negligence’ over climate crisis<\/h2>\n

With parts of Britain set to experience their fifth heatwave of the summer this week, Zack Polanski<\/strong>, the Green party leader, has accused the government of not recognising the severity of the crisis.<\/p>\n

In a statement, he said:<\/p>\n

double quotation markWe are now facing the fifth heatwave in months following the recent deaths of 3,000 people in our country from extreme weather conditions.<\/p>\n

This is the greatest crisis this country has faced since the second world war and to complacently dismiss the demands for immediate action by saying everything is under control is gross negligence, blatantly untrue and misses the severity of the crisis.<\/p>\n

Only days after dedicated public servants talked about the need for urgent action, backed up by indisputable science, to secure our food supplies and the health of the most vulnerable, the Labour government says it\u2019s all in hand, and supply chains are resilient.<\/p>\n

At a press conference last week, Polanski said the government should be responding with emergency measures now.<\/p>\n

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Burnham vows crackdown on \u2018rip-off\u2019 business practices to ease cost of living – as Tories claim he’s ‘run out of ideas’<\/h2>\n

Andy Burnham<\/strong> has promised a series of measures to tackle the cost of living, including a ban on fake discounts and making it easier for people to escape unwanted subscriptions, Aletha Adu<\/strong> reports.<\/p>\n

Burnham<\/strong> has written about his plans in an article for the Guardian.<\/p>\n

These two announcements are extensions of measures already in the pipeline under Keir Starmer.<\/p>\n

The opposition parties are not impressed. For the Tories, shadow chancellor Mel Stride<\/strong> said:<\/p>\n

double quotation markAndy Burnham has already run out of ideas.<\/p>\n

The cost of living didn\u2019t become a problem last week, so you have to ask why it has taken Labour so long to enact legislation passed by the previous government.<\/p>\n

Stride was referring to the fact that the new rules making it easier to cancel subscriptions involve implementing measures originally in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 passed when the Tories were in office.<\/p>\n

And, for the Lib Dems, Daisy Cooper<\/strong>, the deputy leader and shadow Treasury spokesperson, said:<\/p>\n

double quotation markWe Liberal Democrats have long called for stronger consumer protections and we want to see the government go further.<\/p>\n

If the new PM is serious about this, he should introduce strengthened protections against rogue traders, make energy bills fairer by giving everyone a discount on their essential usage, and clamp down on the big supermarkets\u2019 unfair shrinkflation tactics.<\/p>\n

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Labour says Farage has ‘no serious answers’ to prisons crisis, as Reform UK proposes jailing foreign offenders in El Salvador<\/h2>\n

Good morning. Andy Burnham<\/strong> has said Middlemarch is his favourite novel, but he may not remember George Eliot\u2019s line about the genial businessman Mr Vincy who \u201cblustering as he was, had as little of his own way as if he had been a prime minister\u201d. Burnham only took over in No 10 three weeks ago today. But already he is learning that Eliot had a point about the constraints of office.<\/p>\n

As PM, Burnham became responsible for the prisoner early release scheme due to come into force in September, which is hugely controversial because it will lead to killers, rapists and sex offenders being released early. Burnham immediately said he was \u201cpausing\u201d the scheme pending a rethink, and early last week he announced he was changing the rules to make the scheme more restrictive. Explaining the move in an article for the Daily Telegraph, Burnham said that he \u201cwanted to go even further\u201d but that the plan he was announcing \u201cpushed to the very limits of what is possible to do.\u201d He added: \u201cI know I can look people in the eye and say to them there is nothing more I could have asked for without risking the prison system reaching capacity and collapsing within months.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if he thought that would quell public and media anger about the plan, he was wrong. The new rules won\u2019t affect two of the killers of PC Andrew Harper, who will still get early release under the scheme, and Burnham is now reportedly considering a further crackdown to ensure they are included (which, if it goes ahead, would undermine the \u2018nothing more he could do\u2019 claim in the Telegraph last week). Even if Burnham manages to exempt the Harper killers, it won\u2019t be long before media organisations start focusing on other emotive stories about criminals being released early. The Daily Express<\/strong> has an example this morning.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Express splash<\/span> Photograph: Daily Express<\/p>\n

And this morning the Daily Mail<\/strong> has opened up another line of attack on the policy, highlighting Tory claims that the early release scheme will lead to \u201caround 500 added sex offences, nearly 1,800 violent crimes and just under 36,000 thefts before the end of this parliament in 2029\u201d. The Ministry of Justice<\/strong> has dismissed the report as \u201chighly speculative\u201d and based on \u201can inaccurate method of calculating the impact of sentencing reforms\u201d. It says: \u201cWithout [the early release scheme], we risk prisons reaching capacity and collapsing. If that happened, police could not make arrests, courts could not remand offenders and there would be unchecked criminality on our streets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nigel Farage<\/strong>, the Reform UK leader, is now leaping in with his own alleged solution. Reform says it will free up space in jails in England and Wales by rapidly deporting all foreign offenders \u201cto serve their sentences in countries like El Salvador and Kosovo\u201d. In a post on social media, Farage is highlighting a Sun story saying \u201cfollowing initial conversations with the El Salvador government about renting prison spots, party chairman Lee Anderson will lead a team of officials for a visit later this year\u201d. Farage is also proposing building \u201cNightingale prisons\u201d to create extra spaces. He will be giving more details at a press conference later with Zia Yusuf<\/strong>, Reform\u2019s home affairs spokesperson.<\/p>\n

In their London Playbook briefing for Politico, Dan Bloom <\/strong>and Megan McElroy<\/strong> highlight some of the obvious problems with this.<\/p>\n

double quotation markYusuf [says] Reform will deport \u201call 10,000 foreign nationals from our prisons.\u201d Of the 10,134 foreign nationals in custody in England and Wales, nearly a third are on remand, i.e. they haven\u2019t been convicted of a crime yet. A Reform official confirmed foreign nationals will only come in scope of the party\u2019s scheme if and when they\u2019re convicted. Then there are questions about what\u2019d happen after inmates in Kosovo finish their sentence (Reform would put a lifetime ban on returning to the U.K.). Or matters like El Salvador\u2019s human rights record \u2014 though Playbook can imagine how Farage will respond to that one.<\/p>\n

Commenting on the Reform proposals, a Labour spokesperson<\/strong> said:<\/p>\n

double quotation markKeeping the public safe is and always will be Labour\u2019s first priority. The government has already made clear we are working at pace to deport foreign criminals and we\u2019re building more prison places to deliver justice for victims and keep criminals behind bars.<\/p>\n

Reform have no serious answers to the Tory prisons crisis and would lead the system to collapse. This would result in a free for all for dangerous and violent offenders, including murderers and rapists. Nigel Farage and Reform simply can\u2019t be trusted to keep Britain safe.<\/p>\n

Burnham is back from holiday this week, and is due to start a summer tour of Britain soon. But we have not been told to expect him out today.<\/p>\n

So there are only two items on the agenda.<\/p>\n

11am:<\/em> Farage and Yusuf hold their press conference.<\/p>\n

11.30am:<\/em> Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.<\/p>\n

As I explained earlier this month, we are no longer going to have comments open below the line on this blog. From today, if you want to contact me, or anyone else writing the blog when I am not here, please email politics.live@theguardian.com. You can use this to flag up corrections, comments for publication, questions or complaints. There is a longer post here about how we hope this will work.<\/p>\n

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Updated at\u00a004.57 EDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Key events Green leader Zack Polanski accuses government of ‘gross negligence’ over climate crisis With parts of Britain set to experience their fifth heatwave of the summer this week, Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, has accused the government of not recognising the severity of the crisis. In a statement, he said: double quotation markWe<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[994,187,3132,134,132,124,2413],"class_list":{"0":"post-51699","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-answers","9":"tag-crisis","10":"tag-farage","11":"tag-labour","12":"tag-live","13":"tag-politics","14":"tag-prisons"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/51700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}