Shadow Business Secretary Kevin Hollinrake has criticised the Government for releasing more prisoners early to ease overcrowding.
He said on GB News: “There's no way that prisons should be released if they're a danger to society…the fact that some of these prisoners can be released when serving longer sentences is quite wrong, in my view.
“We need to deliver more prison places…and it was a mess last time, when Labour released prisoners, including 37 prisoners who weren't supposed to be released.
“They've got to be able to do their job more competently and we did see some flaws last time. We believe that prison does work.
“There are some people who are a danger to society so they must be removed from society until they can be shown not to be a danger. I'm not sure Labour have the same view of that.”
On Labour blaming the previous government for overcrowding, he added: “Why did they vote against the extra prison places that we legislated for?
“That's the thing that to me, Labour will always be soft on crime, so we need to be tougher on crime where people are dangerous to society.
“But I think some real questions about how Labour will handle this, in terms of the extra prison places, the 14,000 extra that we had coming down the line, and in terms of releasing people that are dangerous in society, both last time and potentially this time.”
He also said the Government’s workers’ right package will put pressure on businesses: “We're all in favour of workers’ rights. We legislated to increase the availability of flexible working things like parental leave, making sure people could keep all the tips they received from customers.
“We did all that in the last Parliament. What this bill is about is it absolutely smashes small businesses, puts tremendous burdens on small businesses, which could really wipe them out, which will mean fewer small businesses survive, get through this, and fewer start up in the first place.
“But also, crucially, this is really a trade unions’ charter. It gives trade unions massive powers to organise the workforce, to enter workplaces where there's no union members and recruit them, and then lowers, in fact, abolishes the thresholds they need to take people out on strike, to recognise unions and get them out on strike.
“We fear this legislation, which has basically been written by the trade unions, will take us back to the 1970s.”
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