Labour accused of 'taking the side of criminals' after early release of grooming gang ringleader: 'It's not right!'

Labour has been accused of "taking the side of criminals" in a scathing takedown by the Shadow Justice Minister.

Speaking to GB News, Kieran Mullan hit out at Labour's early release prison scheme enabling criminals convicted of rape, sexual assault and grooming to be included.

Reacting to Rochdale grooming gang ringleader Shabir Ahmed being released early, Mr Mullan said it is clear the Government is "choosing sides" with their policy.

He told GB News: "Today we're making it really clear for MPs about the choices that they can make.

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"They can either be on the side of victims, including victims of some of the most horrendous crimes, like rape and child grooming, or they can be on the side of the criminals that are going to be let out."

Stressing the impact on victims of releasing such perpetrators early, Mr Mullan said it is "absolutely devastating" for them.

He said: "Normally those schemes exclude sexual offenders, and the Government is making a choice to not do that on this occasion. They are going to be letting out rapists, paedophiles, child groomers earlier.

"And that's meant that thousands of victims have had letters telling them that the perpetrators that had committed offences against them are going to get out earlier, and that's been absolutely devastating for them for understandable reasons."

Challenging Mr Mullan, host Alex Armstrong argued that the Labour Government would lay blame on the Tories for "not building enough prisons", leading to the need for such early release schemes.

He responded: "I absolutely recognise that there are challenges in our prisons. I'm afraid they're not new, hoing back over many, many decades.

"Absolutely we should have built more prisons during our time in office, and we actually built more than 10,000, but a lot of them also went out of use.

"This is a distraction from the Government because, as I said, there are existing schemes that allow you to release prisoners in the short term."

Mr Mullan accused Labour of "confusing the public" about the "short-term challenge" facing prisons.

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He told GB News: "What the Government is actually doing is making a permanent change to our justice system to allow some of these worst offenders to get out of prison earlier. I don't think that's right.

"And I think they're deliberately confusing the public about the short term challenge that we've got and the long term changes they want to make, which I don't think the public would support of letting out serious offenders like rapists and grooming gang perpetrators out of prison earlier."

Pressed on what the Tories would do to have ringleader Shabir Ahmed deported, the shadow justice minister told GB News: "What we have to do is change the Immigration Act from the 1970s, which at the minute says that if you've been in the country for a significant period of time and you're from a Commonwealth country, then the Government isn't entitled to deport you. So we need to change that law.

"I know that Chris Philp is working on legislation, the exact wording that we would need to use, and we'll bring that to Parliament, and we're going to bring it forward as an amendment to a bill going through Parliament.

"And then we would hope that the Government would ask their MPs to support Conservative MPs and other MPs, I'm sure, from across the House that would want to see that passed."

Shadow Justice Secretary Nick Timothy said Labour had promised early release would not apply to the "most serious, heinous crimes" but had now "broken their word".

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: "This Government is fixing the prison crisis it inherited – building 14,000 more prison places and reforming sentencing so we can always lock up dangerous criminals.

"Without this decisive action, prisons will run out of space entirely as early as November and we will be unable to lock up serious offenders at all."

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