Badenoch urges Burnham to cancel prisoners’ early release scheme – UK politics live

The Conservative party leader said that Labour’s plan allows for too many serious offenders to be freed earlyBack to the Kemi Badenoch press conference, and the Conservative leader made an uncharacteristic statement when speaking to journalists this morning; she apologised for the record of the last government.It was quite fleeting, but it was definitely an apology. She said:On the crisis in prison places, this has been a long time coming. We did some things, as I said [see 10.11am], it wasn’t enough, and I’m sorry about that.But I can’t fix the past, but what I can do is come up with solutions for now, and for tomorrow.This was something which we were doing in government. We had plans to rent prison places, just like Sweden has done with Estonia, so that we didn’t have to just release these sorts of violent criminals early. We could have put them in other countries.Reform UK has long argued that Britain needs a technical and vocational renaissance alongside a genuine skills revolution.For too long, the philosopher has been valued more than the plumber. We welcome any effort to rebalance the scales, but we’ve been here before. Successive prime ministers have promised parity of esteem and failed to deliver.Spot the difference: “A new ‘T-level’ system, which overhauls how technical education is taught and administered, aims to put the courses on an equal footing with academic work,” announced in Philip Hammond’s 2017 budget … “We need finally to do what we always promise we will — to elevate practical and technical qualifications, so that we recognize their immense value to society and to the individual,” Boris Johnson, 2019 … “Technical education is not given the respect it deserves but today, I am changing all of that, pulling one of the biggest levers we have to change the direction of our country,” Rishi Sunak in 2023 as he announced plans for a British baccalaureate … “While you will never hear me denigrate the aspiration to go to university, I don’t think the way we currently measure success in education — that ambition to get 50 per cent of kids to uni — I don’t think that’s right for our times,” Keir Starmer, 2025 … “That’s why today we’re putting technical education back where it belongs — not as a second thought, but as a first choice,” Andy Burnham, 2026. Continue reading...