No One Has Ever HUMILIATED David Lammy Like This – He GOES MAD When Asked One Simple Question!

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]Now, Mr. Speaker, overnight the father of the girl assaulted in Epping by Hadush Kebede, the illegal immigrant, released by accident, said the government had failed them relentlessly.

[00:00:13]Now, I confess I'm surprised the Deputy Prime Minister hasn't already apologized.

[00:00:18]So, I'm going to give you an opportunity now. Will he apologize to the family concerned?

[00:00:23]Deputy Prime Minister.

[00:00:25]Well, it's great to see the honorable gentleman in his place. I had expected to see the Shadow Justice Secretary, but nevertheless, I'm pleased to see the honorable gentleman.

[00:00:37]He must have missed He must have missed the debate because in the debate, of course, I said sorry for the anxiety caused whilst Kebede was at large, and I repeat that, and it's hugely important that Dame Lin Homer now gets to the bottom of what has happened with her further investigation.

[00:01:00]Oh, you think that was something? You have not even seen the half of it because this man gets asked the same question five times. Five, and still cannot give a straight answer. Watch the full clip carefully because we are breaking down every single dodge after.

[00:01:14]But before we do, if you are new here, please subscribe. It is completely free.

[00:01:18]Drop your thoughts in the comments below because together we are going to make Britain great again. Now, watch this.

[00:01:24]James Cartlidge.

[00:01:25]Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

[00:01:27]Watching the interview last night, I have to say it was absolutely heartbreaking. And I have to say, Mr. Speaker, I do think he owes it to offer an apology here on the floor of the house.

[00:01:41]But he should have done that at the at the start of his remarks. Mr. Speaker, these are very serious matters, Mr. Speaker, which is why I want to ask him a further very important question.

[00:01:50]Can he reassure the house that since Kebede was released, no other asylum-seeking offender has been accidentally let out of prison?

[00:02:01]Deputy Prime Minister.

[00:02:03]Well, the house is thankfully quiet, so I'm surprised the honorable gentleman didn't hear me when I said that, of course, I apologized and I'm sorry for the anxiety caused. But look, let me just remind him that he was a Justice Minister that allowed our prisons to get to this state in the first place.

[00:02:26]And it's now FOR US TO FIX THE mess that we've got into. It's important that Dame Lin Homer now continue her work and understand what is happening. He knows that early release has begun under their watch in 2021.

[00:02:42]Mr. Speaker.

[00:02:44]These are extremely serious crimes that we are talking about.

[00:02:50]I'm going to ask him the question again.

[00:02:53]Can he reassure the house that since Kebede was released, no other asylum-seeking offender has been accidentally let out of prison? It's a very specific question for him to answer.

[00:03:05]Deputy Prime Minister.

[00:03:07]After his release, I put in place the toughest checks we've ever had in the prison system.

[00:03:17]It is important that Lin Homer is able to get to the bottom of her work. I suspect there'll be more checks and balances we need to do. What we inherited was a complicated system that they set up, letting people out on the sly. That's part of the problem, and we're trying to fix it.

[00:03:36]James Cartlidge. Mr. Speaker, he's the Justice Secretary. He's responsible for the justice system.

[00:03:43]He needs to take responsibility, and I'm asking him a straight question, and I'm going to repeat it once more for the avoidance of doubt because he didn't answer it twice.

[00:03:54]It's He's He's here to answer questions.

[00:03:58]Can he reassure the house that since Kebede was released, no other asylum-seeking offender has been accidentally let out of prison? It's a clear question. Can he give an answer?

[00:04:09]Deputy Prime Minister. Get a grip, MAN.

[00:04:11]I KNOW I'm the Justice Secretary. That's why I'm at the dispatch box also as Deputy Prime Minister. We know that.

[00:04:18]I'm not going to pray in aid. Dame Lin Homer is a former Deputy Commissioner in London, head of the NCA. It is for her to get to the bottom of that work. Of course, we know that there have been spikes since 2021 under his watch. When did he come to this HOUSE AND APOLOGIZE?

[00:04:41]THANK YOU, MR. SPEAKER.

[00:04:44]THE purpose of government is to take I want to hear both.

[00:04:51]Quiet.

[00:04:52]James Cartlidge.

[00:04:54]Mr. Speaker.

[00:04:55]It's getting noisier now, so just in case he didn't hear me.

[00:05:03]He's the Justice Secretary.

[00:05:05]Can he reassure the house that since I will have no gestures from the balcony. Let me reassure you. Don't gesture to me. It's not a wise decision.

[00:05:17]This is important. Prime Minister's questions, all our constituents are listening.

[00:05:23]People in Epping and right across the country want to know the answer, Mr. Speaker.

[00:05:29]So, I'm going to ask him again. He's the Justice Secretary. Can he reassure the house that since Kebede was released, no other asylum-seeking offender has been accidentally let out of prison? Can he answer the question?

[00:05:43]Deputy Prime Minister.

[00:05:46]I've got to tell you, I spent 14 years in opposition, and I did a hell of a lot better than he's just done. I have answered the question. Under their watch, prisons were in a mess.

[00:06:01]Suicides went up. Prison officers CUT.

[00:06:05]20,000 NEIGHBORHOOD polices lost. We've deported more in the last year than they deported in the last 5 years. Please, I'm not going to take any lip from the honorable gentleman.

[00:06:18]Mr. Duras and Mr. Stafford.

[00:06:21]You test my patience each week.

[00:06:23]Today's not the day to test my patience.

[00:06:26]We do have quite a bank holiday, so I certainly wouldn't want to be testing it at the moment.

[00:06:31]James Cartlidge.

[00:06:32]Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

[00:06:34]The public are extremely concerned about what happened in the Kebede case. They want to know there won't be a repeat.

[00:06:43]So, I'm putting to him a very clear question about his responsibilities. I repeat, can he reassure the house that since Kebede was released, no other asylum-seeking offender has been accidentally let out of prison? Can he answer the question?

[00:07:00]Deputy Prime Minister.

[00:07:03]Mr. Speaker.

[00:07:05]Mr. Speaker, I'm looking forward to being up against the member for Newark next time. In 25 years in this house, I've not witnessed a more shameful spectacle, frankly, than what the party opposite left in our justice system. Their criminal negligence on his watch as a former Justice Minister. They left our prisons on the brink of collapse entirely, threatening to allow offenders to run wild on our streets. He knows that. Rape victims waiting years for their day in court. He knows that. Neighborhood policing decimated, leaving our people feeling unsafe in their communities, and they haven't learned a thing. We are tackling knife crime. That's why it's falling.

[00:07:53]13,000 more bobbies we are putting on the streets, kicking out 5,000 foreign criminal offenders. I've got to say to the honorable gentleman, HE SHOULD DO BETTER.

[00:08:07]THANK YOU, MR. SPEAKER. MY CONSTITUENT, Georgia Hart, All right, got it to six. James Cartlidge.

[00:08:19]Order. It is six.

[00:08:25]Six have I got you saying?

[00:08:27]Sorry, I I WAS CORRECT.

[00:08:35]MR. SPEAKER.

[00:08:39]LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, what you just witnessed is a master class in the art of not answering a question. And I want you to appreciate the specific genius of what just happened because it takes real talent, a particular kind of political skill, to be asked the exact same question five times in a row in front of the entire country, and somehow find five completely different ways to say absolutely nothing useful whatsoever.

[00:09:05]That man at the dispatch box is David Lammy, the Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

[00:09:11]And the question he could not answer was not complicated. It was not a trick. It was not ambiguous. It was simply this: Since Hadush Kebede was accidentally released from prison, has any other asylum-seeking offender been accidentally released? Yes or no? Five times. Not once did he answer it. And here is the most spectacular part of the whole thing. While David Lammy was standing there telling Parliament he had put in the toughest checks ever seen in the prison system, police had just admitted that a 24-year-old Algerian man convicted of sex offenses had been accidentally released from HMP Wandsworth and had been at large for a full week before anyone even told the Metropolitan Police. He could not answer the question because the answer was already walking around London unchecked.

[00:09:55]Now, let us make sure everyone understands the full story here because the Kabat two case is not just a bureaucratic mishap. It is not a paperwork error that anyone could sympathize with. Hadush Gerbaba Selassie Kabat two was an Ethiopian asylum seeker who had arrived in England by boat and within just over a week of arriving sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl in Epping. He was convicted and sentenced to 12 months in prison. And then somehow, despite everyone knowing exactly who he was, despite his case having sparked nationwide protests, despite his face being known across the entire country, he was wrongly categorized as a prisoner due to be released on license, handed a £76 discharge grant, and sent to the railway station. He was given spending money on his way out. The man who assaulted a child was handed cash and pointed at a train by the government that promised to fix the justice system. And the victim's family had to watch all of it. The girl said she could not sleep because she was so worried he was going to come back to Epping looking for her. Her father, in an interview that was described in Parliament as absolutely heartbreaking, said the government had failed them relentlessly. He said there had been 17 weeks from the day Kabat two was arrested to the day he was deported, called it disgusting, and said there was no justice system. 17 weeks from assault to deportation for a convicted sex offender who should never have been in the country in the first place. And in those 17 weeks he was accidentally freed, a nationwide manhunt was launched, protests erupted, and an entire family was left terrified in their own town. Now, David Lammy's response to all of this is where things get truly extraordinary in a way that only this government can manage. His answer to the Kabat two scandal, his answer to the escaped prisoner, his answer to the question asked five times in Parliament was essentially the same answer this entire labor government gives to everything. It is the Conservatives' fault. They left a mess.

[00:11:48]They broke the system. We inherited chaos. And yes, to be fair, there is a grain of truth buried somewhere deep inside that defense because the prison system in Britain has been underfunded and overstretched for many years. But here is the thing about that argument.

[00:12:02]The number of prisoners released in error more than doubled in the year to March 2025, rising from 115 to 262, a 128% increase. And analysts directly linked that spike to Labour's own early release scheme, which the government introduced in September 2024.

[00:12:22]They inherited a difficult system and then they made it measurably worse with their own policy, and then they stood at the dispatch box and blamed the people who were no longer in charge. Let us talk about that early release scheme for a moment because it deserves its own paragraph in this story. Labour introduced a scheme to release prisoners earlier than their sentences required in order to reduce prison overcrowding.

[00:12:45]Fine.

[00:12:46]Prison overcrowding is a genuine problem that needs genuine solutions. But thousands of inmates were freed early under this scheme by temporarily reducing the proportion of sentences that some prisoners must serve from 50% to 40%. And a number of the 262 accidental releases in that period happened specifically because of errors introduced when the early release scheme began. So, Labour created a policy to release prisoners earlier. The policy introduced new complexity into an already complicated paper-based system, and the complexity produced more errors.

[00:13:21]And then, when the errors produced a national scandal involving a convicted sex offender wandering around London on a government-issued train fare, David Lammy stood in Parliament and said, "Get a grip, man." The phrase "get a grip" is doing some remarkable heavy lifting in that exchange because the man being told to get a grip asked a completely reasonable question on behalf of the public. The man doing the telling is the Justice Secretary who was somehow unaware that while he was shouting at the opposition, another prisoner had been accidentally released. It was only after Parliament had ended that evening that it emerged a 24-year-old Algerian man convicted of sex offenses had been released in error from HMP Wandsworth, and that the Metropolitan Police had only been informed that very afternoon, a full week after the release happened. So, the man who needed to get a grip was, rather ironically, the man at the dispatch box. And the man calmly asking the same question five times turned out to be the one who had a better grip on the actual situation than the Justice Secretary himself. Now, we need to zoom out a little bit here because this is not just about one case or one prison or one policy. This is about a pattern. This is about a government that came to power promising to fix a broken justice system, promising to restore order, promising to be competent and serious and trustworthy in a way that the previous government was not. And what has actually happened?

[00:14:41]Between July 2025 and the end of the reporting period, this government oversaw the accidental release of 193 prisoners, which works out at five prisoners every single week.

[00:14:54]Five a week. That is not a system that has had a bad day. That is a system that is having a bad year. And the Justice Secretary's response to being asked about it publicly was to refuse to answer, attack the opposition, brag about his own record, and then have to face a completely separate accidental release announced by police while he was still at the dispatch box. You honestly could not write it. What makes this even more richly ironic is that before this parliamentary session, before the Kabat two scandal, before the prison chaos, this government had already managed to lose its Deputy Prime Minister to a scandal of her own.

[00:15:30]Angela Rayner, who had occupied the role of Deputy Prime Minister and was one of Labour's most high-profile figures, resigned in September 2025 after a report found she had breached the ministerial code by underpaying stamp duty on a second home purchase. When in opposition, both Starmer and Rayner had taken a very firm line on Conservative ministers caught up in scandals, promising that any government they led would clean up politics after years of Tory sleaze. Rayner was then replaced by David Lammy as Justice Secretary, who promptly walked into his first big test, a national scandal about a convicted sex offender walking free, and responded by telling Parliament to get a grip while another convicted offender was apparently doing exactly that somewhere in Southwest London. This is the government of integrity. This is the party that was going to fix things.

[00:16:20]This is the clean break from the chaos of the previous administration. And yet here we are with prison escapees, accidental releases, a resigned Deputy Prime Minister, and a Justice Secretary who answered the same question five times with five different non-answers.

[00:16:36]Polling shows that only one in five members of the public believe Keir Starmer will follow through on his promises. And on the basis of what we have just watched, perhaps those four out of five people have been paying close enough attention. If you enjoyed that breakdown, smash that like button, subscribe if you have not already, and drop your thoughts in the comments below. We are going to keep covering this because this government keeps giving us material. See you in the next one.