Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg has accused Andy Burnham of being more interested in buses than in the legislation on the early release of prisoners.
Speaking on GB News he said: “The 2026 Sentencing Act: No doubt at the forefront of your mind, something that you have been considering since it was passed.
“But unfortunately, the new prime minister hasn’t been, and this is one of the problems with government of parachuting somebody in who’s been running the buses marvellously in Manchester.
“‘Any more fares’ may be his favourite line.
“But he didn’t know that there was an Act of Parliament that was going to mean from the 2nd September hundreds of dangerous criminals were going to be released after a third rather than half their sentence.
“It has come to him like a bolt from the blue, one of Zeus’s thunderbolts striking the gleam off his immediate and new premiership.
“Unfortunately, this is what government is like: that decisions need to be taken based on a whole range of pieces of information, of moving parts, of difficult balancing acts between funding things and between keeping the country safe.
“But unfortunately, our new prime minister has been out of it. He’s been too far away. He’s been too devolved to be aware of what was going on.
“And then you have a scandal that potentially the murderers of a brave policeman could be freed early because of the way that the law was drafted, which of course, Burnham wasn’t in Parliament to see, to debate, to understand, or to have views on.
“And now that law is about to come into force, and Parliament isn’t sitting. So it’s very nice not to have any scrutiny. Very nice not to have to answer difficult, awkward, pertinent questions from elected representatives.
“But it also means it’s very hard to change the law because to do so you would have to bring back people in an emergency, give them notice, cancel their holidays, upset all your backbenchers who are sunning themselves on the Costa del Sol, and really make a thorough nuisance of yourself because you weren’t aware of what was going on.
“It’s very unfortunate. Prisons are a serious problem. We haven’t got enough prison spaces. We need more. Perhaps we could be using some of those camps that are being used for illegal immigrants to house lower-risk prisoners.
“Instead, we’re going to release dangerous people onto the streets on the 2nd September. And Andy Burnham’s pause will prove to be completely ineffective because the law is already passed.”