Reform UK MP Sarah Pochin has criticised the government’s early release scheme for prisoners, saying that the safety of women was being put at risk.

She told GB News: “This is the third wave of early release prisoners. 650 to 700 will be released from prisons today. Amongst them are domestic violence perpetrators, for example, that will be coming out early, free to seek revenge on those brave, brave women that brought their cases to court and got their perpetrators put behind bars in places like Wandsworth, but now at risk.

“How this Labour government can claim to prioritise the safety of women is quite frankly beyond belief, because they don’t have to do this. They could empty these prisons of foreign national offenders, for example, deport them back to their country of origin, and no early release is necessary.”

Asked why she did not vote on the third reading of the government’s Sentencing Bill, she said: “That Sentencing Bill didn’t go far enough. So the practicalities that we’re seeing today: men will be coming out of these prisons untagged.

“When I last did a report from Brixton Prison, the first wave, I made this very point, and I wrote to the Home Office to get confirmation about whether or not prisoners being released are going to be tagged and monitored in the community. They wrote back to me, and they could not deny the fact that there will be prisoners, if you have no fixed abode or if you claim mental health issues, you do not get tagged, so there are going to be dangerous criminals roaming our streets, let out this morning, free, as I say, to re-offend.

“And believe me, these are prisoners that have received up to three years in jail. Those are very nasty, dangerous criminals being released today.”

She added: “This is an utter betrayal. What Reform will do is we will insist that countries take back their criminals. If they don’t, we stop their visas. If they don’t, we stop their foreign aid.

“Why are we still paying foreign aid to countries like Pakistan when you have someone like Shabir Ahmed still roaming our streets, free to roam our streets in this country? One of the key perpetrators of grooming gangs in this country, and Pakistan won’t take him back.

“Why are we still paying them foreign aid? That will all stop under a Reform government.”