Transcript of Govt triggers emergency move to avoid prison overcrowding amid sentencing of rioters

A very good morning to you. We start with this morning's breaking news. The government has confirmed that it's activated an emergency plan to avoid overcrowding in jails. Operation Early Dawn is a long-standing but very rarely used contingency plan. It means defendants can be held in police cells and not summoned in court until a space in prison is available. Court dates can be delayed or adhered at short notice. The measures are being put in place in the northeast and Yorkshire. Cumbria and Lancashire, Merseyside and Cheshire, and Manchester regions. There's a close correlation here with areas that have seen the most serious violence during far-right riots. I'm joined by a political crosswind at Mairi Roura. For the significance of this. Mairi, it It's a contingency plan that's rarely used, but has been used actually relatively recently.

Yeah, exactly. That's really indicative of the fact that the prison system has been in a bit of a dire situation for quite a while. As you say, it was used back in May. It's not a brand new scheme. As you outlined, it's important to distinguish the difference between two different initiatives. One was the early release scheme, and this is different. I'm seeing a lot of confusion on social media where people think this is an early release scheme. It's not. It's separate to the early release scheme. It's this Operation Early Dawn, which is essentially making sure that if people are going to be sent to court, there is a prison place waiting for them. If there is no prison place waiting for them, they won't be sent to court until then. They will either be held in police cells or they will be released on bail and then come back to court when there is the space for them in the prison system, were they to be found guilty. That's what this initiative is about. Now, the early release scheme is a It's a completely different thing that was already implemented earlier this summer by the new government, which is expected to kick in on the 10th of September.

That's about releasing prisoners earlier than normal. Normally, potentially, you'd observe half of your sentence, 50% of your sentence, then you'd be released potentially. Whereas now they're reducing that threshold to 40% to allow people to be reduced quicker to essentially get more capacity in the system. As you say, this is partly driven by the massive influx of inmates we've had because of the riots and rioters being jailed. Therefore, suddenly, the prison population has slightly ballooned at a time when there is so little capacity. That is really what's happening here. Now, we've got the government release that's come out this morning. I'll read you a quote here from the National Police Chiefs Council Lead for Custody, Nev Kemp. Now, he says, We're working closely with criminal justice system partners to manage demand in the system and ensure that the public are safe. Policing will continue and will arrest anyone that needs to be arrested in order to keep the public safe, including policing protests and events and ensuring that people are are arrested as expected. What Neve Kemp is trying to argue is, Don't worry, the public will still be safe and people will still be arrested if they are needed to be arrested.

We're not just going to stop arresting people. That's not how this works. The justice system will continue to work. The policing system will continue to work, but this is just a way to make sure that we don't end up with more inmates than beds.

Prime Minister has put his holiday, or at least the extent of his holiday, on pause.

Yeah, it sounds like it. There was a lot of back and forth between number 10 and journalists last week as to whether he was going to go on holiday or not. It looks like the Prime Minister's decided that wasn't going to be a great look. So he's not on holiday at the moment. He's on a visit in Northern Ireland later today, and we'll be able to bring more details on Sky News later, and we should hopefully be able to hear from the Prime Minister.

Nonetheless, I hope he does get some time off. We jump on this. I think he's right to cancel if he was about to travel off to some expensive five-star hotel in a foreign country. To pause that, all things considered. But they can't work 24/7, 360 five days.

This is the thing about politicians. They are always criticized when they go on holiday, if anything's really happening. Look at the damage it did to Dominic Raab when we saw the Taliban taking back over from Kabul, and he was on a beach in Cree, didn't come back as quickly as people said he should have. That really damaged him as a politician and his reputation. So the difficulty is the public always want you to come home if anything happens. The safest thing would be to holiday in the UK. But we haven't always got the best weather for it.

Yeah, well, it's been pretty good, actually, of late. It's been all right. But suddenly, it seems to have temp. What was it like in Prague?

Was Prague last week? So hot, like 36 degrees in a city. Am I allowed to reveal where you went? I already did. It was ridiculously hot.

Hot temperature, cold beer?

Cold beer, hot temperature is a perfect combination.

There we go. It's good to have you back.