Rishi Sunak faced off against Sir Keir Starmer in the first PMQs since ENatalie Elphicke’s defection last week.
The Prime Minister was branded by Starmer a “jumped up-milk monitor” obsessed with “confiscating lanyards”.
The Labour leader accused the PM of trying to grant high-risk criminals early release, but Mr Sunak told MPs serious offenders would not be freed from jail early as part of a Government bid to cut overcrowding.
The SNP’s Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn, demanded that Sunak apologises for comparing Scottish people to war criminal Vladimir Putin.
PMQs came amid a fresh crackdown on culture war issues, with a ban to be introduced on children under nine being taught sex education and about gender identity.
Policing minister Chris Philp said the new measures are expected to come into force soon.
Speaking today, he also called on police forces to increase the use of stop and search as part of tougher measures to tackle knife crime.
PM’s sex education plan to spark homophobia in schools, critics say
Rishi Sunak ‘shocked’ by Slovak PM shooting
The incident took place in the town of Handlova, some 150 kilometres northeast of the capital Bratislava, after a government meeting.
Rishi Sunak has taken to social media to send his support to the Slovak PM.
‘Sex education restriction is ill-informed and war noise,’ schools’ unions say
The National Education says there are many areas of concern in the new sex education restrictions.
The crackdown hasn’t been well received among unions who claim education about sex and about positive relationships is already being delivered in an age-appropriate way.
The Union’s general secretary Daniel Kebede has accused the “ill-informed” PM of causing culture war noise.
Mr Kebede added: “Schools need clear and constructive support about how to respond to the issues children and young people face, read about online and chat about in the playground. Primary-aged children pick up information online and need the opportunity to discuss puberty and relationships and their bodies with trusted adults.
“Issues such as domestic violence can affect children from a young age and it is irresponsible to shut this conversation out until teenage years. We must also challenge widespread patterns like sexual bullying and homophobic bullying which start in primary, and all children must have the language to help them make disclosures where needed.”
Labour: ‘Sex education in schools should be age appropriate’
The opposition party has spoken up about the Conservative’s plan to ban sex education on children under nine.
A Labour spokesman said: “We have always said that sex education in schools should be age appropriate.
“Clearly there are materials that are not appropriate when it comes to teaching younger children.
“We will obviously have to wait and see the detail of what the guidance says, and it is right that parents know what their children are being taught, that schools show parents the materials that are being used in lessons, which is a requirement that already exists.”
He added: “On gender identity, again we will have to wait and see what the guidance actually says, but I would just point out that the Gender Recognition Act is the law of the land.
“It is the law in this country that you can choose to identify in a different gender to the one that you were born in, so we will have to see what the guidance comes forward with and what that means in practical terms.”
Prison governors can veto early releases
No 10 has announced prison governors can still block early releases under the government scheme.
A Downing Street spokesperson said: “Prison governors and the probation service have a veto which we fully expect them to use to block any offender moving onto licence before their release date if they could pose an increased risk to the public.
“Governors are obviously best placed to take these individual judgments in combination with the probation service, but they have a specific veto on top of the automatic exclusion that will apply to anyone who is convicted of a sexual, terrorist or serious violent offence.”
The scheme is only for offenders “right at the very end” of their sentence, he said, refusing to comment on “individual cases”.
PM defends early release scheme
Downing Street says that letting some offenders out of jail early and slapping serious criminals with longer sentences are “two sides of the same coin”.
An official spokesman said: “We are taking action to lock up the worst offenders for longer and in order to ensure that we can put the worst offenders away for longer.
“We must make sure that there are sufficient spaces to lock up the most dangerous criminals.”
Exclusive: Rishi Sunak warned stoking culture wars won’t save the Tories
Pollsters tell PM that right-wing rhetoric on sex education in schools is ‘not a winning strategy’ while Starmer lampoons him as ‘jumped-up milk monitor’ over plans to ban rainbow lanyards.
In full: What is the prison early release scheme?
- The Emergency Prison Release Scheme is based on a legislation that allows charged criminals to be released before their sentences are due.
- It applies to prisoners serving sentences with the opportunity to be released at halfway through.
- It means they can be released 18 days earlier than their actual release date.
- People convicted of sexual offenses, terrorist offences, serving more than 4 years for violence, licence recalls and those of Category A status are not eligible.
- The scheme was originally set to run for two weeks with the hopes of making 200 spaces available in prisons.
- The legislation came as an emergency response to the overcrowding in England prisons.
Labour vows to scrap early release scheme
The Labour Party has promised it would scrap the Government’s prison early release scheme.
A party spokesman said: “Of course we would want to end this policy as soon as possible but as I say, the honest answer is that we are under no illusion about the scale of the challenge we will face when it comes to the prison capacity crisis that we will inherit, should we be privileged enough to win the next election.
“But it isn’t right. In fact, it is an injustice to see prisoners being released from prison earlier than an independent court has intended simply because there isn’t the estate space for them.”
‘PM using migration to solve problems gov doesn’t want to deal with,’ says migration advisor
The graduate visa route is currently being debated at the Home Affairs Committee following the publication of an emergency report.
Migration Advisory Committee chair Professor Brian Bell told the committee cutting the graduate visa would negatively affect universities.
He slammed the government for using immigration “to solve problems politicians don’t want to deal with”.
He added: “We’re crippling universities on the domestic fee side, we don’t fund research so the only way to break even – not to make a profit – is to bring in more international students and charge them a lot,” he told the committee this morning.
“Until that funding model is solved, we need to deal with the funding – politicians have driven universities to this.”
