Dominic Casciani

speaker

321 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 27 Aug

Dominic Casciani’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

Newscast · Andy Burnham Pauses Prison Early Release Plan · 23 Jul 2026 podcast

That's right.

I mean, the old system, which was called SDS 40, which basically meant that on an emergency basis, an awful lot of lower level offenders were getting out at the 40% mark.

That was to ease those pressures, because without that, the practical reality that the Starmer government was facing in the summer of 24 – and remember, we had the riots then as well –

was that literally the courts were on the edge of deciding not to actually jail people because there was nowhere to send them.

And that meant in turn, the police may have been under pressure to stop charging people.

And that meant crimes wouldn't be solved.

I mean, it's a whole like sausage factory going on here.

You have to move these people through the system.

I think the interesting thing is, is where does the PM go now?

from now on this.

So the plan is there in primary legislation.

So if Andy Burnham doesn't like this plan, and he wasn't an MP when this went through, we'd have to have a recall of Parliament or wait until MPs are back in the autumn to completely unpick this.

What's an extraordinary situation that would be, the government reversing a major piece of legislation like that.

But the one thing he can do

at the moment is pause the timetable for these releases because that's being done under those legendary secondary ministerial powers where they can get on with the detail without bothering.

Well, what Andy Burnham has said this afternoon in the statement is that keeping the public safe will always be my top priority.

I'm working closely with the new Justice Secretary, that's Alex Norris, and have instructed my team to put a pause on the changes that were due to start in September.

No prisoners will be let out under this policy until we've concluded an urgent review and done everything we can.

to minimise the risk to the public.

Where changes are needed, we will not hesitate to make them.

Showing 261–280 of 321 · page 14 of 17