Rory Stewart

speaker

24,884 appearances 92 recordings 4 series first heard Nov 2025 last heard yesterday

Rory Stewart’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 — 92 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 16.

Appearances

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The Rest Is Politics · 562. The Right’s War With Itself and Burnham’s Prisons Challenge · 12 Aug 2026 podcast

Alistair, just before we go to the break, um, there was a really interesting question. voice-verified

Elke, given the difficulties around the early release scheme, practically speaking, why haven't governments generally built a few new prisons? voice-verified

And Dominique from London about questions about women's prisons. voice-verified

But the the key here, I guess, Alistair, as I hand over to you, is that voice-verified

Sir David Gork did this report in which he argued for early release from prisons. voice-verified

And he made a number of arguments. voice-verified

Um one of them is actually about re-offending. voice-verified

And one of them, of course, is the fact that our prisons are absolutely chock full. voice-verified

And unless we start releasing people from prison, there's simply not going to be any room to accommodate any prisoners. voice-verified

And Andy Burnham stepped into this. voice-verified

He's tried to voice-verified

push back on it. voice-verified

Um we're actually speaking today when today programme it was announced that he was going to ask for uh the killers of a police officer to be exempted from this scheme and it's becoming a really live issue for reform and Conservatives. voice-verified

Um many issues, but over to you. voice-verified

Yeah. voice-verified

And and the the problems that we're facing are pretty fundamental. voice-verified

I mean I I was the prisons minister, so I was right in the heart of this question of capacity building new prisons. voice-verified

I mean the first thing is when people talk about prisons being uh overcrowded, voice-verified

They're already massively overcrowded. voice-verified

We're already keeping two prisoners in cells which the Victorians built for one. voice-verified

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