News story

9th October 2003

MP Demands Home Office Investigation into Checks on Leyhill Escape

Northavon MP Steve Webb has written to the Home Secretary to demand an investigation into how a dangerous rapist came to be placed in open conditions at Leyhill prison in South Gloucestershire. The man subsequently escaped and went on to assault two women in Oxfordshire before being recaptured. Last month he was convicted of these further assaults and resumed a life sentence in a regular prison. At the trial, the judge said that he was a danger to women and should never have been
held in such a low security setting.

Now Lib Dem MP Steve Webb, who has three prisons in his Northavon Constituency, has written to David Blunkett asking for an investigation into how this man came to be placed at Leyhill.

Steve Webb said:

“I support the principle of open prisons for those who are going to be released shortly anyway, as a means of preparing them for life outside. But community support for open prisons depends on confidence that the people who are sent there are not a risk to the public. The system of vetting people before they are transferred to prisons such as Leyhill clearly went very badly wrong in this case.

I have asked the Home Secretary for a full investigation so that lessons are learned and this kind of thing does not happen again”.