The escape of a former soldier from a London jail has provoked a furious political row with ministers criticised over cuts and staff shortages that have left potentially dangerous inmates in low-security prisons.
With the hunt for Daniel Khalife involving 150 counter-terrorism officers, the police were on Thursday urgently trying to establish whether the 21-year-old had help fleeing from HMP Wandsworth.
Detectives said Khalife, who is facing espionage charges, strapped himself to the bottom of a van, raising questions about the equipment he used and how he was not detected as the vehicle left the prison.
The chief inspector of prisons, the chair of parliament’s justice committee and the prison officers’ union, the POA, all said HMP Wandsworth was known to have staffing issues, adding to pressure on the government over Khalife’s escape on Wednesday morning, which Labour said “beggars belief”.
Khalife’s presence in a category B prison when he has been charged with such serious offences also prompted concerns that other high-risk inmates might not be held in security conditions commensurate with their alleged crimes.
Among the charges he faces is that he may have collected, recorded, published or communicated sensitive information that might have been useful to an enemy, in breach of the Official Secrets Act 1911. The country in question is understood to be Iran, although it is unclear how strong the link is alleged to be.
The head of the Metropolitan police’s counter-terrorism command, Dominic Murphy, said: “If there are people out there in London today, or anywhere else in the UK, who are supporting Daniel and have supported his escape and are continuing to support him to prevent his capture and return to prison, those individuals commit serious criminal offences.”
While the police manhunt involving 150 counter-terrorism officers plus many more from the Met and other forces remained largely focused on London, the government has faced questions about the state of prisons and the criminal justice system more widely.
Charlie Taylor, the chief inspector of prisons, said “there are too many prisoners in Wandsworth for the amount of staff” and that such concerns had been flagged for years. “This is very concerning because Wandsworth had a previous escape in 2019 as well,” he told BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme. “Obviously any prisoner getting out of the jail is extremely rare event. But particularly a prisoner who’s accused of a terrorist offence makes it all worse.
“But to some extent, our concerns about Wandsworth over a number of years make it a jail that’s more likely for this sort of thing to happen. Particularly the lack of staffing which has dogged the prison. I think when we last inspected at the end of 2021. They were 30% short of staff.”
His concerns echoed those of the POA, which said the prison was “overcrowded and under-resourced” with “chronic” staffing shortages and a lack of adequate training.
Steve Gillan, the POA general secretary, said: “You cannot take out £900m from the budget with reduced staffing levels up and down the country and expect the Prison Service to operate as if nothing has happened. Government needs to take responsibility for the decimation of the Prison Service with less staff and more prisoners and Wandsworth is a typical example of what life is like for serving prison officers operating in a stressful and violent workplace with inadequate staff levels caring for over 1,600 prisoners at that establishment.”
More significant for the government was the intervention from the Conservative MP Bob Neill, who chairs the justice committee. He said problems with staffing at Wandsworth and more widely were “a matter of record”, adding: “There is an issue across the Prison Service with retaining experienced staff – we have a large number of comparatively inexperienced staff.”
The MPs’ comments in the Commons came after the justice secretary, Alex Chalk, announced independent investigations into how Khalife escaped, why he was being held in a lower-security prison and whether other high-risk inmates may need to be moved from the jail. He said reviews would look into the placement and categorisation of all inmates at HMP Wandsworth and all held in the custodial estate charged with terrorism offences.
Chalk added: “No stone must be left unturned in getting to the bottom of what happened. Who was on duty that morning? In what roles, ranging from the kitchen to the prison gate? What protocols were in place? Were they followed?”
Defence of the government’s record on prisons came mainly from the prime minister’s official spokesperson who said Rishi Sunak still had confidence in Chalk.
He added: “We recognise the need for more staff and that’s why we’ve increased the workforce by 4,000 since 2017. We’re hiring 5,000 more across the estate in the coming years. We’re also boosting pay by 7%, so the starting salaries have gone from £22,000 to £30,000. And we’re retaining more staff. The resignation rate amongst junior prison officers is down around 2.5% compared to last year.”
Murphy did not rule out Khalife having gone abroad but said that the alert to borders went out relatively quickly on Wednesday morning. The Bidfood van, which he is believed to have strapped himself to the bottom of, left HMP Wandsworth at 7.32am. Khalife was declared missing at 7.50am, police were informed at 8.15am and the van was stopped at 8.37am in Upper Richmond Road. Kingston and Staffordshire, both places Khalife has connections with, are also areas of focus.
Murphy reiterated that Khalife was believed to pose a low threat to the public but, stressing the difficulty of the manhunt, he said the escaper had a skillset different from most people, having trained in one of the best militaries in the world. There have been more than 50 calls from the public but no confirmed sightings.