Escaped prisoner: search continues for terror suspect Daniel Abed Khalife, who broke free from London prison – live | UK news

The shadow chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, Pat McFadden, raised concerns in the Commons over Daniel Abed Khalife’s escape from HMP Wandsworth and asked for an update on the search.

He asked whether chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster Oliver Dowden has questioned why a “terror suspect like Mr Khalife was being held at a lower category security prison like Wandsworth in the first place”, PA reports.

Dowden replied:

The lord chancellor has asked for an urgent investigation working with the Prison Service to find out the exact circumstances of what happened in respect of this escape.

Clearly the initial law enforcement response will be led by the Home Office but I will be working with the lord chancellor, with the home secretary and others to ensure that we rapidly apprehend this individual and we learn the lessons of what led to this in the first place.

McFadden raised reports that Khalife escaped from a prison kitchen by clinging to a delivery van.

Dowden replied:

If it was the case that the individual escaped in those circumstances that clearly should not have happened and I know that my right honourable friend takes it very seriously indeed and will of course update the house on the outcome of the investigation and of course the home secretary will update the house alongside the lord chancellor on steps to apprehend the individual.

What we know so far – summary

Responding to Daniel Abed Khalife’s escape, the Prison Officers Association (POA), has highlighted staffing shortages and budget cuts.

Mark Fairhurst, the POA national chair, said:

Wandsworth is one of the largest prisons in the country and is overcrowded and under resourced. The chronic staffing shortages and lack of adequate training for staff highlight the need for an urgent review of how our prisons are run. We await the results of an internal investigation so we may ensure this is not repeated.

Steve Gillan, the POA general secretary, said:

No one ever wants to see an escape from prison but since 2010 this union has been on record as saying cuts have consequences. 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 1600 prisoners at that establishment.

The POA wants an urgent royal commission to be set up for the entire criminal justice system to prevent further deterioration.

The Labour MP Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, when talking to Nick Ferrari from LBC about the prisoner escape at Wandsworth prison, has said the government “sat on their hands”.

Allin-Khan said she raised concerns with the justice secretary about the unsafe staffing levels and the unsanitary condition of Wandsworth prison, last December.

Aubrey Allegretti, the Guardian’s senior political correspondent, has our latest report on the situation.

An investigation is under way into why a former soldier accused of terrorism who is now on the run was held in a lower-security prison, a cabinet minister has said.

Michelle Donelan, the science secretary, said the government’s ‘top priority’ was tracking down Daniel Khalife, who absconded from HMP Wandsworth on Wednesday morning by clinging to the bottom of a delivery van.

She said the investigation launched by the justice secretary, Alex Chalk, would look at ‘all the contributing factors’ to discover how Khalife could have escaped, including ‘checking that he was in the correct facility’.

You can read the full report below:

The head of the Metropolitan police’s counter-terrorism command, Dominic Murphy, said the force was following urgent inquiries to “locate and detain” Daniel Abed Khalife as quickly as possible.

Murphy said:

I want to reassure the public that we have no information which indicates, nor any reason to believe, that Khalife poses a threat to the wider public.

You can watch the full video below.

Speaking to Sky news, the shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, says there are “grave questions” about how Daniel Abed Khalife, who was awaiting trial for terrorism and Official Secrets Act offences, was able to escape prison.

The Labour MP Dr Rosena Allin-Khan described the Wandsworth prison escape as a “mess of the government’s making”.

In a tweet, she said the prison was the fourth most overcrowded in the country and that she was told that less than half of shifts were filled.

Talking about the poor oversight, she added:

This prison also recently went four days without water recently.

The technology secretary, Michelle Donelan, said it wasn’t “helpful” to draw a link between over-capacity, understaffing, and this recent prison escape until there had been a “thorough investigation”.

She told ITV’s Good Morning Britain programme:

We can’t say why this happened until we’ve got the results of that investigation.

I don’t think it’s helpful to get into a hypothetical of what was the cause, or what allowed this individual to evade the system and manage to escape.

That’s why we’ve got to have that thorough investigation. And then, of course, whatever that flags up, those lessons need to be learned, that changes need to be made, mitigations need to be put in place so that we don’t have this happen again.

Police appeal for public’s help to find escaped prisoner Daniel Abed Khalife