The government has this afternoon unveiled its response to the Streatham terrorist incident on Sunday – which saw a man recently released for terror offences stab civilians in south London. Speaking in the Chamber, Justice Secretary Robert Buckland said that the government will table emergency legislation to end automatic early release for convicted terrorists. Under the plans, terror offenders will only be considered for release if they have served two-thirds of their sentence rather than half and then it will be subject to the approval of the parole board. Crucially, this will retrospectively end automatic early release for 220 convicted terrorists who are currently behind bars.
Explaining the decision, Buckland said:
‘We cannot have the situation, as we saw tragically in yesterday’s case, where an offender – a known risk to innocent members of the public – is released early by automatic process of law without any oversight by the Parole Board.We
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