JUSTICE Secretary David Lammy locked the stable door today after announcing measures to tighten prison rules after admitting hundreds of prisoners had been wrongly released.

Extra checks will be carried out in prisons across England and Wales after a migrant sex offender was released in error last week.

The government has ordered governors to carry out new procedures to avoid a repeat of Hadush Kebatu’s mistaken release from HMP Chelmsford on Friday.

Mr Lammy gave a statement to MPs where he blamed the last Tory government for cutting prison budgets in real terms by 24 per cent from 2010-15 and with 30 per cent cuts to prison staff.

“Mr Kebatu’s victims are rightly outraged about what has happened, and I am livid on their behalf,” Mr Lammy said.

He said that it “appears to have been human error” that led to Mr Kebatu being mistakenly freed, and insisted “there must and there will be accountability.”

Mr Lammy also said that release checks have now been put in place and foreign nationals being deported cannot be discharged unless the duty governor is physically present.

The Justice Secretary boasted that by the end of the parliamentary term “there will be 14,000 extra prison places, the largest prison expansion since the Victoria era.”

Downing Street has also insisted that Mr Kebatu, who sexually assaulted a teenage girl, will be deported “imminently.”

Chief inspector of prisons Charlie Taylor said mistakes over prisoner releases are happening “all the time” and are symptomatic of the chaos within the system.

Mr Taylor said prisoners being released early, in error or even late is an “endemic problem” now that needs to be fixed by prison service leaders.