Police have launched a manhunt after another foreign criminal was released from prison by mistake.

The Met Police said officers were carrying out “urgent enquiries” to locate the 24-year-old Algerian man, who was released in error from HMP Wandsworth last Wednesday.

It comes just weeks after migrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu, who arrived in the UK on a small boat, was also mistakenly released from HMP Chelmsford.

It leaves Justice Secretary David Lammy under fire, after he promised to put in place extra checks to prevent similar cases in the future.

During Prime Minister’s Questions, Lammy, who was standing in for Sir Keir Starmer as deputy PM, was repeatedly asked whether any other asylum-seeking offender had been accidentally let out of prison since Kebatu was released but refused to answer.

Shortly after PMQs ended, the Met Police released a statement revealing a foreign prisoner had been released by mistake last Wednesday, with the force informed on Tuesday.

The BBC has been told the Algerian man is not an asylum seeker and that Lammy was informed overnight about the accidental release.

Prison sources said it would have been irresponsible for him to talk about the incident during PMQs because the detail surrounding the case is “incredibly complex”, with multiple agencies involved and new information emerging constantly over the past 24 hours.

Shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge, who was deputising for Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, asked the same question several times during PMQs but Lammy repeatedly avoided answering.

Instead, he attacked the Conservative Party’s record in government, telling Cartlidge: “Let me just remind him that he was a justice minister that allowed our prisons to get to this state in the first place and it’s now for us to fix the mess that we’ve got into.”

At the end of the session, Cartlidge revealed the Telegraph newspaper was reporting another foreign offender had been mistakenly released from prison.

A Met Police spokesperson said: “Shortly after 13:00hrs on Tuesday 4 November, the Met was informed by the Prison Service that a prisoner had been released in error from HMP Wandsworth on Wednesday, 29 October.

“The prisoner is a 24-year-old Algerian man.

“Officers are carrying out urgent enquiries in an effort to locate him and return him to custody.”

In a statement after PMQs, Lammy said he was “absolutely outraged and appalled” by the mistaken release.

“The Metropolitan Police is leading an urgent manhunt, and my officials have been working through the night to take him back to prison.

“Victims deserve better and the public deserve answers. That is why I have already brought in the strongest checks ever to clamp down on such failures and ordered an independent investigation, led by Dame Lynne Owens to uncover what went wrong and address the rise in accidental releases which has persisted for too long.”

He added that the latest incident “exposes deeper flaws across the failing criminal justice system we inherited”.

Some 262 prisoners in England and Wales were mistakenly released in the year leading up to March 2025, according to the latest figures, up 128% from 115 the previous year.