Angela Rayner has said that having fewer criminals serve sentences in prison is not “softening crime” and insisted people would be safe under the plans.

“We’ve put over a billion pounds extra into fighting crime, and we inherited a disastrous situation where our prisons were at creaking point – where we’d have had to have turned away serious offenders because we wouldn’t have had the prison places to house them.

“So we put in a programme, a system, so that we can – if people are well behaved and deemed not a risk – that they could be tagged and supported in the community.

“So it’s not softening crime. It’s about making sure we build the prisons we need. We’ve got the bobbies on the beat, and we’re making sure that people are safe in their communities.”

Asked if police would have enough funding to deliver on Labour’s goals, she said: “We put more money into policing. We know that we also need to look at how we modernise policing, and we also need to make sure that our prison system can cope with the demand.”

Angela Rayner said the Government’s new planning reforms “won’t be bulldozing over the greenbelt” to build homes faster.

Asked how much land released in the new National Housing Delivery Fund would be greenfield sites at a new housing development visit near Didcot, Oxfordshire, the Deputy Prime Minister told the PA news agency: “I can’t confirm how much of the greenbelt (will be used), but we’ve been very clear on the rules around greenbelt release.

“It’s greybelt, as we’ve designated (it), which is old disused car parks like garages, so it won’t be bulldozing over the greenbelt just to reassure people on that.

“There’s really strict golden rules that will apply to that as we build out and make sure that we build the homes that people desperately need.”

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch “is going to go, probably this year”, Boris Johnson‘s former aide has forecasted.

In a Sky News interview, Dominic Cummings said: “Kemi is going to go, probably this year.”

He added: “There’s already people who are organising to get rid of her, and I think that that will work. If it doesn’t work this year, it will definitely happen after next May.

“She’s a goner, so there’s going to be a big transition there.”

Nigel Farage could “definitely” become prime minister at the next general election, Dominic Cummings has declared.

Boris Johnson‘s former chief adviser told Sky News: “It could definitely happen now, yeah, because the old system’s just so completely broken.

“If he does what I’m suggesting and actually sets out a path for how Reform is going to change, how Reform is going to bring in people, how it’s structurally going to alter, what it’s going to build, how it is going to do policy, how it can recruit MPs, etc.

“If he does that, then there’ll be a huge surge of interest and support into the whole thing.”

Conservative shadow work and pensions secretary Helen Whately has said Labour “are the guys who are in Government now” as she urged ministers to “take responsibility” on prison capacity.

On Times Radio, Ms Whately said: “I think the Government needs to sort this out and make sure that there is the prison space for people who need to be in custodial sentences and take responsibility – they are the guys who are in Government now.”

Asked what the Tories had planned, she later said: “I wasn’t clearly prisons minister myself, but I know that we were working on expanding jail capacity, but the Labour Party won the general election. Their job when they were in opposition was to come up with the policies of what they wanted to do when they got in charge.

“And as far as I can see – and clearly my area is the Department for Work and Pensions and welfare, what’s very clear in welfare is that we’ve got a Government that has come into power but they haven’t got a plan for what they want to do on welfare.”

Ms Whately referred to a “partial U-turn or potentially a full U-turn on the winter fuel payment – chaos on that” and added: “So, it’s a Government that simply doesn’t know what it’s doing.

“That’s clearly the situation on welfare, and I think it is across the board.”

Housing minister Matthew Pennycook has said that “we can’t build our way out of” prison capacity pressures in the short term.

Responding to police chiefs’ warnings that sentencing reforms could put pressure on frontline services, Mr Pennycook told Times Radio: “The risk to public safety I’d highlight is the prospect of our prison system collapsing, which is what we face and why we’ve had to act.”

He had earlier said: “What we were handed by the previous government in terms of the state of our prison system was nothing short of criminal neglect. They added just 500 places to the prison estate in their time in office, while at the same time, sentence lengths rose, and as a result, we got the prison population rising by approximately 3,000 people each year.

“And we’re heading back to zero capacity. If we run out of capacity, courts will be forced to suspend trials, the police will have to halt arrests, crimes will go unpunished.

“We’ll essentially be in a breakdown of law and order, so while we’re trying to add prison places as fast as we can as a Government – and we’ve already created 2,400 since taking office, allocated an additional £4.7 billion to prison building, putting us on track to hit 14,000 places by 2031, we can’t build our way out of this particular crisis we’ve inherited because demand for places will outstrip supply.

“So sentencing reform is necessary, and we’re taking steps to ensure the most dangerous offenders are kept off our streets and that offenders who are released early are tagged and are monitored closely in the community – there’s an increase of £700 million in probation funding to achieve that.”

Police chiefs and MI5 have called for the Government to give them enough funding amid pressures from the latest plans to release prisoners early.

The heads of the Metropolitan Police, MI5 and the National Crime Agency were among those who warned that plans to release prisoners early could be “of net detriment to public safety” in a letter to the Ministry of Justice.

They also argued they would need the “necessary resources” in the upcoming spending review to deal with the plan’s impacts and maintain order, The Times reported.

“We have to ensure that out of court does not mean out of justice, and that out of prison does not mean out of control,” they said in a letter sent before the formal announcement.

Sir Sadiq Khan has backed calls for the possession of small quantities of natural cannabis to be decriminalised.

The Mayor of London said a new report by the independent London Drugs Commission (LDC) had provided “a compelling, evidence-based case” for decriminalisation and urged the Government to consider the move.

Set up by Sir Sadiq in 2022 and chaired by former lord chancellor Lord Charlie Falconer, the LDC found the current laws on cannabis were “disproportionate to the harms it can pose” following a study of how the drug is policed around the world.

Sir Sadiq said: “I’ve long been clear that we need fresh thinking on how to reduce the substantial harms associated with drug-related crime in our communities.

“The LDC report makes a compelling, evidenced-based case for the decriminalisation of possession of small quantities of natural cannabis which the Government should consider.

“It says that the current sentencing for those caught in possession of natural cannabis cannot be justified given its relative harm and people’s experience of the justice system.

“We must recognise that better education, improved healthcare and more effective, equitable policing of cannabis use are long overdue.”

The Government is seeking to give a boost to smaller developers with faster planning decisions and financial backing to speed up building new homes.

It will set out the detail of proposals to cut red tape and for planning decisions to be shifted away from councillors and towards expert officers as part of efforts to meet Labour’s pledge to build 1.5 million homes by 2029-30.

Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary Angela Rayner said it was time to “level the playing field” for smaller housebuilders.

“Smaller housebuilders must be the bedrock of our Plan for Change to build 1.5 million homes and fix the housing crisis we’ve inherited – and get working people on the housing ladder.

“For decades the status quo has failed them and it’s time to level the playing field.

“Today we’re taking urgent action to make the system simpler, fairer and more cost effective, so smaller housebuilders can play a crucial role in our journey to get Britain building.”