The Prime Minister announced that no prisoners will be released early until an 'urgent review' is completed

Andy Burnham's plan to pause all early prison releases has been dismantled by Gareth Davies, declaring he has "no plan" and has so far faced "no scrutiny".

Speaking to GB News, the Shadow Exchequer to the Treasury questioned how the Prime Minister will execute the pause on releases while Parliament is in recess.

Mr Davies argued: "We're not clear on what this pause is, by the way. How is he going to stop it? It's a piece of legislation. Is he going to scrap the act? Is he going to change the act? How is he going to do it?

"We're on recess, it's not very clear. Nick Timothy on our side has written to his counterpart to ask, we need more detail on how you're actually going to pause this situation."

The Tory MP stressed that the early releases are set for September, and the Act of Parliament on the scheme is "very clear".

He told GB News: "I'm not sure what a pause is. This is happening in September, we've got an Act of Parliament that's very clear and we're on recess.

"So I don't know what the plan is, that's for the Government to set that out. Again, there's no scrutiny. We have no idea."

Asked by host Stephen Dixon on whether the Tories would support Parliament being "recalled" to resolve the issue, Mr Davies pointed out that the Tories had called for an extension to the Parliamentary term before recess.

He explained: "We actually did ask and put down a motion to extend the Parliamentary term. We had a motion in front of the House for the Wednesday before we broke up to say, look, we haven't got scrutiny of this new Prime Minister, we have no idea what his plan for the country is.

"Let's just bring him to the house let's get some questions to him, and he can answer about his plan for taxation, about the economy, about prisons, about early release - just a bit of scrutiny, and he rejected that.

"They actually took the motion off the agenda altogether, they didn't even vote against it, they just took the whole thing off. So we just need more scrutiny of this Prime Minister who keeps dodging questions."

Asked by Ellie whether the Government needs to now consider looking at "Nightingale prisons" rather than early release, Mr Davies made clear that they should be looking at a "number of options".

He said: "We should look at a range of options. We've been talking for a long time about the foreign national offenders, some 10,000 offenders that are in our jails that we'd like to see removed to free up space.

"There are things that you can do in addition to that, such as temporary accommodation for our prisoners as well, so it's for the Government to really set those out.

"But very clearly, we should not be releasing after just a third of their term the most serious offenders onto our streets, rapists, paedophiles violent criminals. We should not be doing that."

Criticising Mr Burnham's first week in Downing Street and the measures put forward so far, Mr Davies made clear that although some plans are "good", he must stop "thinking like a Mayor" and see the "bigger picture".

He told GB News: "There are reports about approval of Jackdaw and Rosebank, that's very much welcome, this is something we've been calling for for a long time.

"We've got a temporary pause on the Sentencing Act, let's see the detail of that, but again, it's something we've been warning about for a long time on this early release of prisoners.

"And if he takes action on that, that's a good thing. I think it's okay to say that from time to time, but let's be clear, there's a lot of issues going on in the country and around the world, and his biggest answer so far is a £2 bus cap. This is not serious.

"He's still acting like the Mayor of Manchester. He's the Prime Minister of the G7 economy and nuclear power. We've got businesses that are being hammered by taxation.

"He needs to zoom out, get a bigger picture of what's going on in the country and start acting on those very big issues."