Nearly 900,000 offences including murder, kidnap, and child rape, have been committed by people on bail in England and Wales since the Conservatives came to power, a new analysis has found. The latest government figures show more than 20,000 offences were committed by those released from custody as they awaited a hearing, equating to 55 offences a day. More than 7,200 sexual offences, including some committed against children as young as 12, were also committed by people on bail since 2010, of which 260 were committed in the last recorded year of 2021. The data, released to Labour after a parliamentary question, came as the Ministry of Justice launched a review of London probation services after they were condemned for a lack of staff and poor management. Labour has seized upon the figures, as Keir Starmer attempts to reinforce the message to voters that it is now the natural party of law and order. The shadow justice secretary, Steve Reed, said: “Dangerous criminals must not be left to roam the streets and prey on new victims. “Labour is the party of law and order. We will increase the number of lawyers allowed to serve as crown prosecutors to slash the courts backlog. In government, we will prevent crime, punish criminals and protect victims to keep our communities safe.” A number of people accused of murder have been released on bail this year because of delays in the criminal justice system and strike action by criminal barristers. In September, four people on trial for the fatal stabbing of 40-year-old Keith Green were released on bail after a judge refused to extend the time they could be kept in custody pending trial during the strike. Judge Ian Pringle, the recorder of Oxford, was asked to extend the period the accused could be held on remand beyond the six-month limit but refused to do so. Pringle pointedly remarked on the current state of the criminal courts and the government’s failure to remedy it. He said the government had made “virtually no … reforms” to legal aid funding. It was part of a series of refusals by judges to extend custody time limits (CTLs) in cases affected by the barristers’ strike. Judges in Leicester, Bolton, Manchester and Isleworth, west London, all recently refused to extend CTLs, raising fears about potentially dangerous people being released. In one such case, at Bristol crown court, Judge Peter Blair QC blamed “chronic underfunding” for delays, the Law Society Gazette reported. According to the data, 20,121 offences were committed by people on bail in 2021, while 874,621 were committed between 2010 and 2021. A total of 265 sexual offences were committed by people awaiting a hearing in 2021, while 7,219 were committed over 11 years to 31 December 2021. The independent review of London probation would be led by a senior MoJ official, the government said on Thursday, after the service was condemned by the chief inspector of probation, Justin Russell, for “shocking” standards. A government spokesperson said: “Bail decisions are made by independent judges and the police, not the government, but anyone who commits a crime while on bail faces a tougher sentence and we have strengthened bail requirements to protect victims. “Since 2010 we have also driven up average sentence lengths almost every year and increased convictions by 15%. And we are going further to improve our justice system, by recruiting an extra 20,000 police officers, creating 20,000 additional prison places and investing almost half a billion pounds to reduce the number of outstanding crown court cases.”