PAROLE BOARD chairman Nick Hardwick faces a grilling from MPs on how the widely criticised decision to free serial sex attacker John Worboys was reached.

Professor Hardwick apologised “unreservedly” today for the board’s failure to inform two of the scores of victims that Mr Worboys’s release was imminent.

He will be questioned about this blunder, as well as the unpopular decision to free the former London black cab driver, by the Commons justice committee.

Mr Worboys was jailed indefinitely in 2009, with a minimum term of eight years, for drugging and sexually assaulting female passengers.

Labour MP Yvette Cooper, who chairs the Commons home affairs committee, urged the board to immediately publish its reasons for freeing him, given his “appalling and vile” crimes.

Mr Worboys was found guilty of 19 charges of drugging and sexually assaulting 12 women, one of whom he raped.

But police said in 2010 that his alleged victims totalled 102 after more people came forward following his conviction.

Specialist abuse lawyer Richard Scorer from Slater Gordon, which represented 11 victims, said the board must reveal whether Mr Worboys has admitted the crimes or shown remorse.

“We are concerned he may have fooled the board into believing he is no longer a threat,” he said.

“For many years after he was convicted, he continued to deny even the offences for which he was found guilty.”

Many of Mr Worboys’s victims were young women who had been out drinking in the West End and Chelsea.

Claiming he had just scored a big lottery win, he invited the women to celebrate with him by drinking champagne — spiked with strong sedatives — before sexually attacking them in his taxi.

The board’s decision sparked an outcry from charities and support groups when it was made public yesterday.

Rape Crisis South London chief executive Yvonne Traynor said: “It feels far too soon for this dangerous and manipulative perpetrator to be released into the public having served this woefully short time in prison.”

Sarah Green from the End Violence Against Women Coalition suggested that the decision to release Mr Worboys “was the product of a justice system and a society that cannot and perhaps will not deal with rape.”