Burnham ‘increasingly confident’ PC Harper’s killers will not get early release

Andy Burnham has said he is increasingly confident he can adapt the early release scheme for prisoners to exclude the killers of PC Andrew Harper and other serious offenders, saying he understood and shared the public’s concern about their potential release.

Writing on Facebook, the prime minister said on Tuesday he had asked the justice secretary, Alex Norris, to rapidly push through a series of measures to increase the number of prison places, requiring fewer people to be released early to free up room.

Downing Street said on Monday that there was no feasible way of exempting just a handful of prisoners from the scheme to block the release of Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers, who were sentenced to 13 years for Harper’s manslaughter.

The pair were due to be freed in January under plans to release about 5,000 people early under an emergency plan to create more space in the prison estate in England and Wales.

Exemptions were made for those convicted of rape, serious child sexual abuse and grooming offences, but not manslaughter, prompting pressure to block the release of Harper’s killers, including from police and his family.

No 10 had already changed stance, saying Burnham has asked Norris to “work through further options to keep a greater number of the most serious offenders in prison, including the killers of PC Harper”.

In his Facebook post, Burnham said the early release scheme could be mitigated by expanding prison places in three ways: removing foreign offenders more quickly; finding a way to release lower-risk prisoners stuck in jail on indeterminate sentences; and “making greater use of the entire prison estate including using the female estate for male offenders”.

He wrote: “I am increasingly confident that a more focused approach along these lines will allow us to reduce the number of people released early and, in the case of the most serious offenders like those convicted of the killing of PC Harper, prevent their early release altogether.

“In advance of the justice secretary’s proposals being presented to parliament, we will seek to engage other political parties in discussions with the aim of gaining the widest possible public and political consensus on the approach being taken.”

Burnham wrote that he understood “the depth of public concern about the potential early release of those involved with the killing of PC Andrew Harper – and I share it”.

“I fully appreciate the anguish of Andrew’s family and, more broadly, of all those victims and their families who may see those who caused them such harm not serve their full sentence. It is incumbent on me as prime minister to do everything within my power to minimise that possibility. And I am determined to do so.”

Speaking later during a visit in Derbyshire, Burnham said he would prefer to not release any prisoners early, and that he was aware of the public feeling over the issue.

“It’s my job to speak up for the public on this issue,” he said. “I take that duty very seriously indeed, and I’m confident that there’s more that can be done, and will be done to address public concern.”

He added that No 10 officials had been in touch with Harper’s family on Monday night, and Norris was “in regular touch as well”.

Harper, 28, was fatally injured when he got caught in a strap attached to the back of a car and was dragged down a country road as the killers fled the scene of a quad-bike theft in Sulhamstead, Berkshire, in 2019.

Cole and Bowers, two of three men sentenced over the police officer’s death, are due to be released halfway through their 13-year sentences, having been convicted of manslaughter in 2020. A petition demanding an intervention has nearly 900,000 signatures.

Prison Service officials have warned Burnham that changing the terms of the prisoners’ early release scheme so that those convicted of manslaughter, such as Cole and Bowers, remain in jail would mean further early releases would be needed within 18 months.

Governors told the Guardian the prime minister’s decision last week to exempt rapists and serious child sex offenders would force thousands of sentences to be recalculated in haste and could lead to the mistaken early release of some prisoners.

The early release changes were part of the Sentencing Act passed earlier this year that cut the minimum amount of time many offenders would have to spend in prison.

The third man jailed for the manslaughter of Harper – the vehicle driver, Henry Long – was given a longer jail term of 16 years. Because he received what is called an extended determinate sentence, he cannot be considered for this early release scheme.

Harper’s mother, Debbie Adlam, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on Tuesday the debate over the killers’ release had been a “rollercoaster” but that she had heard directly from Downing Street “so we’ve now got a little bit of hope”.

Speaking of others affected by the early release plans, she said: “We are not alone on this journey. It’s the world that we have been thrown into. You want what is right for your family member. They’ve lost their life through somebody else’s actions. You have to be their voice.

“We are not asking for a special case for Andrew here. We are not stupid, we know it needs to be done the right way.”

Reporting from The Guardian contributed to this story.