Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of UK politics. The mother of PC Andrew Harper said her family are “bitterly disappointed” that her son’s killers remain eligible for early release after the government revised plans to tackle the overcrowding crisis in prisons.
Following pressure from victims, MPs and frontline prison officers, rapists, child sexual abusers and groomers will be excluded from the scheme for England and Wales, the government said on Monday.
But domestic abusers and killers will still be eligible for early release, including two men jailed for their role in the death of PC Harper, who sustained fatal injuries while responding to a quad bike theft in Sulhamstead, Berkshire, in August 2019.
“Quite frankly, we shouldn’t be in this position,” Debbie Adlam, PC Harper’s mother, told BBC Breakfast.
She said it was “completely right” that rapists and paedophiles are not going to be released under the government’s latest plans, but added “they shouldn’t have been considered in the first place”.
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Speaking to BBC Newsnight, Adlam said she was “devastated” that two of her son’s killers remain eligible for early release. She told the programme:
double quotation markIt feels like we’re letting Andrew down again. We’ve been through the justice system, we thought we’d done as best as we could. Now we’re standing up to fight again … so I just feel really let down, for Andrew’s sake as well as ours.
The justice secretary, Alex Norris, told Sky News this morning that the latest changes to the early release scheme would see 5,000 prisoners released over 10 months, down from 6,000.
He said the government won’t need further emergency release schemes as sentencing changes would provide “long-term security” for prison capacity.
Writing in the Telegraph, the prime minister, Andy Burnham, said he asked the justice secretary to consider the early release of more female prisoners, “given the lower risk they generally pose” in order to prevent further overcrowding.
Burnham said he had “pushed to the very limits of what is possible” but was unable to exempt more criminals from the early release scheme without the prison system “collapsing within months”.
PC Harper’s wife, Lissie Harper, has expressed anger at the prospect that two of her late husband’s killers could be released early, calling it “an affront to justice” and “an utter betrayal”. The justice secretary said he understood the family’s “anger” and offered an apology.
He told Sky News:
double quotation markWere we not to make these changes, then we would run out of prison places in this October or November.
I know that’s difficult. I know that’s created harm, and it’s not Lissie Harper’s fault, and I’m sorry that she’s been put into this situation as a result, I genuinely am.