‘I can’t be too hopeful’ says PC Harper’s mum
ByElla Kipling
The mother of PC Andrew Harper says a phone call from Downing Street to discuss the early release scheme that could see two of her son’s killers freed halfway through their sentences has given her hope.
After speaking to a senior No 10 official, Debbie Adlam said she had been told the prime minister wanted to do “everything he can” to find a resolution to prevent the release of Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers this January.
Adlam told BBC Breakfast: “For me, it’s hope, but I can’t afford to be too hopeful.”
She added she was not looking for a “special case” for her son, but wanted the killers of all emergency workers to be exempt from the early release scheme.
Cole and Bowers were sentenced to 13 years for manslaughter in 2020. Under changes to the Sentencing Act made this year, they will become eligible for release from custody next January.
They are in a category of prisoners – those who have committed certain serious violent or sexual crimes – who until now would have had to serve at least two-thirds of their sentence in jail before being considered for release.
Downing Street had earlier warned it would not be possible to exclude “one or two offenders” convicted of manslaughter from the early release scheme.
However, the BBC has been told that Burnham has now instructed his justice secretary to find a way to exclude Cole and Bowers from the scheme designed to ease prison overcrowding.
In a later statement, the PM said he was “increasingly confident” that work to increase space in the prison system “will allow us to reduce the number of people released early”.
He added: “And, in the case of the most serious offenders like those convicted of the killing of PC [Andrew] Harper, prevent their early release altogether.”
Adlam said the conflicting reports had been making her “more and more angry” and the uncertainty had left her family “in turmoil”.
Of the phone call she received, she said. “I think the fact it’s actually come from Downing Street, I’ve got to try and have some faith in it, but at the same time I’ve got to protect my own feelings.”
Thames Valley Police officer PC Harper, 28, from Wallingford, Oxfordshire, died in 2019 when he was dragged behind the getaway car of three teenagers who had fled the scene of a quad bike theft in Berkshire.
Adlam said: “Everybody is watching this. This is obviously extremely personal to us but it’s to do with the country as a whole really. This is really vital to get right, it feels like a hash, like a rush job.”
Speaking about Cole and Bowers, she added: “They weren’t given extreme sentences and I’m only asking for them to do what they were given, I’m not asking for anything more than they were sentenced.”
Image source, PA MediaDebbie Adlam said it was ‘vital’ for the government to get this right
Aileen O’Connor, chairman of Thames Valley Police Federation, said the reports that Burnham would look to exclude Cole and Bowers from the early release scheme, gave her a “little glimmer of hope”.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Police officers up and down this country run towards danger, they put themselves on the line every single day and Andrew Harper paid the ultimate sacrifice for the job that he loved and the badge he wore.
“We need to see the government protecting us because we’re getting battered all over the show every single day.”
Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary Angela Rayner said the government was still looking at all options around the prisons crisis and preventing the early release of PC Harper’s killers.
She told BBC Breakfast on Tuesday: “The trauma that PC Harper’s family has been through, and other victims who are watching this crisis unfold in our prisons, is unacceptable.
“The prime minister has said that those serious offenders, like the ones that killed PC Harper, he doesn’t want to see them released early and he has tasked the justice secretary to look at that and to come to parliament in September so that we can do everything we possibly can to stop that from happening.”
Last week, PC Harper’s widow, Lissie Harper, said she “will not give up” and hoped people would share a petition calling for his killers to be denied early release from prison.
She said: “Hopefully we can make the current government come to their senses and realise we cannot put people like this back on our streets.
“Justice should mean justice and serving the sentence given.”
More than 900,000 people have signed the petition set up by Thames Valley Police Federation, which calls the decision for Cole and Bowers to be eligible for early release an “insult”.