The Prime Minister has said he is confident he can stop the early release of the men convicted of killing PC Andrew Harper, insisting there is more that can be done to keep serious offenders behind bars. He said he had heard the depth of concern felt across the country about the potential release of the officer's killers, and expressed sympathy for the family and the anguish they are going through. Since coming into office, he added, he has pushed the system every single day to go further and has refused to accept that it is impossible to do more.
The intervention came after Andy Burnham faced mounting pressure over the case, once it emerged that two men convicted of PC Harper's manslaughter would potentially benefit from the government's prisoner early release scheme. That scheme was introduced to ease an overcrowding crisis in prisons by making some inmates eligible for release earlier in their sentences. The Prime Minister was emphatic that he does not want to see a single offender freed early simply to address that overcrowding, framing the issue as one he is determined to tackle directly.
As his central response, the Prime Minister said he has asked the Justice Secretary to present a plan in early September, when Parliament returns, setting out how the government can go further so that it does not have to release as many people early. He said he would talk to the other political parties about the proposals, arguing it is extremely important to build as much public and political consensus as possible around what he described as a difficult crisis within the prison system. He indicated the Justice Secretary now has around three weeks to develop the detail before bringing it to Parliament.
The Prime Minister set out several strands the plan is expected to cover. These include returning more foreign national offenders to their country of origin, and examining the injustice of IPP sentences, which have left people imprisoned indeterminately after being jailed when they were young. He also pointed to women's jails as part of the picture. His stated aim is to reach a position where people who have committed serious crimes are not released early, and he made clear that this outcome would include the killers of PC Andrew Harper.
Legal analysis of how such a change would work indicated that under the Sentencing Act, the measures do not come into effect until the Justice Secretary, Alex Norris, signs an order bringing them in, and he does not have to bring everything into force at the same time. He can make different provisions for different offences or sentence lengths, meaning early release could apply to some offences but not others. Crucially, ministers cannot single out named individuals, so any exclusion must be defined by a type of offence, such as manslaughter, or by the length of sentence. The government has already postponed the plans from the beginning of next month to the beginning of October.
PC Andrew Harper was killed in 2019, when he was about to head home at the end of his shift and he and a colleague were called to reports of a quad bike theft. As three teenagers fled the scene, he was dragged along a country road for more than a mile after his ankle became caught in the getaway car's tow rope. Two of his killers, Albert Bowers and Jesse Cole, were convicted of manslaughter and each sentenced to 13 years in prison, but under the early release scheme they could now be freed halfway through those terms, the prospect that has driven the current outcry.
PC Harper's widow, Lissie, has said she will not give up her campaign against the killers' release, and a petition challenging the decision had gathered more than 900,000 signatures as of lunchtime. Aileen O'Connor, chair of the Thames Valley Police Federation, said the case feels personal to the police family across the country, noting that the anniversary of Harper's death falls on 15 August. She said officers run into danger every day when everyone else runs away from it, swearing an oath to serve, and that some pay the ultimate sacrifice, as PC Harper did across the Thames Valley.