Harper's Killers to Stay in Jail as Burnham Overhauls Releases
The prime minister announced that all unlawful killing — including every form of manslaughter — will be excluded from the early-release scheme, meaning PC Andrew Harper’s killers will not be freed early, alongside new exemptions for death by dangerous driving and historic child sex offences. To offset a prison system 97 per cent full, foreign prisoners will be deported and IPP sentences — under which 2,271 people are held, 856 never released — will be scrapped “by the end of this Parliament”. Harper’s mother said she was “glad and really grateful” but worried “immensely for those it doesn’t happen for”.
Yesterday thirty bereaved families demanded manslaughter’s exclusion; today they have it — a turnaround so swift it confirms the scheme’s exemption list is written by campaign rather than principle, as government insiders candidly concede. The genuinely historic element is buried beneath the headline: ending IPP sentences closes one of British justice’s longest-running scandals, the indefinite terms abolished in 2012 yet still holding 856 people who were never released, some for offences with two-year tariffs. Mr Burnham’s framing — the public prefers releasing those who served their time over those who haven’t — is the rare political sentence that is also a principle. The arithmetic remains unforgiving: every exemption fills cells the scheme exists to empty, and nothing lands before October’s first releases. Watch Tuesday’s statement to Parliament for the IPP mechanism.