{"id":4273,"date":"2026-08-11T13:29:24","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T13:29:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/11\/politics-home-pm-increasingly-confident-pc-harpers-killers-will-not-be-released-early\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T13:29:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T13:29:24","slug":"politics-home-pm-increasingly-confident-pc-harpers-killers-will-not-be-released-early","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/11\/politics-home-pm-increasingly-confident-pc-harpers-killers-will-not-be-released-early\/","title":{"rendered":"Politics Home | PM “Increasingly Confident” PC Harper\u2019s Killers Will Not Be Released Early"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Andy Burnham visits The Hub cafe in Derbyshire as part of his tour of the UK. (Alamy)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said he is “increasingly confident” that plans to free up prison spaces will not mean the early release of PC Andrew\u00a0Harper’s killers.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Burnham said on Tuesday that he had asked Justice Secretary Alex Norris to find\u00a0ways of exempting more of the most\u00a0serious criminals from the government’s early release scheme.<\/p>\n

Speaking in Derbyshire this morning, the PM\u00a0said: “I don\u2019t want to see a single prisoner released early, and that\u2019s the spirit that I\u2019ve brought to the first three weeks that I\u2019ve served as Prime Minister, and I\u2019ve always worked like that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m confident that there\u2019s more that can be done, and will be done to address public concern.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burnham has said that options on the table to create additional space in the prison system include quicker removal of foreign national offenders, releasing lower-risk prisoners serving indefinite sentences, and making better use of Britain\u2019s prison capacity, including using female prisons for male offenders.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have spent recent days considering in depth all of the issues involved and the range of advice I have received. I have been pushing for further progress. I have not accepted that it is impossible to do more,\u201d said Burnham.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Norris is expected to present proposals to Parliament in early September.<\/p>\n

The new Labour government is coming under pressure to ensure that Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers are not released early as part of efforts to relieve pressure on prison capacity.<\/p>\n

The pair, who were sentenced to 13 years for manslaughter in 2020, were due to be freed in January after serving around half of their sentences.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve heard the depth of concern felt across the country about the potential release of the killers of PC Andrew Harper. I feel for the family and the anguish that they’re going through,” Burnham has said.<\/p>\n

The government has already announced that murderers, rapists and child sex offenders, including grooming gang perpetrators, would be exempt from the scheme.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, the Harper case has put pressure on ministers to go further, following criticism from his relatives and friends.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the government\u00a0is\u00a0trying to make sure that prisons in England and Wales do not run out of space amid recent warnings that the estate is close to reaching full capacity.<\/p>\n


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Andy Burnham visits The Hub cafe in Derbyshire as part of his tour of the UK. (Alamy) 2 min read2 hr Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said he is “increasingly confident” that plans to free up prison spaces will not mean the early release of PC Andrew\u00a0Harper’s killers. Burnham said on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4274,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}