Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said he now believes it is possible to stop the early release of two of the men convicted over the killing of PC Andrew Harper, despite comments from Downing Street only a day earlier suggesting the opposite.
Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers were jailed for 13 years in 2020 for manslaughter after PC Harper, a Thames Valley Police officer, was dragged to his death by a car in 2019.
Under the sentences handed down at the time, both men were due to serve two thirds of their term before release. But a new early release scheme for England and Wales, designed to ease overcrowding in prisons, would have made them eligible for release as soon as next year.
A Shifting Position
Burnham’s comments mark the latest turn in a policy story that has run for weeks. The early release scheme itself stems from the Sentencing Act 2026, passed by the Starmer government in January 2026 and originally due to take effect on 2 September. A revised version is now set to begin in October instead.
The row intensified after PC Harper’s mother, Debbie Adlam, said in July that a Ministry of Justice letter had confirmed Cole and Bowers’ sentences could be reduced under the scheme. She called it an “insult.” Burnham, newly installed as prime minister, announced the next day that he was pausing the scheme for review.
On 3 August, the government said the scheme would be revised so that it no longer applied to those convicted of rape or serious child sex and grooming offences, but manslaughter cases such as Cole and Bowers’ remained eligible. Adlam described herself as “devastated” that her son’s killers were still in line for early release.
Just a day before Burnham’s latest statement, Downing Street had said it was “not possible” to exempt “one or two offenders” convicted of manslaughter from the scheme, though it added that the justice secretary would look at keeping more serious offenders behind bars. That followed a warning from Justice Secretary Alex Norris on 4 August that excluding further categories of prisoner risked a “prison capacity crisis,” and echoed language Burnham himself had used the previous week, when he wrote that he had gone as far as possible within the limits of what could be done.
What Burnham Is Now Proposing
Speaking on Facebook and later in person in Derbyshire, Burnham said he had “not accepted that it is impossible to do more” and that he had never accepted there was nothing further that could be done. Pressed on the apparent contradiction with earlier government messaging, he denied having previously ruled out further action.
He said he had asked Alex Norris to fast track a plan, to be put to Parliament in September, built around three strands of work:
- Speeding up the deportation of foreign national offenders
- Resolving outstanding Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentences, a now abolished sentence type with no fixed maximum term, potentially freeing space by releasing lower risk prisoners
- Making broader use of the prison estate, including housing male offenders in parts of the women’s prison estate
Norris backed the approach, saying the government wanted to “go further in keeping more of the most serious offenders in prison” and that his department was examining “every serious option.”
Burnham said he remained confident this work would let the government reduce the number of early releases overall and, for the most serious cases such as Harper’s killers, stop early release altogether. He cautioned, however, that it was not possible to prevent all early releases without risking the collapse of the prison system, meaning some victims’ families would still see offenders released ahead of their full term.
Reaction
The shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, accused Burnham and the government of “constant u-turns” that were “re-traumatising victims and their families,” and said the changing position amounted to poor governance.
PC Harper’s mother told BBC Breakfast the handling of the issue had been a “hash” and said she was in “turmoil” over conflicting reports about her son’s killers. Aileen O’Connor, a former colleague of PC Harper’s who has gathered more than 900,000 signatures on a petition against the men’s early release, said she was optimistic the government would act to keep them in custody.
Other families affected by the wider scheme, including that of Calvin Buckley, whose pregnant partner Frankie Jules-Hough was killed by a speeding driver, and the family of Sue and Tom Corkery, have also spoken out against early release, arguing it undermines the sentences originally handed down by courts.
A former prison governor, John Podmore, who has run several major English prisons including Belmarsh and Brixton, said there were more immediate ways to ease overcrowding that ministers were not pursuing, including releasing some of the roughly 13,000 prisoners currently on remand, a quarter of whom, he said, ultimately receive sentences shorter than time already served. He also pointed to the sharp rise in prisoners recalled to custody for licence breaches, arguing the government was receiving poor advice by focusing elsewhere.
Background: Why the Prison System Is Under Strain
An independent review into the causes of overcrowding found that England and Wales imprison more people per head of population than almost any other country in western Europe, behind only Poland. It pointed to longer average sentences, a decline in the use of community orders, and a sharp rise in prisoners recalled to custody, with more than 51,000 recalls in the year to March 2026, up 28% on the previous year, as key drivers of the pressure on prison places.
PC Harper’s death in 2019 also led to the introduction of “Harper’s Law,” which brought in mandatory life sentences for anyone who kills an emergency worker. Because the law was passed in 2022, it did not apply retrospectively to the sentencing of Cole and Bowers, a point that has fuelled some of the criticism of their treatment under the current scheme.
