Andy Burnham says he would preferably not want a ‘single prisoner’ released early – UK politics live

Andy Burnham says he would like to get as much “political consensus” about prisoner releases as possible. (See ۱۲.۱۱pm.) Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary, has responded to Burnham’s long statement about this topic this morning (see ۹.۵۸am), and he does not sound minded to drop this as a party political issue.

Timothy says:

One week ago, the PM said he could not exclude anybody else from Labour’s early release scheme because:

“it’s not possible without the prison system reaching capacity and collapsing.”

We said more could be done, and he denied it, but today he has once again changed position and accepted our argument.

Instead of changing policy day-by-day he needs to present a proper plan and emergency legislation.

He needs to let parliament vote on who is and who is not excluded from this shambolic early release scheme.

Nothing matters more than the safety of our people. Andy Burnham needs to get a grip.

In his pooled TV interview, Andy Burnham also said he hoped that other parties would work with the government on devising a better prison early release scheme. He said:

I will talk to the other political parties about it because I believe it’s extremely important to build as much public and political consensus as we can around this difficult crisis within our prisons.

In his pooled TV interview, Andy Burnham repeated the point he made in his Facebook post earlier (see ۹.۵۸am), saying he was confident that more could be done to free up space in the prison system (which would allow the early release system to be changed so that PC Andrew Harper’s killers are excluded). Burnham said that since becoming PM he had been pushing the system “every single day” to go further.

Explaining how extra space could be found (see ۹.۱۹am), he particularly singled out the more than ۲,۰۰۰ prisoners on indeterminate IPP (imprisonment for public protection) sentences. He said:

[The] plan will include issues like returning more foreign national offenders to their country of origin, and looking at the injustice of IPP sentences, which have led to young people, or young when they were imprisoned, being imprisoned indeterminately, and that clearly is unfair.

Burnham said that he would keep the family of PC Andrew Harper informed as the government developed a plan to keep his killers locked up. Burnham said:

My office was in touch with the family last night [see ۱۰.۰۴am], and I know the justice secretary is in regular touch as well.

So, we will keep close to the family through this whole process because we understand how difficult this process has been for them.

As Simon Hattenstone explained in a column yesterday, IPP sentences are one of the biggest scandals in the justice system.

IPP sentences were introduced by David Blunkett when he was home secretary. Ironically, Blunkett is one of Burnham’s chief mentors in politics; Burnham was his parliamentary private secretary. But Blunkett also now views IPP sentences as a mistake.

Andy Burnham has said that in an ideal world he would not want to see “a single prisoner” released early.

Speaking to reporters on a visit in Derbyshire, he also said that his decision to order the justice secretary to look again for a means of excluding the killers of PC Andrew Harper from the early release scheme coming into force in the autumn was evidence of how he has “never taken no for an answer”.

Burnham said:

I don’t want to see a single prisoner released early, and that’s the spirit that I’ve brought to the first three weeks that I’ve served as prime minister, and I’ve always worked like that.

I’ve never taken no for an answer, not in the past dealing with Hillsborough and other issues, and not now when I’m facing the situation that I’m looking at now. It’s always been my style, I won’t give up, and I believe there is more I can do.

It’s my job to speak up for the public on this issue. I take that duty very seriously indeed, and I’m confident that there’s more that can be done, and will be done to address public concern.

Most prime ministers act as leaders of a government explaining to the public what the government is doing. In this instance, Burnham is presenting himself as an insurgency PM, telling the government, on behalf of the public, what it should be doing. This is a hard act to pull off. But when leaders do it successfully, voters tend to approve.

Labour is now ahead of Reform UK in national polling. Several individual polls have already shown this, but the trend is now clear in poll trackers – datasets using all available published polling to show what is happening with voting intention.

At Westminster the most widely consulted tracker may be Politico’s, and today, for the first time since March last year, it is showing Labour ahead of Nigel Farage’s party. It has Labour on ۲۵% and Reform UK on ۲۴%.

Other trackers are showing the same thing. The Economist has Labour on ۲۷% and Reform UK on ۲۳%. (Different trackers used slightly different methodologies, but they are all trying to measure the same thing.) And PollCheck has Labour on ۲۶% and Reform UK on ۲۳%.

Yesterday we reported the calls for the Scottish Greens to withdraw the whip from their MSP Q Manivannan over their comment about rape being a “spectrum”. Manivannan, who is non-binary and who uses they/them pronouns, has now apologised for the comments, which were in a podcast made before they became an MSP.

As the BBC reports, they said:

I recognise that the words in the clip shared, without the full context of the conversation, have caused considerable upset.

For that I apologise. I will always stand with and for victims and survivors …

I would never seek to diminish or dismiss any survivor’s experience, or to make anyone feel that their pain was not heard or understood.

Andy Burnham did not want to be talking about prisons today. As Aletha Adu and Alexandra Topping report, the PM wants to highlight new powers to stop betting and vape shops taking over their high streets.

As with some of Burnham’s other early announcements, today’s initiative is an extension of one already in the pipeline. Here is the news release from last year when Keir Starmer’s government announced councils getting powers to “block gambling and vape shops on their high street”.

The opposition parties say today’s measures don’t go far enough.

This is from James Cleverly, the shadow housing secretary.

Everyone can see what has happened to our high streets, with once-treasured shops being replaced by a smattering of rogue operators, many of which have links to organised crime and fraud.

Labour’s business rates hikes have hollowed out our high streets, driving out the shops people want and leaving empty units for whoever is left standing to fill. Conservatives would cut business rates for high street firms and back the small businesses that give a town centre its character.

This is from Max Wilkinson, the Lib Dem home affairs spokesperson.

Unless he beefs up powers to properly crack down on cowboy vape shops and dodgy operators, Burnham’s plan could go up in a puff of smoke.

Our high streets are in crisis, so rolling the dice and keeping his fingers crossed these minor changes are enough simply won’t win the hand. He should scrap the failed business rates system and urgently give sweeping new powers to councils so high streets can prosper and trading standards officers can permanently shut repeat offenders.

And this is from Robert Jenrick, the Reform UK Treasury spokesperson.

Until this government scraps the jobs tax, addresses sky-high business rates and provides real, fundamental support for high street businesses, this policy will only create even more empty shops on our high streets.

Preventing businesses from opening only works if the government and local councils make it attractive for the right kind of shops to open in their place. Labour is doing the opposite by making life harder for small, legitimate businesses to operate on our high streets.

UPDATE: And the Green party has made a similar point. A Green spokesperson said:

The hollowing out of so many of our high streets is the direct consequence of a failed economic model designed for wealth to collect in one direction.

We need our high streets back at the heart of our towns and communities and these measures look like more inadequate tinkering and reannouncements. We would support real powers given to councils to improve the types of shops on high streets, although more police powers aren’t what is needed, and would invariably make the situation worse by treating the symptom not the cause, and using up police resources.

If prime minister Burnham is serious about change, he needs to go further and allow councils to introduce rent controls for small businesses. Then small and independent shops won’t continue to be priced out by chains, vape and gambling shops.

Debbie Adlam, the mother of PC Andrew Harper, told the BBC this morning that she had a “bit of hope” about her son’s killers being excluded from the early release scheme followng a call from Downing Street about this last night.

Referring to a conversation with a member of the PM’s staff, Adlam told BBC Breakfast:

She said that he wanted to convey that he wants to do everything that he can and has more hope now of finding a resolution to this to try and keep them in prison.

I think the fact that it’s actually come from Downing Street – I’ve got to try and have some faith in it, but at the same time, I have to protect my own feelings.

Adlam said she had been on an emotional rollercoaster.

It’s just been up and down. It’s just the rollercoaster of just hope, not even more than that is really, really draining. We’ve now got a little bit of hope that we didn’t have before.

She was speaking before Burnham posted his latest message on Facebook. (See ۹.۵۸am.)

Andy Burnham has written a post on his Facebook account about the prisoner early release scheme. Explaining why he has asked Alex Norris to come up with further plans, he says he is “increasingly confident” that the government will be able to revise the scheme so that PC Andrew Harper’s killers remain in jail.

He says:

I understand the depth of public concern about the potential early release of those involved with the killing of PC Andrew Harper – and I share it.

I fully appreciate the anguish of Andrew’s family and, more broadly, of all those victims and their families who may see those who caused them such harm not serve their full sentence.

It is incumbent on me as prime minister to do everything within my power to minimise that possibility. And I am determined to do so.

I 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.

As a result, I have asked the justice secretary to fast-track the development of a plan for presentation to parliament early next month to create more headroom within the prison system.

It will be based on a range of options including the three strands of further work I asked him to initiate last week: increasing the rate of removal of foreign national offenders from the prison estate to their country of origin; finding an early resolution to the long-running injustice of IPP sentences, which could allow for the release of lower-risk prisoners; and making greater use of the entire prison estate including using the female estate for male offenders.

I am increasingly confident that a more focused approach along these lines will allow us to reduce the number of people released early and, in the case of the most serious offenders like those convicted of the killing of PC Harper, prevent their early release altogether.

In advance of the justice secretary’s proposals being presented to parliament, we will seek to engage other political parties in discussions with the aim of gaining the widest possible public and political consensus on the approach being taken.

Murderers have always been exempt and our actions have already ensured that rapists, serious child sex offenders and those convicted of grooming offences will never be released early.

And today I have shown a determination to go further. However, I recognise that, even with all these changes, there will be concerns from many victims about who will still be released early for other offences. I am doing all I can, but it is simply not possible to prevent all offenders from being released early without the prison system collapsing.

Aileen O’Connor, chair of the Police Federation in Thames Valley, where PC Andrew Harper was an officer, has welcomed the news that Andy Burnham has ordered another rethink on the prisoner early release scheme.

She told the Today programme this morning:

There’s a little bit of glimmer of hope and encouragement with this latest release that we heard last night, but I can’t lose sight of just hours before that we heard that there was no possibility. So for me, I’m encouraged, I’m optimistic.

And I genuinely believe that the powers that be, Andy Burnham – and the difficult decisions that they have to make – he will make the right choices here, and he will come on board with us, and he’ll get the right side of the line.

The strength of feeling up and down the country, where over ۹۰۰,۰۰۰ people have signed that petition, that’s the British public that have got behind this campaign.

This is their voice, and this is about justice for Andrew and justice for Lissie and his family.

O’Connor was referring to this online petition at change.org.

Here is Caroline Davies’s story on Andy Burnham ordering Alex Norris, the justice secretary, to revise the prisoner early release scheme again so that two of the killers of PC Andrew Harper are excluded from it.

Good morning. Andy Burnham has been prime minister for three weeks and one day, and arguably he is performing his first U-turn. It is in relation to the prisoner early release scheme and, in particular, finding a way of ensuring that two of the killers of PC Andrew Harper are not included.

Burnham has been looking at this for some time. Early last week he announced significant changes to the early release scheme that he inherited and that was due to come into force from September. Around ۱,۰۰۰ fewer prisoners were going to be included. But two of the three Harper killers (Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers) were not affected by the change, and remained eligible. The main perpetrator (Henry Long), who was driving the car that dragged Harper to his death, was not covered by the scheme anyway because his manslaughter sentence was longer than theirs.

In an article for the Daily Telegraph last week, Burnham implied that he had done as much as he could to toughen up the early release scheme. “I know I can look people in the eye and say to them there is nothing more I could have asked for without risking the prison system reaching capacity and collapsing within months.” At the Downing Street lobby briefing yesterday morning, the PM’s spokesperson also played down the prospect that there might be further tweaks to the system. The spokesperson said that No ۱۰ could not simply adapt the scheme to exclude people convicted of the manslaughter of an emergency worker (one proposed solution), and he highlighted the risk of wider exemptions that could lead to the Prison Service running out of space.

But the spokesperson did not categorically rule out a rethink. And last night the government revealed, in a quote first reported in the Times, that Burnham has told Alex Norris, the justice secretary, to come up with further revisions to the prisoner early release scheme to keep Cole and Bowers in jail.

Angela Rayner, the housing secretary, has confirmed this. She has been giving interviews this morning and she told the Today programme:

The prime minister is determined to ensure that there is a solution to this, and I think he’s made that really clear. And he’s tasked the justice secretary to come to parliament in September with that solution. He’s looking at alternatives like the indefinite sentences, like women prisoners and speeding up foreign nationals being deported. So there is a lot of work that’s going on.

She was implying that, by extending early release to include prisoners on indefinite IPP (imprisonment for public protection) sentences or more women, or by speeding up the deportation of foreign offenders, the government could free up more space. This would allowing more manslaughter offenders like Cole and Bowers to be excluded from early release.

This is a U-turn in the sense that it is a shift from the position Burnham set out last week. Politicians normally get criticised for U-turns. But when the government is committed to a policy unacceptable to the public, ditching it swiftly is normally a wise move (at least, electorally), and that is what Burnham is up to here. This was the case that Rayner made in her Today interview. She said:

The prime minister is really clear. He will not just accept that the system says no. He understands the anger and the trauma that PC Harper’s family are going through, and other victims who are seeing this prison crisis unfold.

The risk for Burnham is that sometimes the system says no for a reason, and sometimes leaders just have to tell people they can’t get what they want. The prison system is in crisis because voters seem to like sending offenders to jail for longer and longer, but don’t seem to like the government building and funding more jails to house them all, and governments can’t deliver on both these wishes without the system eventually collapsing.

As Rajeev Syal reports, Burnham has been warned that, without an extensive prisoner release scheme now, he could end up having to approve another one just before the next election.

Burnham is doing a visit in Derbyshire this morning, and we will hear from him then because he will be doing some media.

Other than that, there is not much on the agenda. But I will be covering reaction to his announcement to give councils enhanced powers to stop betting and vape shops taking over their high streets.

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