Rayner says Burnham won’t accept ‘system says no’ advice over prisoner release scheme – UK politics live

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.

double quotation mark 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.