Some 5,000 people are expected to be released early under sentencing changes.
Downing Street has said it is “not possible” to exempt “one or two offenders” convicted of manslaughter from early release amid pressure over the eligibility of Pc Andrew Harper’s killers to be freed from prison from January.
No 10 insisted Prime Minister Andy Burnham is “far from accepting the situation” but appeared to play down the prospect of an imminent carve-out to keep Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers behind bars.
Some 5,000 people are expected to be released early under sentencing changes, down from 6,000 after the exemptions announced as part of an urgent review of the scheme.
Under current plans, Cole and Bowers remain eligible to be freed halfway through their 13-year sentences after they were convicted of manslaughter in 2020 following Pc Harper’s death in 2019.
More than 880,000 people have signed a petition calling for them to remain in jail, with a Government source telling The Daily Telegraph on Friday the Prime Minister is prepared to “explore every option” to block their early release.
Asked whether this was correct on Monday, Mr Burnham’s official spokesman said manslaughter of an emergency worker was “not a standalone offence” and it was “not possible to simply exclude one or two offenders” within the wider category of manslaughter.
Asked whether ministers were accepting the situation as it stands, the spokesman said: “I think you’ve seen from the Prime Minister’s words that he’s far from accepting the situation and as he wrote last week he wants to go even further.
“He’s pushed hard on what more we could do and his focus now is on fixing the prison system long term to avoid a repeat of this prison crisis so that it never happens again.”
Pressed on whether the Prime Minister was admitting there was nothing more he could do, the official said: “He understands the public wants him to go further, and he wanted to go further, but on the wider issue that prisons would have run out of space, police would stop making arrests, it would be impossible to lock up convicted offenders and that would put public safety at untold risk.”
