PM Burnham excludes manslaughter convicts from early release, keeping PC Harper's killers jailed

In the long tension between justice and practicality, Prime Minister Andy Burnham has drawn a line — declaring that those convicted of manslaughter will be barred from England and Wales's new early release scheme, a decision that keeps the killers of PC Andrew Harper imprisoned and reverses weeks of government signals that such an exclusion was impossible. The choice arrives against a backdrop of near-capacity prisons, a grieving family's sustained campaign, and a system straining under the weight of its own contradictions. It is a reminder that policy, however structural, is never fully insul