Downing Street has admitted it cannot stop the early release of Pc Andrew Harper’s killers despite public outcry over the situation because it is “not possible” to exempt “one or two offenders” convicted of manslaughter.

The government’s early release scheme - put in place to manage overcrowding in the prison estate - was reviewed by new prime minister Andy Burnham following public backlash after it emerged that Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers, who were handed 13 years in custody in 2020 for Pc Harper’s manslaughter, could be released early.

Under current plans, the pair remain eligible to be freed halfway through their sentences as part of the early release scheme, which starts in October.

While it was reported this week that Mr Burnham was prepared to “explore every option” to keep Cole and Bowers in jail, No 10 has since played down the prospect of an imminent carve-out to keep the pair behind bars.

Asked about reports of a possible carveout, the prime minister’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 offence category.

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.”

Some 5,000 people are expected to be released early under sentencing changes, down from 6,000 after exemptions were announced as part of the prime minister’s urgent review of the scheme.

Mr Burnham said earlier this week he had “pushed to the very limits of what is possible to do without risking the prison system reaching capacity and collapsing” by excluding sentences for “rape, serious child sex offences and other grooming offences” from eligibility.

Pc Harper was 28 when he sustained fatal injuries while responding to a quad bike theft in Sulhamstead, Berkshire, in August 2019.

He died after getting caught in a strap attached to the back of a car and dragged down a country road as three teenage suspects fled the scene of the burglary.

The driver of the vehicle, Henry Long, received a 16-year sentence and would not be eligible for release.

Pc Harper’s family has repeatedly hit out at the government for the scheme, with the police officer’s widow, Lissie Harper, describing the scheme as “deplorable”.

She accused politicians of “making decisions from behind a desk that will have real and lasting consequences” for the families of victims.

“It has taken me years to rebuild a life that was torn apart in a matter of moments. Years to pick up the pieces left behind by three men whose actions robbed Andrew of his life and stole our future”, she said.

Meanwhile, more than 880,000 people have signed a petition calling for them to remain in jail.

Prison overcrowding has forced successive governments into making emergency releases, with the Conservative administration’s End of Custody Supervised Licence scheme, launched in 2023, releasing more than 10,000 inmates between 18 and 70 days early.

This was followed by Labour’s SDS40 scheme, which has seen 56,323 offenders released after serving 40 per cent of their prison term between September 2024 and December 2025.

Reforms in the Sentencing Act came after prisons came close to running out of space entirely last year, risking the “total breakdown of law and order”, which would leave police unable to make arrests and courts unable to send offenders to custody, the then justice secretary Shabana Mahmood said.