The Prime Minister has declared he will 'not give up' in trying to block PC Andrew Harper's killers from early release
Andy Burnham's reforms to Labour's early release prison scheme has been branded a "disgrace" by the Shadow Justice Minister.
Speaking to GB News, Kieran Mullan declared the plans, set to be unveiled in September, are "not good enough".
Addressing the controversy surrounding the early release of PC Andrew Harper's killers, the Prime Minister assured he will "not give up" in trying to block the two men from being eligible for release.
He said: "I've been pressing every single day to go further. I don't want to see a single prisoner released early, and that's the spirit that I 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.
Highlighting the "distress" facing the family of PC Harper amid he reforms, Mr Mullan told GB News: "This must be incredibly distressing for the family.
"Lissie and PC Andrew Harper's mother have both been speaking out about this, I had the privilege of working with Lissie as a backbench MP on Harper's Law, and day to day different things are being told to them by various Government sources.
"It was only a couple of days ago we were told there was no way it could be exempted, now they can be exempted."
The Tory MP argued the Tories fought for dangerous criminals to be exempt from the scheme "months ago".
He explained: "We were very clear many, many months ago when this law was originally passed that we should be exempting serious criminals, people responsible for horrific crimes like manslaughter, rape, child abuse, all those offences.
"We put forward to a vote in parliament say they should be excluded. Unfortunately, Labour and the Lib Dems worked together to overrule our changes, and now here we are months later and it's taken what is very distressing for them, the efforts of victims across the board, speaking out about it to get this Government to pay attention."
Mr Mullan stressed there are "many families" affected by the early release scheme, not just the high profile cases.
He said: "Of course you can exempt these these killers, we should be exempting all killers from this early release scheme. Of course, we're all focusing quite rightly on this high profile case.
"But there've been many other families who were never in the news, whose relative wasn't an emergency service worker, who may well see the person that killed their relative in different circumstances let out of prison earlier, I think that's a disgrace."
Challenged on the Tory record on prison spaces, Mr Mullan was reminded by host Ellie Costello his Government built "500 prison spaces in 14 years".
He responded: "We built more than 10,000 new prison spaces, but we made a mistake in closing too much of the older Victorian estates at the same time, and that's something that Kemi [Badenoch] has apologised for. We understand this and we've all had a part to play.
"I'm someone that's been passionate about law and order issues for a very long time. I've spent some time as a volunteer policeman, and I want us to put a greater priority on our justice system.
"I want victims to see justice done more readily than it is at the moment. But we never let out these sorts of offenders early."
Mr Mullan concluded: "Labour have taken a choice to let these sorts of people out earlier, and even now, despite the outcry, we still don't have that firm commitment from them that they're going to stop serious criminals from being let out of prison early."
