SOME offenders including PC Andrew Harper’s killers will not be released early from jail after changes to a scheme aimed at reducing prison overcrowding, Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced today.

Plans will instead focus on freeing people still serving indefinite jail sentences, abolished in 2012, and deporting foreign prisoners.

Grooming gang members will not be released as part of the legislation the PM will bring forward by the end of this Parliament.

About 5,000 prisoners had been due to be released early from September under plans to ease overcrowded jails.

This was already down from 6,000 after ministers stepped in to block rapists and “serious” child sex offenders from being let out of prisons.

Mr Burnham had previously said plans would remain the same after it emerged that Albert Bowers and Jessie Cole, who were convicted of PC Harper’s manslaughter in 2020, would be eligible from next year.

But on Sunday, he announced that prisoners convicted of unlawful killing, which includes all forms of manslaughter and death by dangerous driving, are to be excluded from the scheme.

Indecent assault will also be added to the list of exemptions after concerns were raised over grooming gang members potentially being released due to a loophole.

Changes will mean “hundreds” of extra people are to remain in prison, the Prime Minister said. They will be presented to Parliament through secondary legislation next week.

Mr Burnham added that spaces in prisons would be created by deporting foreign prisoners and releasing inmates serving imprisonment for public protection sentences indefinite sentences (IPPs), given to offenders who were considered a significant risk to the public between 2005 and 2012, when they were abolished.

But changes to IPPs could take years to implement and won’t figure in initial plans.