The mother of Pc Andrew Harper has requested a meeting with Andy Burnham to seek an explanation as to why her son’s killers cannot be excluded from the Government’s early release scheme.

It follows a statement from Downing Street stating that it is "not possible" to exempt "one or two offenders" convicted of manslaughter from early release.

While the Prime Minister is due to spend much of August travelling across the country asking the public how the Government can improve their lives, Debbie Adlam confirmed he has not contacted her.

Asked what she would like to say to Mr Burnham, Ms Adlam told ITV News: “My message is that you want to tour the country, you want to meet the people. You haven’t even got in touch with me. How about coming to see me?”

Ms Adlam added: “Nobody has been in touch officially to tell me what the situation is. I’ve heard nothing from the Government.

“I’m just really angry now because our emotions are going round … we’re getting twisted inside, with what is happening.”

Pc Harper’s mother said she is “more angry than ever”, adding: “I was already upset but I feel it more now because I just feel like I’m going round in circles. Andrew deserves more than this.

“We’re not talking – as they keep coming back to – about a special case for one or two people that killed Andrew, we’re talking emergency service worker killers.”

Pc Harper was fatally injured when he got caught in a strap attached to the back of a car and was dragged down a country road as the killers fled the scene of a quad bike theft in Sulhamstead, Berkshire, in 2019.

Some 5,000 people are expected to be released early under sentencing changes, down from 6,000 after some exemptions were announced as part of an urgent review of the scheme designed to tackle jail overcrowding.

Under current plans, Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers remain eligible to be freed in January, halfway through their 13-year sentences after they were convicted of the manslaughter of Pc Harper in 2020.

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

Thames Valley Police Federation chairwoman Aileen O’Connor has said Downing Street’s failure to block the early release of Pc Harper’s killers are “indefensible”.

She said in a statement: “The public are speaking loudly and clearly.

“They agree with us that the Government are firmly on the wrong side of this.

“What they are doing is indefensible. And they simply cannot defend it.

“They must listen. The Prime Minister must listen.”

She added: “If you kill a police officer, there should be no early release. No ifs. No buts.”

Asked earlier on Monday whether the Government was exploring options to keep them in jail, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman downplayed the prospect of a carve-out.

No 10 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.”

Mr Burnham said last 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.

The early release changes were part of the Sentencing Act passed earlier this year that cut the minimum amount of time many offenders would have to spend in prison.

Those freed will face tougher probation conditions, including electronic monitoring, random drug testing and possible bans from driving, pubs and events such as football matches.