Andy Burnham is chairing a meeting of the government’s Cobra emergency committee this afternoon to discuss the heatwave and the climate crisis. The meeting comes as pressure mounts on multiple fronts, including a plea from 50 police leaders over the early release of PC Andrew Harper's killers.
Green Party leader calls for action on fossil fuels
Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, who has been calling for the Cobra meeting, posted on social media: “Good. Now we need action. Tax fossil fuel giants to pay for firefighting helicopters. A cool space in every community. A maximum working temperature. And no new oil and gas extraction in the North Sea. We cannot negotiate with the science.”
The Cobra announcement will not deflect all attention from the prisons crisis. Yesterday Burnham said he was “increasingly confident” that the new review of the early release scheme he has ordered will result in the killers of PC Andrew Harper not being let out.
Police leaders urge block on early release
That has not silenced his critics. As Peter Walker, Rajeev Syal and Caroline Davies report, 50 police leaders, including every chief constable in England and Wales, have signed a letter urging him to do everything in his power to stop the killers benefiting from a programme designed to free up prison space. They say there is “a profound strength of feeling across policing” that this should not happen.
The Conservatives are claiming that the changes in approach to this issue adopted by No 10 over the past week – denounced as a U-turn in the Daily Express splash, and described as “chaos” in the Times – are “re-traumatising” victims.
Probation chief warns of pressure
There are new warnings about what will happen when the early release scheme does start. Martin Jones, the chief inspector of probation for England and Wales, said he is “not confident” the service will cope when the new round of releases starts in the autumn. In an interview with the BBC, he said: “Ultimately I’m not fully confident that the probation system will be able to cope with this massive work and there’s a risk that things will go wrong. Probation services are already under unprecedented pressure. They’re managing a caseload of 258,000 cases, that’s nearly three times the number that are in our prisons, and obviously the early release scheme will be increasing that pressure considerably.”
Here is the agenda for the day. Morning: Andy Burnham is on a visit in the east of England. Afternoon: The funeral of Ann Widdecombe takes place at Buckfast Abbey in Devon. Afternoon: Burnham chairs a Cobra meeting to discuss the extreme heat.
