Back to the substantive thread about PC Harper's killers ...
I'll admit that I remain uneasy about Harper's Law - the idea that the severity of the crime depends on the identity of the victim strikes me as difficult. Don't get me wrong, I feel all the outrage for what happened but the idea that any other person getting killed while trying to prevent these scum getting away would now be - effectively - a lesser offence cannot be right.
Anyway, much has been made about the fact that the government can't exclude these two from the ERS because, if they do, they'd have to exclude all of the 500 or so on manslaughter offences and that would mean not enough prison space is cleared.
Why?
I am not saying it is good law, or even a good idea, but as a technical thought process what is to prevent the government putting forward a law explicitly excluding these individuals from the ERS?
Or, even a new law that says "the ERS will not apply to any individual guilty of having committed the following offences against an emergency services worker"?
Yes, that would get challenged but by the time the courts got round to it, we're years and years away ... It where remaining in the ECHR is a good idea as the case backlog there would take these two vermin into their dotage anyway.
As I started by writing, I have difficulties with Harper's Law so I am not sure how I feel about further interventions to make one type of manslaugtherer different to another. I'm asking not about the morality of it (one way or the other), more the technical possibility of it.
