Andy Burnham has ordered justice secretary Alex Norris to review Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentences, the indefinite jail terms that have left thousands of prisoners without a release date years, or even decades, after their original tariff expired. The move is intended to help ease Britain's prison overcrowding crisis and comes after sustained pressure from campaigners, affected families and international human rights bodies, who argue the sentences are unjust and psychologically damaging.

IPP sentences were introduced under Tony Blair's government in 2005 and abolished in 2012, but not retrospectively, leaving hundreds of people still serving them, some for relatively minor offences such as stealing a mobile phone. The review was announced alongside changes to the early release scheme that will exclude rapists and serious child sex offenders. It follows a UN Human Rights Council report branding the sentences "arbitrary" and akin to psychological torture, a demand from UN rapporteurs to resentence almost 2,400 people still held, and an admission from the policy's architect, Lord David Blunkett, that introducing IPP was his "biggest regret." Ninety-six IPP prisoners have taken their own lives in custody.