No Barnet home for Great Train Robber (From This Is Local London)

No Barnet home for Great Train Robber

5:37pm Wednesday 1st July 2009 in

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RONNIE Biggs' future in Barnet lies in doubt after his parole was refused by the Secretary of State.

Jack Straw rejected the Parole Board's recommendation to release the Great Train Robber, who was hoping to celebrate his 80th birthday in the borough next month.

The news came as Biggs' solicitor confirmed the condition of the convict had "taken a turn for the worse".

He is currently in hospital after breaking his hip in a fall at the weekend.

Over the past few years he has suffered a series of strokes and is unable to speak. He communicates with an alphabet board and is fed through a tube.

Tim Morris, spokesman for the Parole Board, said Biggs could apply for judicial review if he wanted to appeal the decision.

"But it could take nearly a year," he added.

"He'll have another opportunity to apply for parole in a year's time, so it may be easier for him to wait."

The pensioner, who took part in the Great Train Robbery in 1963, was planning to move into a Barnet care home to be close to his 34-year-old son, Michael, who lives in the borough.

But many MPs and residents opposed the decision, angry that they would have to foot the bill for the robber’s 24-hour care, which could be as much as £35,000 a year.

Theresa Villiers, Conservative MP for Chipping Barnet, approved Mr Straw's decision.

She said: “Ronnie Biggs has never expressed remorse for his crime.

“Not content with robbing trains, he was set on hitting the taxpayer with a big bill.

"People who have worked hard and saved all their lives would be worse off than a convicted criminal who spent 35 years evading British justice.”

The robber has served ten years of the 30-year jail term imposed for his part in the £2.5 million heist of the Glasgow-to-London mail train in 1963. The haul would be worth £40 million today.

Former Middlesex University professor Geoffrey Alderman, 65, said he was "delighted" by the news.

"I am not without compassion - he is ill in hospital and must receive all the medical help he needs - but he was utterly without repentance for his crime.

“The fact is, Ronnie Biggs was given a 30-year sentence but lived a charmed existence abroad for most of his life.

“I don’t see why we should have been forced to dig into our pockets to maintain him.”

Biggs was jailed for 30 years for the crime, in which train driver Jack Mills was severely beaten and never returned to work — though Biggs claims he did not attack him.

Fifteen months later, Biggs escaped Wandsworth Prison and spent the next 35 years on the run in Brazil, returning to his homeland in 2001 to hand himself in.

After his return, he was imprisoned in Belmarsh, in south-east London, before being switched to a high-dependency unit at Norwich at an estimated cost of £2,000 per week.