Ministers order urgent review into loophole letting Jack Shepherd claim legal ...

An urgent review was ordered last night into the loophole letting a killer claim legal aid while on the run.

Despite being a fugitive, Jack Shepherd, 31, has been granted public money to challenge his six-year prison sentence for killing his date on a speedboat trip.

Justice Secretary David Gauke has told officials to examine legal aid rules in such cases and last night the Solicitor General joined MPs in calling for reform. Home Secretary Sajid Javid also intervened to say it was a ‘heart-breaking’ situation.

Praising the Mail, which is offering a £25,000 reward to bring Shepherd to justice, Mr Javid appealed to those harbouring the killer of Charlotte Brown, 24, to turn him in.

‘Her parents have suffered enough and Mr Shepherd should give himself up right away,’ he said. ‘I will be meeting Charlotte’s parents in the coming weeks and will do all I can to support them.’

Police admit Shepherd could be anywhere in the world and they have no ‘tangible clues’ as to his whereabouts. Prosecutors failed to have his passport confiscated and he fled before his trial.

The reckless womaniser killed Miss Brown while he was showing off his defective speedboat on a drunken dash down the Thames in central London. When it flipped over, he called for help only for himself. Miss Brown, a business consultant from Clacton in Essex, died after being pulled unconscious from the water.

Yesterday her grieving family vowed not to give up fighting to track down the man who robbed her of her life in December 2015. Her father Graham Brown said: ‘She was a young woman with everything in front of her. He stole that. She’s never going to have a husband, children, her dream career – all because of him.’

Recalling the moment a policeman broke the news, he added: ‘I threw my phone down and screamed. It was the most awful, awful thing.’ He said that when he was shown his daughter’s lifeless body, ‘I stood over her and I opened her eyes. I looked into them, into my daughter’s eyes for the last time, and just said “Why?”. That moment will stay with me for the rest of my life.’

Miss Brown’s mother, Roz Wickens, said of Shepherd: ‘He needs to serve his sentence. His actions killed my daughter. If it was not for Jack Shepherd taking her out that night, Charlotte would still be with us now.’

Shepherd’s lawyers told his trial he was too cowardly to face Miss Brown’s devastated family at the Old Bailey.

He went on the run in March last year, four months before he was tried in his absence and found guilty of manslaughter. Under a European Court of Human Rights precedent being on the run is no bar to an appeal.

Earlier this week, it was announced that Shepherd, originally from Exeter, had been granted the right to appeal – with the public having to foot the bill through legal aid. Yesterday the Justice Secretary ordered an investigation into the loophole.

A source close to Mr Gauke said he ‘quite understands and sympathises with the public concern here about a convicted killer fleeing the country and having his appeal paid for by the taxpayer and has asked officials to look at this’.

The source added that the situation was not clear cut, with the minister anxious not to spark ‘unintended consequences’ that could make it harder to try criminals in their absence. ‘In exploring this he is clear that we must not do anything that would make judges less likely to proceed with a trial for an absent defendant because of fear they would not be properly represented throughout the whole process,’ the source said.

‘He is particularly mindful that victims’ families could be left without justice for years where courts consider themselves unable to try an absent defendant.’ Shepherd could be using bank accounts and phones police cannot trace, Scotland Yard has admitted.

From his bolt-hole, the convicted killer is directing his London lawyers to prepare his legal aid-funded appeal.

The Government’s second most senior lawyer, Solicitor General Robert Buckland, called for action. The Conservative MP, who is a senior barrister, challenged the Ministry of Justice to examine the issue, saying: ‘This is a matter that deserves careful consideration.’