‘Anomaly’ as Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe is paid incapacity benefit

Employment Minister Chris Grayling called the payments “an anomaly” and promised a review.

He was responding to a question from Tory MP Jake Berry on whether it was right that Sutcliffe, along with Moors Murderer Ian Brady, were entitled to benefits.

Mr Berry, MP for Rossendale and Darwen, said: “Unlike prisoners, those detained under the Mental Health Act, including Ian Brady and Peter Sutcliffe, are entitled to receive incapacity benefit.”

“Will you tell the House what this Government intends to do about it?”

Mr Grayling replied: “I agree with you that this is an anomaly and it is something that the department is reviewing as we speak and we will give more details in due course.”

Mr Berry’s constituency includes parts of Saddleworth Moor in the Pennines, where Brady and his accomplice Myra Hindley buried five child victims in the 1960s.

Peter Sutcliffe was given 20 life sentences in 1981 after being convicted of murdering 13 women and attacking seven others in Yorkshire and Lancashire. He has served almost all his sentence at Broadmoor Special Hospital,

He was blinded in one eye and the other damaged when he was stabbed with a pen, having on an earlier occasion been slashed with a broken coffee jar.