Thirty-five prisoners have been told that they will die in jail but one of Britain’s most notorious killers is not on the official list.

Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, convicted of murdering 13 women, has not been told that he must spend the rest of his life in detention, The Times has learnt.

Thirty-one of the 35 murderers given “whole-life” tariffs have been named for the first time by the Home Office.

But some of the country’s most notorious killers are not on the published list. In addition to Sutcliffe, the list does not include John Straffen, at more than 55 years in jail the longest-serving prisoner, Beverly Allitt, “the Angel of Death”, Kenneth Erskine, the Stockwell Strangler, and Robert Black, the child killer.

Publication of the names comes as the overall number of those serving life in jails in England and Wales has reached a record high. More than one in ten of the jail population are serving life, the highest number for any country in Western Europe. A total of 8,252 offenders are serving life, including 6,355 given either a mandatory life term for murder or a discretionary life sentence for crimes such as rape, manslaughter and attempted murder.

Almost two thousand are serving the new indeterminate sentence for public protection given to those convicted of other violent or sex crime.

The new sentence, which is proving popular with the courts, means a person can remain in jail indefinitely and is only released if the Parole Board considers that they are no longer a risk to the public.

The Home Office has never before confirmed or denied who had been given a whole- life tariff. Even now, the department will not disclose the remaining four.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: “The four undisclosed prisoners have never had their tariffs reviewed. It would not, in our view, be right for them to be publicly identified until they have had an opportunity for their tariffs to be reset.”

Ministers lost the power to set tariffs in 2003 and, since then, the decision has been for the trial judge, or the High Court, which is reviewing all tariffs previously set by ministers.

The Times can disclose that although the judge at Sutcliffe’s trial in 1981 said that he should serve a minimum of 30 years, a formal tariff was never set because the killer failed to submit written representations.

It will now be for the High Court to set a tariff for Sutcliffe, who was transferred to Broadmoor top-security mental hospital in 1984, after paranoid schizophrenia was diagnosed. He still lives at the hospital near Crowthorne in Berkshire.

The Criminal Justice Act 2003 makes it clear that a whole-life order would normally be the starting point in any case where two or more murders are committed involving a substantial degree of premeditation, or sexual or sadistic conduct.

Black, 59, was sentenced in 1994 to ten life terms for the abduction and murder of three young girls and the attempted abduction of a 15-year-old. The trial judge said that Black should serve 35 years.

Allitt, a nurse, was given 13 life sentences in 1993 for murdering children in her care by injecting them with insulin. Allitt is in Rampton top-security mental hospital in Nottinghamshire. Her trial judge recommended that she serve a minimum of 40 years.

Ian Huntley, the Soham murderer, was given a minimum 40 years but not a whole-life tariff because of the nature of the case. Mr Justice Moses, the trial judge, said that it was “likely” but not proved that Huntley had enticed the girls into his house and there was a “likelihood” of sexual motivation but no evidence.

Rose West, 52 Convicted of ten murders by Winchester Crown Court in 1995. She helped her husband Fred West to rape, torture and kill young women at their home in Gloucester. He had admitted to 12 murders, but hanged himself while awaiting trial. Among the victims were West’s daughter, Heather, and her stepdaughter, Charmaine

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