TRAIN Robber Ronnie Biggs hopes to end his days by his son's side in Barnet after being granted freedom from prison on compassionate grounds.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw approved his release yesterday after being told he is unlikely to recover from severe pneumonia.

Biggs' son Michael told the BBC he was "absolutely delighted".

Speaking on the Today programme this morning, he said: "My father has served a very long time in prison.

"In comparison to sentences which are being handed out nowadays, it's pathetic that anyone would expect my father to serve 30 years for taking part in a train robbery.

"The reasons why my father didn't get parole is that he didn't show any repentance. My father did show remorse all through the years for having committed a crime.

"However, he has never regretted living the life he did, because had he done that he would never have had me as a son."

Four weeks ago, Mr Straw said the 79-year-old should not be granted parole as he remained "wholly unrepentant" about his involvement in the 1963 robbery of a mail train.

But yesterday he said the medical evidence clearly showed "that Mr Biggs is very ill and that his condition has deteriorated recently, culminating in his readmission to hospital".

The decision means Biggs will spend his 80th birthday on Saturday as a free man.

The pensioner, who has suffered a series of strokes and is unable to speak, hopes to move into a Barnet care home to be close to his 34-year-old son, who lives in the borough.

However, his condition may mean he has to remain in hospital.

This will relieve many MPs and residents, who voiced anger 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, said: "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, originally from Lambeth, has served ten years of the 30-year jail term imposed for his part in the £2.6 million heist of the Glasgow-to-London mail train at Ledburn, Buckinghamshire. The haul would be worth £40 million today.

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 was not involved in the attack.

Fifteen months later, Biggs escaped Wandsworth Prison and spent the next 35 years on the run in Brazil.

He returned to his homeland in 2001 to hand himself in.

He was then imprisoned in Belmarsh, in south-east London, before being switched to a high-dependency unit at Norwich.