Ronnie Biggs was in hospital last night after falling from his prison bed and breaking his hip. The Great Train Robber, whose release has been recommended by the Parole Board and could happen on Friday, might require surgery this morning, his son Michael said.

Biggs, 79, is infirm after a series of strokes and also has chest infection. He was taken by ambulance yesterday from Norwich prison, where he has been held in the medical wing, to Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital.

Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, will decide this week whether to act on the report recommending Biggs’s release. The Parole Board concluded that he posed a “manageable” risk. It said: “The strokes he has suffered have deprived him of speech and the ability to swallow. He is tube-fed and communicates by hand gestures and the use of an alphabet panel.”

The report added, though, that he might associate with criminals and become indirectly involved in crime.

Biggs was one of 15 members of a gang that attacked a mail train at Ledburn, Buckinghamshire, on August 8, 1963, making off with £2.6 million, a record haul at the time. Jack Mills, the train driver, was knocked unconscious with an iron bar and never fully recovered.

The gang was quickly captured. Biggs served 15 months before escaping from Wandsworth prison in a furniture van. He fled overseas, living in Spain and Australia before settling in Brazil. He thwarted attempts to extradite, kidnap and arrest him and achieved a popular notoriety. He recorded a single with the Sex Pistols when they visited him in 1978. With his health failing, he returned in 2001 and has been in prison ever since.

Michael Biggs said yesterday: “He is comfortable, but this is very worrying. How was he allowed to fall off the bed in the hospital wing? Hopefully now Jack Straw will sign the release order which has been on his desk for two weeks.”

Giovanni di Stefano, Biggs’s lawyer, said: “The only important factor is this: the Parole Board has recommended release — all else is frankly superfluous. Biggs still a risk? At 80, can’t walk, can’t talk, can’t go to the toilet, is fed with nasal gastric feed, in a wheelchair?”

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