Labour whips should be ‘concerned about the risk of MPs deciding they have had enough and triggering by-elections’, the MP said
Karl Turner, Labour Party MP for Hull East(Image: Karl Turner / Labour Party)
The MP for Hull East, Labour’s Karl Turner, has warned the Government of MPs ‘deciding they have had enough’ amid his continued opposition to planned jury reforms. Mr Turner has said the Prime Minister, “ought to be ashamed of himself” over the proposed alterations.
In a bid to cut a record backlog of cases, in recent months the Government has announced plans to ‘modernise’ the court system. The plans, announced by Justice Secretary, David Lammy, see cases with a likely sentence of three years or less being heard by a Judge alone, rather than a jury.
Mr Turner voted against the proposals last week in a vote held during an Opposition Day in Parliament. The Hull East MP was the only Labour MP to back the Conservatives’ call for the proposals to be rejected.
In an interview with The Sunday Times following the vote, Mr Turner said he was “not fearful of having the whip removed” for voting against his party, with the paper also reporting that the MP added he would consider triggering a by-election as a point of principle. He also told the broadsheet: “The Government must stop these ludicrous proposals and get on with the hard job of sorting out the criminal justice system.”
The paper ran the story with the headline: “Labour MP tells Starmer: Scrap jury reforms or face by-election.” Following this, Mr Turner told the Hull Daily Mail: “I did not write The Sunday Times headline; that is the editor’s responsibility.
“I have made clear to the whips that they should not be threatening to withdraw the whip simply because MPs vote with the opposition on a policy that concerns most political parties in Parliament and that they should be more concerned about the risk of MPs deciding they have had enough and triggering by-elections. Too often, MPs have been marched up the hill to defend unworkable policies, only to be marched back down again.
“I am hugely disappointed with the Government on this issue. The proposals go well beyond the recommendations of Leveson, and the Government must undertake the modelling that Sir Brian has rightly said is essential. The second Leveson report is due to be published imminently, and once we have that, we will be in a position to take a more sober and informed view of what is required to fix a system that the previous Tory government left in a broken state.
“Successive governments have underinvested in the criminal justice system for decades. If we genuinely want the system to work, it will require sustained effort from ministers and stakeholders alike to deliver a justice system that victims of serious crime so clearly deserve. At the last election, people voted for a government that would deliver change and that change is happening but on this issue, the Government have got it very badly wrong.”
Despite Mr Turner retaining his seat just 18 months ago at the 2024 General Election, pollsters, Electoral Calculus, have determined the Labour Party would have just a 6% chance of winning in the area based on current polls. Their calculations would mean any by-election would likely be music to the ears of Reform UK, with the party having a 93% chance of winning the seat according to the pollsters. This, in addition to Nigel Farage’s party’s success in the Hull and East Yorkshire Mayoral Election, last May, would likely be cause for concern for the Labour Party if a by-election were to be called.
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