Reform UK MP Lee Anderson said he would back a referendum on the death penalty in the UK, in an article he wrote for the Sun, dismissing the massive fall in support for capital punishment in Britain over the last 50 years.
Support for the death penalty in the UK has fallen significantly since the 1970s, and this support dips even lower when the public are presented with the reality of the return of capital punishment. Only 35% of people surveyed in the UK think executions should be reintroduced for all cases of murder. Meanwhile, in the US, support has fallen to a 50-year low, with more Americans now preferring a life without parole.
Responding to Anderson’s comments in the online news website, Left Foot Forward, Reprieve CEO Maya Foa called Anderson’s comments “attention-seeking bluster, not a serious proposal”.
Maya went on to say that:
“The death penalty is increasingly the preserve of authoritarian regimes, and it says a lot about Lee Anderson that he thinks the UK should be following the example of Iran, China, Saudi Arabia and Donald Trump’s USA,”.
“The death penalty does not deter crime – the murder rate is consistently higher in US states that have capital punishment than in those that don’t. There is no humane way to execute someone and it often goes wrong – just in the last year, we’ve witnessed horrific scenes of men being tortured in execution chambers in Tennessee and Alabama.
“Every criminal justice system makes mistakes, including Britain’s – look at Andrew Malkinson, who spent 17 years in prison fighting a wrongful conviction for rape. The death penalty is irreversible, and where it exists, innocent people will inevitably be executed.
“The outcry after Timothy Evans was hanged for murders he didn’t commit eventually led to abolition in the UK. This is what Lee Anderson is proposing we go back to – a cruel, arbitrary and ineffective punishment that most democratic societies rejected long ago.”
Read the full piece on Left Foot Forward.
