Hull East MP Karl Turner has had the Labour whip suspended after his outspoken criticism of the Government’s planned reforms of jury trials. Turner, who joined the Party at age 13 and has been a loyal Labour MP for 16 years, said: “I have not had any notification from the whips about this. It seems journalists have been told but I have not.”

Turner issued a statement, adding that he had broken the whip only once, on jury trials. I’m disappointed to be suspended without prior discussion. “I’ll always stand up for justice, my principles, and East Hull,” he said.

Turner said it was “clear” his suspension was connected to his “robust but fair” criticism of the government’s policy on jury trials. Speaking to Times Radio earlier this month, Turner said he was “already on a conduct warning for having the audacity to say that these proposals are ludicrous,” adding: “I’m not going to be bullied around.”

In a parliamentary debate in March, a number of backbench Labour MPs spoke out against the Government’s unpopular plans to curtail trial by jury, which many regard as an attack on a fundamental right, as well as unlikely to solve the problem of long delays in the judicial process. Additionally, it’s a policy for which the Government has no democratic mandate.

Labour’s former director of policy Andrew Fisher said: “Starmer’s Labour: authoritarian, disrespectful and tactically inept. Karl Turner had been one of the leaders of the dissent against curtailing jury trials.”

The media is being briefed that Labour MPs had raised concerns about a recent interview Turner gave to independent journalist and former Workers’ Party candidate Jody McIntyre. Turner said: “At the time, I was unaware of the interviewer’s wider views, and had I known then what I now know, I would not have participated.”

According to the Guardian, “A Labour source denied that the suspension was due to Turner’s opposition to the judicial changes and said there had been complaints about his conduct online as well as in Parliament from other MPs.”

Online Turner had called the recently sacked Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s former Chief of Staff, “McSwindle” and suggested he staged the theft of his mobile phone, which is thought to contain sensitive details of his relationship with the now disgraced Peter Mandelson. Three-quarters of the public have reached the same conclusion about the phone theft, according to one recent survey. Later Turner retracted his opinion about the theft, but in his McIntyre interview, he alleged the Prime Minister’s former Chief of Staff was “still running the job” in the background.

The suspension of Karl Turner is unlikely to deter a large backbench rebellion over the scrapping of many trials by jury when the government Bill is next debated in Parliament.

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Official_portrait_of_Karl_Turner_crop_2.jpg Source: https://api20170418155059.azure-api.net/photo/lRKogHos.jpeg?crop=MCU_3:4&quality=80&download=trueGallery: https://beta.parliament.uk/media/lRKogHos. Author: Chris McAndrew, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.