Sir Keir Starmer has vowed to look at whether younger people should have recognition as domestic abuse victims, after a teenager stabbed his 15-year-old ex-girlfriend to death in an alleyway.
Taking questions at the despatch box on Wednesday, the Prime Minister said he was “grateful” to address the murder of Holly Newton, from Hexham in Northumberland.
Her killer Logan MacPhail, then aged 16, stalked Holly for an hour through the town before knifing her 36 times in an alleyway in January 2023.
The town’s Labour MP Joe Morris said the case was a “tragic murder”, adding: “Will the Prime Minister and Home Secretary look urgently at the calls from Holly’s mother Micala Trussler to lower the age that a person can be recognised as a victim of domestic abuse?”
Sir Keir replied: “Can I thank (Mr Morris) for raising this tragic case and it is a really important issue.
“We’ve seen an increase in violence in teenage relationships in the last decade and I’ve been continually shocked by research that shows that at a younger and younger age, there’s abuse in relationships.
“So we do need to look at this at the earliest opportunity to how we properly protect girls, but I’m very grateful this tragic case has been raised.”
MacPhail, of Birtley in Gateshead, was detained for life with a minimum term of 17 years.
According to Mr Justice Hilliard, who sentenced him last year, MacPhail was not able to accept that his 18-month relationship with Holly was over and launched the attack when he was “filled with resentment and jealousy but still able to calculate” where to murder her.
In UK law, domestic abuse can take place only when two people personally connected to each other are aged 16 or over.
When it prepared the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, the Home Office said it wanted to maintain the age limit.
“We do not want to risk blurring the lines between domestic abuse and child abuse,” it wrote in a policy paper, adding: “In 2012, following a public consultation, the age limit in the cross-government definition of domestic abuse was lowered from 18 to 16, to recognise that young people can experience abuse in their relationships.”
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has previously said the Government “will particularly, specifically look at this, because we need to make sure that we have got the right ways of recording this kind of violence in teenage relationships”.
Mrs Trussler had previously described “a lot of controlling behaviour going on” in an interview with broadcasters ahead of MacPhail’s sentencing.
