The new deputy Conservative Party chairman has said he supports the return of the death penalty. MP Lee Anderson said he supported the death penalty as “nobody has ever committed a crime after being executed”.
The controversial MP, who represents Ashfield, was given the new position by Prime Minister Rish Sunak in Tuesday's reshuffle He recently hit headlines after he criticised food bank users and the England football team when they took the knew against racism.
He made his opinion on the death penalty known during an interview with The Spectator. When he was asked whether he supported the punishment he said: "Yes.
“Nobody has ever committed a crime after being executed. You know that, don’t you? 100% success rate.”
The death penalty for murder was outlawed in the UK in 1969 and was later abolished for all crimes in 1998. The last people executed in Britain were Peter Allena and Gwynne Evans on August 13, 1964.
The UK follows the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which bans restoring the death penalty. However, the death penalty remains in some parts of the world such as the United States.
However, even in America, the death penalty is controversial, with only 24 out of the 50 US states having the lethal punishment. Death penalty cases can prove long and expensive and are not always correct. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, since 1973 190 people in the US have been exonerated since they were convicted and sentenced to death.
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But Mr Anderson said that the most serious crimes, such as the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby in 2013 by Islamist extremists Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, where the perpetrators are clearly identifiable such be punished by execution.
Mr Anderson told the magazine: “Now I’d be very careful on that one (the return of the death penalty) because you’ll get the certain groups saying: ‘You can never prove it’. Well, you can prove it if they have videoed it and are on camera – like the Lee Rigby killers.
“I mean: they should have gone, same week. I don’t want to pay for these people.”
Adebolajo was given a whole-life term. Adebowale was jailed for a minimum of 45 years for running over and stabbing Lee Rigby in London.
