Bishop Auckland MP Dehenna Davison seeks 'fairer justice' on single-punch killings

An MP whose father was killed by a single punch is seeking "fairer justice" for victims and families.

Dehenna Davison, MP for Bishop Auckland, said she had felt a "burning sense of injustice" at the "lenient" sentence given in her father's case.

She was 13 when her 35-year-old father Dominic was killed outside a Sheffield pub in 2007.

Ms Davison has launched an all party parliamentary group to look at sentencing of single-punch assaults.

Launching her campaign in The Northern Echo on the 14th anniversary of her father's death, Ms Davison, 27, said: "Alongside trying to process the grief and shock of losing dad so suddenly, there was also the pressure and uncertainty of the court case, which took 10 months to complete, and ultimately left us with a burning sense of injustice."

She has previously told parliament of the "anger and frustration" her family felt after learning the man they blamed for her father's death was being released from prison after serving 18 months.

The Conservative MP, who took the Bishop Auckland seat held by Labour since the 1930s in 2019, said she was surprised by how many other families have been similarly affected by one-punch attacks and said there was a shared feeling that "sentencing was too lenient".

She said her group will seek to draw up proposals "for how the sentencing system could be changed to provide a fairer sense of justice" and look at "how we can better educate people about the true impact of violence".

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