Arthur’s MP calls for killers to get more time in jail
THE ‘lenient’ jail sentences handed to the ‘monsters’ who killed sixyear-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes will be reviewed, the Attorney General confirmed yesterday.
Emma Tustin, 32, was jailed for a minimum of 29 years on Friday for murder and child cruelty. Arthur’s father, Thomas Hughes, 29, was given 21 years for manslaughter.
The Attorney General’s Office has 28 days from the date of sentence to review the case, assess whether it falls under the Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme, and make a decision on referring it to the Court of Appeal. The Court of Appeal then makes the decision about the sentence. Confirming the review, a spokesman said: ‘The Attorney General’s thoughts are with those who loved Arthur.’
The decision came as footballers and fans paid tribute to Arthur yesterday, with rounds of applause before matches and during the sixth minute of games.
Players and fans paid tribute at Birmingham City, the club Arthur supported, as well as at Liverpool against Wolverhampton Wanderers, West Ham versus Chelsea and Coventry against West Brom. At Birmingham’s game against Millwall, players wore T-shirts emblazoned with ‘Arthur We Love You’ during the pre-match warm-ups.
Aston Villa will also honour Arthur during today’s clash with Leicester.
Speaking in Solihull yesterday, the local Conservative MP Julian Knight said: ‘There’s a palpable sense of real loss and tragedy over this and also, frankly, a sense of anger, and questions over how this was allowed to happen – how these monsters were allowed to inflict this horrible torture on this young, defenceless boy.’
‘I think anyone reflecting on those sentences thinks that they were too lenient and my intention is to refer this to the Unduly Lenient Sentencing scheme as soon as possible and I will be doing that on Monday.’
Arthur was starved and beaten to death by Tustin and Hughes who also made him stand alone for more than 14 hours a day in a degrading, punishing and hellish regime over the last painful months of his life.
West Midlands Police has released a video showing the couple eating two separate boxes of McDonald’s, while a starving Arthur is left to his own devices.
The home footage also shows the pair tucking into ice cream at Tustin’s Solihull home days before Arthur was murdered in June 2020. As the couple relax on the sofa, Arthur is left to stand by himself in
the hallway, wearing a fluffy onesie in sweltering temperatures.
The trial heard harrowing clips of Arthur crying, ‘No one loves me’ and ‘No one is going to feed me’. Solihull Council has faced fierce criticism over failures in its children’s services department while Arthur was being tormented.
Department head Louise Rees, 60, left her £123,000-a-year post weeks after Arthur’s murder. Children’s social services complaints rose by 33 per cent to 87 during Rees’s first year in charge.
Solihull’s social services was found to have ‘seriously declined’ as a result of ‘poor leadership’.