Dominic Raab has called for the new law to prevent the release of wife killers

Former cabinet ministers Priti Patel and Robert Buckland are urging the government to end the automatic release of wife killers. Laws they push through Parliament.

Ms Patel, the former home secretary, and Mr Buckland, the former justice secretary, called on ministers to refer Robert Brown’s case to the Parole Board using provisions of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Act 2022.

Brown killed his estranged wife Joanna Simpson, 46, with a claw hammer while their children shivered at their home in Ascot, Berkshire, in October 2010. Brown buried Simpson’s body in a pre-made grave in Windsor Great Park.

Brown, a former British Airways pilot, pleaded guilty to manslaughter due to diminished responsibility and was jailed for 26 years in May 2011. He is scheduled to serve half his sentence and be released in November.

On Saturday, Simpson’s mother Diana Parkes pleaded Directly to Dominic RaabThe Justice Secretary, after learning that Brown would be classified as a “critical public safety case” – meaning he poses a very high risk of serious harm – ordered Brown to be jailed.

Boris Johnson’s wife Mrs Patel, Mr Buckland and Carrie Johnson will be at a reception in Westminster on Wednesday to appeal to Dominic Raab to invoke his “powers to imprison” Brown, hosted by Miss Parkes.

An option for Mr Raab would be to invoke Section 132 of the PCSC Act 2022, which gives him the power to “refer high-risk offenders to the Parole Board in lieu of automatic release”.

Ms Patel said: “If anyone in the government has any doubts, there are rules and laws that can be enforced and that’s where the government needs to be.”

Mr Buckland said: “New powers within the PCSC Act allow the Justice Secretary to convert automatic rules into verification rules. I would like to see this considered and potentially used.”

The reception is organized by the Joanna Simpson Foundation, a charity Parks created to help “transform the care, support and protection of children affected by domestic abuse and homicide.”

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The ceremony at Westminster Chapel will come three days after Mr Raab agreed to meet the family. It is understood that Damian Hinds, the prisons minister, will meet Hetty Burkworth-Nanton, co-founder of the charity, next week.

The Ministry of Justice said:[Mr Raab] Will do everything in his power to put the most dangerous criminals behind bars and has pledged to give this case his closest personal attention.”

Brown was labeled as a serious risk of harm and in need of intensive supervision after serious concerns were raised about the probation service.

Last month, ministers and the service were accused of having “blood on their hands” after Jordan McSweeney, a violent misogynist, was released from prison and killed law graduate Zara Alaina in Ilford, east London, in June 2022.