A NORTH-East MP has vowed to fight to scrap a law that allows wife-killers to be acquitted of murder because they were nagged.

Vera Baird, Labour MP for Redcar, said she would introduce an amendment to the Domestic Violence Bill to remove the defence of provocation.

Ms Baird, a barrister, said the law failed to prevent women being convicted of murder even when they had used a knife to defend themselves against a violent man.

Yet it allowed men to escape with a manslaughter conviction because they successfully claimed they had lost their self-control because of nagging.

She claimed one plea of provocation had been accepted because a wife had told her husband she was leaving him - and another "because of the way the woman moved the mustard pot across the table".

Ms Baird said: "In domestic killings, men kill because of anger or sexual jealousy, women usually because of abuse.

"Hence, violent men get away with murder and battered women are convicted of it.

"The need for a reform of the law is urgent."

Ms Baird said about 100 women every year were killed by violent partners and a further 30 men were killed by partners they had battered.

She pledged to introduce an amendment at the final reading of the Bill to scrap the provocation defence, a change already proposed by the Law Commission.

But Paul Goggins, a Home Office Minister, said that the Commission's recommendations had to be studied in more detail.

The Redcar MP spoke during the second reading of the Bill, trumpeted as the biggest overhaul of domestic violence legislation since the 1970s.

A £4m "Victims' Fund" will provide support, information and advice to victims of rape and sexual offences, road traffic accident victims and people bereaved by crime.

A new offence of familial homicide will be created for causing or allowing the death of a child or vulnerable adult.