A NORTH-East MP and leading barrister has welcomed proposals that could see women who kill their violent partners being spared life prison terms.

A consultation document drawn up by the Law Commission, the Government's law reform advisors, suggests the murder laws are unfair to female victims of domestic violence and need changing.

Redcar MP Vera Baird QC said: "It appears the Law Commission has taken on board the lessons from some of the cases of battered women who kill their abusive partners.

"The law has grown up around the basis of men's response to violence and this report seems to me to finally have started to think about the way women respond."

Currently, English law holds that a person who kills after a temporary loss of self control may be able to rely on the defence of provocation.

If such a defence proves successful, the accused would be convicted of manslaughter rather than murder.

But the law is such that individuals who kill using pre-meditated force in order to protect themselves are not safeguarded.

It is argued that, if an abused woman wanted to protect herself, she would normally have to wait until her husband was asleep or caught unawares - putting herself beyond the boundaries of self defence.

To remove the imbalance, the law could be altered in one of two ways, according to the Law Commission. One approach, it suggests, would be to abolish the mandatory life sentence for murder.

The other would be to extend the availability of a defence to murder to an abused woman who kills "either by altering the boundaries of an existing defence" or by creating a new defence.

Solicitor General Harriet Harman has said the law on provocation is unfair to women, outdated and in need of reform.

The consultation paper, which the Law Society emphasises does not represent its final views, is being circulated for responses to be made by the end of January.