The UK government announced on 29 June 2026 that people convicted of murdering a current or former partner in England and Wales will face sentences roughly ten years longer than they do today.

The change has been in the works for several years. In March 2023, the Ministry of Justice first signalled this direction. Then in June 2026, the government released a consultation document laying out the specific proposal: when someone kills a partner and there is a history of controlling or coercive behaviour — the pattern that typically shapes domestic homicides — judges will be required to impose a much longer minimum prison term before parole can be considered.

Why the Minimum Term Matters

To understand the reform, you need one piece of context. Murder in England and Wales is always a life sentence, but the critical figure for how long someone actually stays in prison is called the "minimum term." That is the number of years a judge says must pass before someone can apply to get out on parole. This figure has grown steadily over the past two decades. In 2000, the average minimum term for murder was 13 years. By 2021, it had risen to 21 years. The new reform adds approximately ten years on top of that — a substantial jump in a system that has already become much tougher.

The law does not prescribe a single minimum term for all murders. Instead, sentences scale upward depending on the circumstances of the crime — the worst cases carry whole-life orders, meaning no parole ever. A new minimum term specifically for domestic killings would sit within that stepped structure. Historically, judges have not given enough weight to coercive control — when one partner systematically dominates and isolates the other — in their sentencing decisions. This reform is designed to correct that gap.

How This Works in Practice

There is a tension worth understanding. In the English and Welsh system, mandatory minimum sentences are rarely used and tend to apply only to the most serious or straightforward cases. Judges still have some room to depart from the starting points the law provides. The Sentencing Council — the body that issues guidelines to judges — already allows courts to treat coercive control as a major factor that increases a sentence.

So the question becomes: how will the new mandatory floor interact with the flexibility judges still retain? A hard minimum will prevent courts from going too low, which is what campaigners wanted — they argued that sentences were too lenient. But it also limits how much judges can adjust for unusual or complex circumstances. For example, a woman who endured years of abuse and then killed her abusive partner faces a very different situation than someone who kills a stranger during a robbery. The same rule will have to cover both.

The government's documents show awareness of this problem, but the exact answer will only appear when Parliament finalises the legislation. Defence lawyers, domestic abuse campaigners, and the Sentencing Council will all be watching closely to see how the courts handle edge cases.

What Happens Next

This reform is part of a larger rethinking of how England and Wales handles murder and homicide more broadly. The law in this area has drawn sustained criticism from academics and practioners for being too rigid. What Parliament actually passes — whether it adopts the government's proposal or amends it — will determine what effect this change really has.

For prosecutors and defence lawyers, the practical question is how to prove a "history of controlling or coercive behaviour" when it comes time to sentence. Coercive control itself became a criminal offence in 2015, but using it as a reason to impose a longer sentence raises specific challenges: how evidence gets shared in court, whether expert witnesses are needed, and how victim statements fit in. Courts have not yet had to navigate these questions in this particular context.

The ten-year increase is substantial. Whether it actually deters someone from committing a crime, whether it changes how the Crown Prosecution Service decides to charge cases, or whether it mainly affects how long people already in prison will stay there — those are questions that will only be answered when real cases move through the courts in the years ahead.