Harman's murder defence for battered women is demolished wrecking Labour's legal reforms The Lord Chief Justice said the Harman laws could very rarely influence decisions of a judge or jury in a murder trial Miss Harman's reforms were passed by Parliament in 2009 The country's most senior judge yesterday dismissed murder law reforms pushed through by former Labour minister Harriet Harman as useless. Lord Judge, the Lord Chief Justice, said the Harman laws - designed to help women who kill violent boyfriends or husbands - could only very rarely influence the decisions of a judge or jury in a murder trial. As a result, judges had to "question their purpose," he said. Lord Judge, the Lord Chief Justice (left) said laws pushed through by Harriet Harman (right) could only rarely influence the decisions of a judge or jury in a murder trial His ruling - delivered in the Appeal Court alongside two other senior judges - effectively wrecks the Labour murder reforms, which were intended to make it harder for men and easier for women to escape a murder conviction. Miss Harman's reforms, passed by Parliament in 2009, swept away the longstanding "crime of passion" defence of provocation, in which defendants could claim they were driven to murder by the sexual infidelity of their spouse or partner. Labour's new law said the courts should not consider the effect of infidelity. Instead, it brought in a "loss of control" defence. This could be used by those who feared violence by the person they killed. The law designed to provide a defence for female victims of domestic violence such as Sara Thornton Miss Harman, who was Minister for Women at the time, said her law would "end the culture of excuses" for male killers. It was designed to provide a defence for female victims of domestic violence such as Sara Thornton, jailed for life in 1990 for murdering with a knife her husband, whom she said was a violent alcoholic. Miss Thornton, who became a feminist heroine, won a retrial and her conviction was reduced to manslaughter six years later. The first part of the Harman law, which was meant to abolish the crime of passion, was overthrown by the Appeal Court last year when judges, including Lord Judge, said that for the courts to ignore infidelity was "unrealistic and carries with it the potential for injustice." Yesterday Lord Judge, sitting with Lady Justice Rafferty and Mr Justice Simon, shot down the second half of Miss Harman's law. The ruling came as the three Appeal judges considered claims from three killers - all men - that their murder convictions should be overturned because of the new "loss of control" defence. The judges rejected the appeals by Mark Dawes, Mark Hatter and Barry Bowyer. Lord Judge said that the laws introduced by Miss Harman could be considered by the courts only in circumstances "much more limited than the equivalent provisions in the former provocation defence." Otherwise, he said, the loss of control defence would succeed whenever someone accused of murder declared in court that "the circumstances caused me to have what I believed was a justifiable sense that I had been seriously wronged." Lord Judge said: "If so, when it is clear that the availability of a defence based on the loss of control has been significantly narrowed, one would have to question the purpose of the law."