'Sooner or later we will walk': Starmer warned swathes of MPs 'sick and fed up of Labour's daft ideas'

Labour MP Karl Turner says his fellow backbenchers are tired of being "marched up hills, only to be marched back down again" as he hit out at a raft of "daft" proposals binned by the Government.

"We've had a lot of daft ideas and the government have rightly binned them," the MP for Hull East told Tonight with Andrew Marr.

He slammed Justice Secretary David Lammy's "ridiculous" proposal to scrap most jury trias as the most "ludicrous proposal I've ever heard."

Mr Lammy and his team are proposing that, should MPs and peers agree, nearly all crimes with a penalty of up to three years in prison will be tried by just a single judge, scrapping the option of trial by jury.

Mr Turner denied threatening to walk from the party over his disdain for the policy, but admitted he is still "incredibly cross".

Read more: Vote down plans to scrap jury trials, Tories tell rebel Labour MPs

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Revealing details of a private conversation, Mr Turner said he told Labour chief whip Jonathan Reynolds to stop threatening MPs with having the whip removed

"I said, listen, stop threatening to lose the whip with peopleWhat you need to be concerned about is MPs walking out the door on the basis that we're sick and fed up, have been marched up hills, only to be marched back down again when the government quickly established that the ideas are daft ideas," Mr Turner said.

He added: "Start worrying about MPs like me being so fed up that we’re just going to walk out the door."

It comes after a bombshell letter published last month revealed 38 Labour MPs and suspended Labour stalwart Diane Abbott called on Mr Lammy's plans to be dropped.

The letter to Sir Keir Starmer, penned by Mr Turner, the Government's proposals were branded "an ineffective way of dealing with the crippling backlog in cases in our criminal justice system".

The MPs, whose number is largely made up of the left of the party, added there is a "growing number of our colleagues who are not prepared to support these proposals" when it comes to the Commons.

Sir Keir has previously answered concerns from MPs about the plans by telling them that jury trials already make up only a small proportion of trials in the criminal courts system.

In the Commons, he told Mr Turner - who confronted him on the issue at Prime Minister's Questions - that "juries will remain a cornerstone of our justice system for the most serious cases".

The Prime Minister also faced calls to place a so-called "sunset clause" on the plans, so that once the court backlog is cleared, jury trials can be restored to all cases they had previously applied to.