A FORMER Labour minister has called for a five-year prison sentence handed to a Cwmbran man who killed his wife to be reviewed, calling it "unduly lenient" .

Harriet Harman said she would write to the Attorney General, asking him to refer to the Court of Appeal the five-year prison sentence given to Anthony Williams this week.

Williams strangled his wife Ruth days into the first national lockdown last March.

A jury cleared the 70-year-old of murder, and the defendant admitted a charge of manslaughter by diminished responsibility.

Ms Harman QC, who served as former Solicitor General for England and Wales and was the UK Government's first minister for women, described the five-year prison sentence as "unduly lenient" and called for a review.

She was joined by fellow Labour MPs Jess Phillips and Barbara Keeley, as well as activist David Challen.

Williams had told police he had “literally choked the living daylights” out of his wife of 46 years at their home on March 28.

He also told officers he had “snapped” following a period of feeling depressed and anxious.

Sentencing the defendant to five years in prison yesterday, Judge Paul Thomas said in his view Williams’s mental state was “severely affected at the time” of the killing.

“The overwhelming greatest tragedy here is a lady of 67 who had so much to live for, had her life ended by an act of great violence at the hands, literally, of a man she loved for very nearly 50 years," the judge said.

Williams told police he had suffered sleepless nights in the run-up to the attack due to “trivial” fears, including that he would run out of money.

In interviews read to the jury, Williams agreed with detectives that he was responsible for the killing of his wife, telling them he “snapped” while in bed.

He said he began strangling her after she told him to “get over it” when he expressed his concerns.

He said he chased his wife downstairs and again grabbed her by her throat as she tried to unlock the front door to escape, saying he found himself “throttling her to death”.

Mrs Williams was found slumped in the couple’s porch with a pair of keys in her hand.

She was taken to hospital where she was pronounced dead.