Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch have been slammed by the most senior judge in England and Wales over their comments at last week’s PMQs about a legal ruling.

The Tory leader first raised the issue by criticising a tribunal decision to grant a Palestinian family – displaced during the Gaza war – the right to stay in the UK after they applied through a scheme meant for Ukrainian refugees.

They eventually won the right to stay under separate, general human rights considerations.  

Badenoch put it to Starmer in the Commons last week that it was the “completely wrong” ruling.

The prime minister agreed, saying home secretary Yvette Cooper was looking at “closing this loophole”.

At the time, he said: “Let me be clear, it should be parliament that makes the rules on immigration.

“It should be the government that makes the policy, that is the principle, and the home secretary is already looking at the legal loophole which we need to close in this particular case.”

But Lady chief justice Baroness Carr said on Tuesday that she was “deeply troubled” by this exchange in the Commons, and had now written to the government over the matter.

She said: “Both question and the answer were unacceptable.

“It is for the government visibly to respect and protect the independence of the judiciary.

“Where parties, including the government, disagree with their findings, they should do so through the appellate process.”

Baroness Carr said she had now sent a letter to both Starmer and to the justice secretary and Lord Chancellor Shabana Mahmood.

“It is not acceptable for judges to be the subject of personal attacks for doing no more than their jobs to find the facts on the evidence before them and apply the law as it stands, to those facts,” Baroness Carr added.

She also noted that “it is really dangerous” to criticise a judgement without full understanding of the facts and law.

Badenoch later hit back at the criticism, saying: “Parliament is sovereign. Politicians must be able to discuss matters of crucial public importance in parliament.

“This doesn’t compromise the independence of the judiciary.

“The decision to allow a family from Gaza to come to the UK was outrageous for many reasons.

“The prime minister couldn’t even tell me whether the government would appeal the decision. He pretended he was looking at closing a legal ‘loophole’.

“This is not just some legal loophole that can be closed, but requires a fundamental overhaul of our flawed human rights laws.”

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp also said politicians are “perfectly entitled to comment on decisions by judges”.

He added: “This is especially the case with human rights-based cases, where judges have adopted increasingly bizarre and expansive interpretations of vaguely worded ECHR clauses.”