The daughter of a murdered couple has hit out after their killer won a legal battle to have cosmetic surgery.

Linda Appleby’s parents Iris and Stephen Hadler were stabbed to death at their home in Newhaven in 1989.

Their murderer, Dennis Roberts, took the Government to Court and last week won the right to have a disfiguring birthmark removed from his face on the NHS.

The Ministry of Justice was slapped down in court for failing to reveal its policy on non-urgent medical treatments for inmates.

Roberts, who was sentenced to a minimum of 17 years in 1991 and is still in prison, had previously had laser surgery on the port winestain birthmark but Franklands Prison in Durham said it could not provide an escort to take him to and from hospital for further work.

Mrs Appleby told The Sunday Telegraph: “I know what I would like to do to him and he would need more than plastic surgery after that.”

Roberts’ legal team claimed the 59-year-old needed the treatment because his birthmark was affecting his mental health, leaving him humiliated, depressed and angry.

The High Court was told: “He has a low tolerance for people commenting on his face. He feels self-conscious and fearful of his own reaction when he becomes aware of others looking at the mark.

"When the treatment was halted in July 2007, Roberts slid into depression and his violent temper re-emerged."

The newspaper quoted another of the Hadlers’ relatives as saying: “What of Iris’s humiliation when he tried to rape her?

“What of her daughter’s depression and anger that her parents were brutalised then butchered in their beds?”

Roberts broke into the Hadlers’ home on July 22 1989, after unsuccessfully trying to pick up women at a local disco on a night of heavy drinking.

He sexually assualted Mrs Hadler, a 74-year-old dementia sufferer, and stabbed her 11 times.

Mr Hadler, 72, who was partly paralysed after suffering a stroke, was stabbed 23 times.

Roberts denied the crimes but was described by his trial judge as a danger to women and was sentenced to a minimum 15 years - later raised to 17 by the Home Secretary.

An appeal judge later told Roberts if he had been sentenced under more recent guidelines he would have received 30 years.