Robert Jenrick
MP for Newark · Reform UK · United Kingdom
“Robert Steele was a beautiful four-year-old boy who died three weeks ago in Newark when he was thrown from an off-road bike that was being driven by a 24-year-old man. This is the culmination of a number of incidents in my town, and many others across the country, involving off-road bikes, e-bikes and e-scooters.”
“The Minister said that Governments are elected to lead. Most people would assume that means that Ministers are elected to lead, because they are accountable to Parliament and to the people.”
“There is an air of total unreality hanging over this debate. Successive Governments have run down our Royal Navy to its present enfeebled state, they have conspired to surrender other British sovereign territory and we have a Government who procrastinate about signing off a new oil field in the North sea—let alone about one in the south A…”
“I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his position. I have known him for a long time—I wish him well. He has a huge task ahead of him. Earlier in the summer, the Prime Minister said that walking the streets of Makerfield lodged in his mind that so many working people want to see the personal allowance raised.”
“Imagine that you are a worker at JLR worried about your future, and you have the misfortune of watching the Chancellor’s speech, which contains searing economic insights like, “I want to see businesses make a profit.” There was nothing about scrapping electric vehicle mandates, bringing down energy costs by getting rid of net zero targets…”
“The sight of the Government escorting illegal migrants into Portsmouth harbour, the home of the Royal Navy, was a national humiliation. Sometimes I wonder whether Members of this House have no appreciation of the level of anger there is in the country at the rapes, the murders and the billions being wasted that should be being spent on th…”
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“Days later, he paid an Islamist double murderer thousands in compensation, alongside hundreds of thousands in legal fees, much of it to the Justice Secretary’s own colleague’s spouse. Then the Prime Minister’s mentor, a leading KC who clapped him into Downing Street, slammed his shameful plan to slash jury trials. To top it all off, on new year’s day we learned that these prisoners had been let loose. Well, happy new year from the Justice Secretary. It is little wonder that in his first interview of 2026, he said that he was seeking divine retribution—sorry, he meant to say divine intervention. Well, with more of this, God help us all.”
“Why, as we have just learned, did it take 48 hours for the police to raise the alarm? How many other murderers are there in open prisons? How many more mistaken releases have there been since the Justice Secretary last came clean? Once again, the safety of the public is being compromised by the breathtaking incompetence of his Department. What a Christmas it has been for the Justice Secretary. On Boxing day, he said he was delighted to welcome into Britain an extremist who hates our country. The following day, it was revealed that he had invited a disgraced ex-Labour politician convicted of spreading homophobic smears to his official swearing-in as Lord Chancellor.”
“So a murderer is on the loose—a murderer and a violent offender. Once again, the Justice Secretary’s strongest ever checks have been a resounding failure, and once again there is a manhunt under way. Precious police resources are being wasted to fix Calamity’s latest cock-up. And where is the Justice Secretary? The Ministry of Justice seems to lose its Secretary of State as much as it does its prisoners. Has his aunt taken him to the January sales to find him a new suit, just in case he gets let loose on Prime Minister’s questions again? Let me ask the Minister instead: why was someone who robbed and brutally killed a man by bashing him on the head with a brick—a man who led a prison riot and attacked prison officers repeatedly—deemed safe for open prison?”
“Once again, he is endangering the British public.”
“Under the Justice Secretary’s plans to slash jury trials, he is giving magistrates more serious cases. However, he also plans to scrap the automatic right to appeal—a vital safety valve in courtrooms where justice is delivered at pace by volunteers. Last year, 5,000 cases from magistrates courts were appealed, of which more than 40% were upheld. Given that very high rate of successful appeals, will the Secretary of State be honest with the public and concede that curtailing appeals will unquestionably lead to miscarriages of justice?”
“If the Secretary of State maintains that this change will not lead to miscarriages of justice, he must be expecting the same number of cases to be appealed. In which case, there is no point doing it in the first place. The truth, deep down, is that the Government are willing to tolerate some miscarriages of justice to save a paltry sum of money, yet all the while the solution is staring us in the face. Since the Justice Secretary announced his plan on 2 December, 640 sitting days have been missed. It is the end of term. The Justice Secretary’s report card is marked “improvement required”. Will he reflect over Christmas and make scrapping his plan to slash jury trials a new year’s resolution that we can all support?”
“I commend the Justice Secretary on the Government’s decision to extend whole-life orders to those who kill prison officers. Two weeks ago, I had the privilege of meeting the parents of Lenny Scott when they came to Parliament. It is absolutely right that we extend whole-life orders to cases in which brave prison officers are killed, either in the course of their duties, or in the exceptional circumstances that faced Lenny Scott after he had left the service. The Justice Secretary can be assured of the support of Conservative Members. Two weeks ago, the Justice Secretary appeared on Sky News and revealed that 12 more prisoners had been mistakenly released, and that two remained on the run. I have two very simple questions: since then, how many prisoners have been mistakenly released, and how many more remain on the run?”
“In all the years that I have been in the House, I have never known a Secretary of State fail to answer the first question from his opposite number, but that says a lot about the man. The Justice Secretary was fine answering questions in the media two weeks ago, when the police investigation was under way, but now he says—or his Minister says, in his stead—that it would be inappropriate to comment in the House of Commons. What utter nonsense! Does he seriously think anyone is buying that excuse? He either does not know the details, or he is covering up his failure, both of which are a dereliction of duty. How on earth can the public assist in the manhunts that are presumably under way across our country and clear up his mess if he will not publish the names or mugshots of the prisoners mistakenly released?”
“The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to reject the proposal for the Rushcliffe Borough Council area to be merged with the Nottingham City Council area, and to retain the borough of Rushcliffe within the county of Nottinghamshire. And the petitioners remain, etc. ] [P003143]”
“The petitioners therefore request that “the House of Commons urge the Government to reject the proposal for the Rushcliffe Borough Council area to be merged with the Nottingham City Council area, and to retain the borough of Rushcliffe within the county of Nottinghamshire.” Following is the full text of the petition: [ The petition of residents of the Rushcliffe area, Declares that the people of Rushcliffe strongly oppose a forced reorganisation of local government which would merge their community into a new authority combining Rushcliffe Borough Council with Nottingham City Council.”
“I rise to present a petition on behalf of almost 15,000 members of the public from the borough of Rushcliffe, much of which falls in my Newark constituency. The petition declares that “the people of Rushcliffe strongly oppose a forced reorganisation of local government which would merge their community into a new authority combining Rushcliffe Borough Council with Nottingham City Council.” The parts of Rushcliffe that I represent are rural areas, made up of market towns, villages and hamlets, and it would be patently absurd for them to be merged with the urban Nottingham city council. These areas have been well served by Rushcliffe borough council for generations, while Nottingham city council has been a catalogue of financial disasters for as long as I can remember. My constituents do not deserve that fate.”
“(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice if he will make a statement on the accuracy of data used to justify the restriction of jury trials in relation to rape victim attrition rates and magistrates court capacity.”
“He will not rule out applying these changes to those who are already in the court backlog, and he will not publish modelling showing that victims of rape will wait less time, or indeed any modelling whatsoever. Unless the Minister can answer those questions today, we can only conclude that the Government simply do not know. If they want to make a major change to our constitution—something that we have enjoyed for 800 years—they should do so on the basis of facts, not baseless claims. The plan is already unravelling, as did the last such attempt 20 years ago. I say to the Minister that it is not too late to avoid a humiliating defeat.”
“The Justice Secretary said that he will divert cases to the magistrates courts because they “do not currently have a backlog” —[ Official Report , 2 December 2025; Vol. 776, c. 806.] but as of September, there is a backlog—or open caseload, as the Minister now calls it—of 361,000 cases, up 25% on this Government’s watch. He claimed that scrapping juries will cut trial times by 20%, but Sir Brian Leveson’s own review found that figure to be “highly uncertain”, stating that “further detailed analysis” was required. There are still reams of unanswered questions. The Justice Secretary will not let the Crown courts sit around the clock, when today, 63 courtrooms sit completely empty.”
“The Government are slashing jury trials under false pretences. Last week, the Justice Secretary suggested that 60% of those who report being raped are now pulling out of cases because of court delays, but Home Office statistics show that this year, only 9% of rape cases were abandoned after a charge was brought. Although that is not good enough, the fact is that the figure is down, and the number of victim-based prosecutions is near its peak. In some parts of the country, the backlog is far lower, and rape cases are rightly being prioritised. The Justice Secretary’s plans will do next to nothing to cut backlogs for rape victims, but his claims are certain to further erode women’s confidence in the justice system. That was not the only claim that did not stack up.”
“This morning, in England alone more than 50 Crown courtrooms sit empty. In fact— [ Interruption. ]”
“Yesterday, the Justice Secretary boldly claimed that if the medieval barons were around today, they would support his changes. Then again, English history has never been his specialist subject, has it? Eight hundred years on from Magna Carta, we have another unpopular leader who does not listen to his subjects and who levies eye-watering taxes, and a state that locks people up for what they say. Well, I say that the link between British citizens and the administration of justice is as important as ever. It is a link that serves as a check on an occasionally overbearing state. Our ancestors did not stop bad King John, only to be undone 800 years later by this Prime Minister and his court jester. And all of this because the Justice Secretary cannot manage his own Department.”
“In 2020, he said: “Criminal trials without juries are a bad idea. You don’t fix the backlog with trials that are widely perceived as unfair.” In 2017, in his report into prejudice in the criminal justice system, he found that juries “act as a filter for prejudice”, but now that he has become the Justice Secretary, he is scrapping the very institution he once lauded. Which is it? Will the real David Lammy please stand up? It is not just the Justice Secretary. Who can guess which Labour MP said that taking away jury trials “would be a wholly draconian act”? It was his own junior Minister, the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Jake Richards). And what about this one? Who said there should be a “right of trial by jury in all criminal cases”? Any ideas, Mr Speaker? Who else? It is the Prime Minister this time. Do this Government have no shame?”
“I am glad to see that the Justice Secretary has finally come into work today. When 12 prisoners were mistakenly released after the introduction of his brilliant new checks, he did not bother to come to Parliament to inform the country; then, when I asked his Department whether it is paying compensation to terrorists in prison, he did not show up; and when the news of his plans to scrap jury trials mysteriously emerged in the press last week, he was nowhere to be seen. Like the prisoners under his watch, he has been a man on the run—the “Lammy dodger” of this sorry charade of a Government—but today we are blessed with his presence. His past is catching up with him, because the best opponent of the Justice Secretary’s plans to curb jury trials is the Justice Secretary himself.”
“He defends their rights under the European convention on human rights, but not our rights under Magna Carta. And for what? He cannot even guarantee that in four years’ time these changes will have reduced the backlog. With this Justice Secretary, it is justice delayed and justice denied. Much of the rest of the package announced today is sensible, but why has it taken 17 months? The Bar Council, the Law Society and the Criminal Bar Association have all said that jury trials are not the problem.”
“Thank you, Mr Speaker. This morning, more than 50 Crown courtrooms sit empty in England alone. In fact, over 21,000 court days have gone unused this year. Why? Not because there are too many juries, but because the Justice Secretary will not fund the sitting days. Had he done so, the backlog would have shrunk by up to 10,000 cases, but the fact is that it has risen this year. The truth is that scrapping juries is a choice. This Government could find the money to bear down on the backlog of asylum claims and to spend more on benefits, but not to fund the courts to sit round the clock. Last year, the entire budget for courts and legal aid was £5.5 billion, which is almost exactly the same amount of money—£5.4 billion—that we spent on illegal migrants.”
“Apologies, Mr Speaker. Why did the Justice Secretary not start by reforming the Probation Service and court listings, and by tackling delays from late prison transfers? Why has he still not taken up the Lady Chief Justice on all the sitting days that she has offered him? Lastly, why on earth does this Justice Secretary think he has a mandate to rip up centuries of jury trials without even a mention of it in his party’s manifesto? The Justice Secretary, in his twisted logic, says he is scrapping juries to save them, but be in no doubt: if he gets away with this, it is the beginning of the end of jury trials. He is already in retreat. Let us unite to send him packing for good.”
“(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice if he will make a statement on the Government’s reported plans to further restrict the right to trial by jury in almost all cases.”
“Well, the people who make up juries—the British people—will not wear it any more. I have one simple question for the Minister he sent in his stead. Will she protect what is fundamental to our democracy, or will she stand by as the Justice Secretary casually casts aside centuries of English liberty?”
“This time, he was right: there is wisdom in 12 ordinary citizens pooling their collective experiences of the world. Yet, now that he is in government, he is doing the complete opposite. He blames the court backlog, but if the courtrooms standing empty this year were used, the backlog would be down by 5,000 to 10,000 cases. He pleads poverty on law and order, but yesterday the Chancellor came here and found £16 billion more to spend on benefits. The truth is that the Labour party just does not think that ordinary people are up to it. It does not trust them with these decisions. Give away the Chagos islands, shackle us to the European convention on human rights, scrap jury trials—all because lawyers know best. And when the Justice Secretary is summoned here to the people’s House, what does he do? He cowers away.”
“While this Government lurch from one outrage to another, yesterday the Chancellor shredded her promises and dropped a £26 billion tax bomb on working Britain. Meanwhile, we learned that the Justice Secretary is plotting to discard centuries of jury trials without so much as a by-your-leave—and where is the Justice Secretary to answer for this? Do we need to send out a search party to Saville Row in case he has gone suit shopping again this morning? Or perhaps he could not face up to the embarrassment that he is now destroying the very principles he once championed. Jury trials are “fundamental to the justice system…fundamental to our democracy. We must protect them.” Those are not my words, but those of the Justice Secretary himself.”
“(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice if he will make a statement on the implications for national security and the management of terrorist offenders following disruption to the separation centre regime.”
“Will the Minister finally publish Jonathan Hall KC’s review of separation centres, which was produced as evidence in court but which has not been published to this House or the country? Will she say that under no circumstances will any terrorist be rewarded in this manner, and bring forward emergency legislation to override this judgment, prevent payout, protect national security and protect our prison officers? I have said many times that it is only a matter of time before an officer gets killed by one of these monsters. Will the Minister bring forward this legislation? If she does, she will have the Opposition’s support; if she does not, we will do so.”
“Every extremist housed in a separation centre may now be able to deploy this judgment to escape being housed in such a unit and to get a payout. Terrorists are weaponising the ECHR and the public sector equality duty to milk the state, and the Ministry of Justice is signing the cheques. I note that the Minister did not say that she would be appealing this judgment. The separation centre regime was created to counter highly subversive terrorists recruiting inside jail and to ensure protection for prison officers, which is effectively collapsing. Prison governors are being paralysed just when there is a crisis of extremism and extreme violence in our prisons, necessitating more separation centres and more segregation.”
“Sahayb Abu is a danger to this country. This is an ISIS fanatic who bought a combat vest and a sword so that he could, in his own words, “shoot up a crowd”, yet this week the High Court ruled that keeping him apart from other prisoners to prevent him from radicalising them was a breach of his human rights. We have reached the perverse situation where a terrorist’s mental health is prioritised over national security and the protection of the very men and women in uniform who are targets for these dangerous individuals with very little to lose. Abu is now in line for a payout from the taxpayer. This is not an isolated incident; it is the latest in a line, including the double murderer and extremist Fuad Awale and Denny De Silva.”
“Fuad Awale is an extremist and double murderer who later took a prison officer hostage and demanded the release of the radical cleric Abu Qatada. He is the definition of evil. Yet the Justice Secretary’s Department is now set to pay him compensation as his ECHR rights have apparently been infringed, because he could not associate with monsters like those who killed Lee Rigby. Will the Justice Secretary ensure that not a single penny of taxpayers’ money is handed over to this man? If he will not, and he puts our membership of the ECHR above the interests of the British people, will he put his money where his mouth is and pay any so-called compensation himself?”
“Currently, if a child sex offender is released from prison, the police and the Probation Service can track them on the sex offenders register, but if a child abuser is released from prison, the authorities have no register to track them with. There is a glaring gap in the system. Paula Hudgell has been fighting to fix the law after her adopted son Tony was abused so badly that he lost his legs. She has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and she says this campaign is the fire in her belly. Paula is truly inspirational, and we are backing her campaign. Will the Secretary of State take our amendment or bring forward his own, and get this change over the line for Paula, for Tony and to protect children now and into the future?”
“Last week, the National Police Chiefs’ Council said that there was “no doubt” that the Government’s early release scheme would lead to an increase in crime. This followed the news that a man who had been released from prison early had been charged with murder. So this is a simple question: will the Justice Secretary rule out any more early release schemes for prisoners?”
“Well, if we strip back all that waffle—the Secretary of State did not deny it, did he? That is interesting, because there has been another accidental release by the Ministry of Justice, and this time it is an email sent in error by his officials to me. It shows that his Department is looking to accommodate criminals in the community instead of in prison. As we would expect from him, it says that the plans are a “finger in the air” approach. It says that the Department is considering spending up to 100 grand a year per person to live outside of prison. That is more than the cost of a prison cell. Can the Justice Secretary really say with a straight face that his latest scheme is a good use of taxpayers’ money?”
“How can he possibly be found if, unlike in the case of Cherif and Kebatu, the public do not have his face or his name? The public deserve to know the truth, and this situation could not be any more serious. There has been a ninefold increase in the number of violent offenders accidentally released in the last year. On the Justice Secretary’s watch, the criminal justice system has been made to look a total mockery. The public are being put at risk. In his own words, it is time for him to “get a grip”—or go.”
“What a complete and utter farce the Justice Secretary is presiding over. As we all suspected, the crisis on his Government’s watch is even bigger than he dared to admit. That is why he would not say anything last week. Prisoners are being accidentally released nearly every other day, putting our constituents—his constituents—at risk. At this rate, he is on track for 156 prisoners to be accidentally released this year, which would be a record, were it not for the doubling that his Government managed to achieve last year. In his statement today, the Justice Secretary posed more questions than he managed to answer. How many crimes were committed by those prisoners while they were on the run? Why can he not tell us who these 91 prisoners are? Who is the foreign criminal, and who is this mystery fourth offender whom he “may” have lost?”
“When will the Justice Secretary finally come clean? He will not provide details in answer to parliamentary questions. He will not answer even when he is here for Prime Minister’s questions. He will not respond to letters—but perhaps that is because they were not addressed to “the Deputy Prime Minister”. He has now been dragged here, kicking and screaming, to admit that one prisoner has been on the run from this Labour Government for 14 months, and 91 have been accidentally released over the last seven months. However, the Justice Secretary is so clueless that he has literally lost track of how many prisoners he has lost. He has said today that a prisoner “may” have been accidentally released last Monday. Well, has he looked? The prisoner is either in his cell or he is not.”
“He could not even get the name of the head of the review—Lynne Owens—right last week. “Anne Owens, Anne Owens,” he bellowed. Well, I looked her up, and the only “Anne Owens” I could find was a panto performer who recently appeared in “Alice in Wonderland”. Perhaps she was the one who gave the Justice Secretary tips on his performance at the Dispatch Box last week. The former chief inspector of prisons says that the issue was caused, at least in part, by the “confusion” created by Labour’s botched early release scheme. Does the Justice Secretary now concede that there is a link between the doubling of the number of prisoners accidentally released in the last year and the introduction of Labour’s standard determinate sentence 40 scheme, or is it just an extremely unlucky coincidence? Do not take us for fools!”
“Two weeks ago, the Justice Secretary told the House that he had put in place the strongest checks ever to stop releases in error. Forty-eight hours later, another prisoner with a history of sex offences was released in error. Seven days later, a fraudster was let out, on the very day he was sentenced to 45 months inside—and today, the Justice Secretary admits that he lost another prisoner on that same day. They are Lammy’s lags, a whole new category of criminal who can just waltz out of prison despite the “strongest ever checks”, introduced by this Justice Secretary. The public are being endangered as this circus rumbles on week after week, with no end in sight. When will the Justice Secretary put a stop to it? He cannot hide behind the inquiry that he has commissioned.”
“So we are back here again. At least the Justice Secretary is getting some use out of his new suit. But where has Wednesday’s bombast and bravado gone? “Get a grip, man!”, he thundered last week, without even a hint of irony. There was none of that today, was there? Why is that? It is because, like increasing numbers of criminals in our jails, the Justice Secretary just does not know whether he is coming or going. Even his colleagues in government are turning on him, some with unbridled contempt. “The handling is terrible”, was the verdict of a Cabinet Minister; “just rank incompetence”, “cowardly”, and “frankly pretty dodgy” was the verdict of another. Before long, the Prime Minister will be saying that he has full confidence in the Justice Secretary, and we all know what that means.”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. In answer to questions, the Justice Secretary said at one point that 17 prisoners a day were released in error under the last Conservative Government. He then repeatedly said that 17 prisoners a month were released in error by the last Conservative Government. Neither of those things is correct. The actual figure was five a month—and five a month is five too many. I know that he would not want to appear as if he did not know what he was talking about, so might you be able to get him to correct the record, Mr Speaker?”
“Be in no doubt: from start to finish, the Kebatu fiasco was a creation entirely of Labour’s own making. So, I say to the Justice Secretary, there is no point coming to the House today professing to be livid at the consequences of your own policies. The British people, they can see straight through you.”
“Can the Justice Secretary give the House his cast-iron assurance that this man will be deported from our country by the end of the week, as he promised on the news on Sunday? If he fails, will he take responsibility and resign? Lastly, on Tuesday the Justice Secretary blocked my amendment to release the migrant crime data. Does he now finally acknowledge that there is a link between the small boats and crime in this country? Will he call the small boats out for what they are: a national security emergency? This man should never have been in our country in the first place. That is the truth. He should have been detained. He should have been deported. Instead, he was put up in a hotel in Epping and allowed to prey on schoolgirls. Now we learn that some Labour officials privately concede that they were wrong to scrap the Rwanda plan.”
“Why are they limiting themselves to this particular security farce and not the other glaring errors, such as the doubling of drone sightings above prisons, the soaring assaults on prison officers or the rampant extremism we are now seeing in our jails? Shocking as this accidental release is, it is not a one-off blunder. It has come to be the norm under this Government, as the number of prisoners mistakenly let out early has more than doubled. Will the Justice Secretary tell the House how many of the 262 prisoners let out mistakenly in the year to March were violent or sexual offenders? And how many are still at large? There are now record numbers of foreign nationals clogging up our prisons—more than under the last Government. How many of those 262 prisoners accidentally released are migrants, like Kebatu, who were awaiting deportation?”
“I will tell you who will be livid then: the British public will be livid and they will know who is to blame. The Justice Secretary says he has launched an inquiry into what has happened, but he should be able to provide some basic questions to the House now. With respect to the prison in question, HMP Chelmsford, there is clearly a very significant problem. In a previous internal audit at Chelmsford, officials had marked their own homework as “good”, yet inspectors rated it as of “serious concern”. What is the Justice Secretary going to do now to address the way in which problems in our prisons are covered up routinely or wished away? On the inquiry itself, you will not be surprised to hear that I am—how shall I put this?—sceptical about this Government’s ability to conduct inquiries with any competence.”
“Let us get it straight: we had the spectacle of the Metropolitan police scouring London to find a man the Justice Secretary is simultaneously legislating to avoid sending to prison. What an absolute farce! I must commend the Justice Secretary’s performance: it is truly BAFTA-worthy. He has perfected the art of performative outrage to a tee. On Wednesday— [ Interruption. ] They may be laughing, but let me finish this point. On Wednesday, the Justice Secretary will force every one of his MPs to vote again on the Sentencing Bill, which will see hundreds of sex offenders just like Kebatu avoid prison altogether—sick men who destroy the lives of young girls, who steal their childhoods from them. They will be free to roam your communities to steal the childhoods of your constituents.”
“Dear, oh dear, where to begin? This Justice Secretary could not deport the only small boat migrant who wanted—no, who tried—to be deported. Having been mistakenly released, Hadush Kebatu came back to prison asking to be deported not once, not twice, but five times, but he was turned away. The only illegal migrants this Government are stopping are those who actually want to leave the UK. His officials, briefing the press, called it “the mother of all—”. Yeah, they are not wrong, are they? Calamity Lammy strikes again. It is a national embarrassment. Today the Justice Secretary feigns anger at what has happened. He says he is “livid” that Kebatu was mistakenly let out, but under his plans to abolish short prison sentences, which he forced through the Commons last week, Kebatu would never have even stepped foot in prison in the first place.”
“(Urgent Question): To ask the Solicitor General if she will make a statement about the role of the Attorney General’s Office in the decision to drop the China spy prosecution.”
“There are examples in the recent past of AGs having the candour to come to the House and explain that the Government and the prosecuting authorities have chosen to drop cases that raise the highest national security questions for diplomatic reasons. Will the SG today have the candour to do exactly the same with this case?”
“At that meeting, did the Attorney General’s Office push for further evidence to be provided? Following that meeting, The Sunday Times has reported that the Attorney General’s Office was asked to speak to the CPS. Can the SG confirm whether anyone from the AGO spoke directly or indirectly to the CPS? The AG knew that the case was going to collapse in August. He knew what was required to save it, but—unless the Solicitor General can provide a compelling account today—we must all conclude that the AG, on behalf of the Government, chose not to provide it. He may not have killed the case, but he allowed it to die.”