Dr Kieran Mullan
MP for Bexhill and Battle · Conservative · United Kingdom
“We did so in a major way by rolling back the automatic release point from halfway to two thirds of a sentence for some offenders. We have talked today about sentences, but we have to remember that the time someone spends in prison can be very different from the sentence that was passed down in court.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“All this was based on a set of plans for an independent review that did absolutely nothing to engage with what victims actually want from sentencing policy when it comes to justice. As I said, this issue has gone on for decades.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“She was walking with her grandmother in St Helens when a stolen car driven at 83 mph in a 30 mph zone hit them. Violet-Grace died and her grandmother was left with life-changing injuries. The driver fled the scene.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Members have said, under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, introduced by the last Government, the maximum penalty for causing death by dangerous driving and for causing death by careless driving while under the influence of drink or drugs was raised from 14 years to life imprisonment.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I also mention them because, like so many of those mentioned today, they really understand what it is to not get justice: they cared deeply and loved someone deeply, and they live in a country where they expected that if you do the right thing and someone does the wrong thing to you, the system will deliver justice for you.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Do the Government believe that the current sentencing framework and the way it has been applied properly reflect the seriousness of causing somebody’s death through dangerous or careless driving?”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
The complete record
2,868 held · 2,866 searchable for Dr Kieran Mullan. The searchable lines are below in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 2 of 10.
This is not an official version of UK Parliament proceedings. It reproduces the published record and links to it; the official version is the one UK Parliament publishes.
“That duty is to test to destruction the proposition that there is no choice. Only the Ministers have the army of civil servants, the data, the costings and the honest advice. When a Minister tells their own MPs that they have no choice, surely it must mean exactly that. That is how they secure the support of their Back-Bench colleagues. These Ministers have failed in that duty and have failed their colleagues. Ministerial credibility is a precious resource and this Minister has exhausted hers. If clause 3 was never truly required to tackle court delays, we must ask: what other assertions made by this Front-Bench team are equally unfounded? How can they expect their propositions of “no choice” to be accepted in future, and not just in future but on this very Bill before us today?”
House of Commons13 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This same ministerial team and this same Justice Secretary told us that the release of various serious sexual and violent offenders was an absolute necessity, that they had no choice other than to put victims through the distress and upset over the summer. And then they did have a choice. Why does this matter? Most of the time in politics in this place we are debating choices—which choice we should make as MPs and as different parties, weighing up the pros and cons of the options—but sometimes Ministers attempt to cut through that to secure the support of MPs by saying that they have no choice. When MPs resist and tell them their concerns over what the Government are proposing, Ministers have a fundamental duty to this House and to their own Back-Bench colleagues in particular.”
House of Commons13 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We were told that their new division of judge-only trials was the only way the Crown court backlog could be brought down—that it could not be brought down without it. Yet now Ministers inform us that removing this very provision will actually allow the work to proceed faster. The Opposition welcome this decision. I welcome the fact that the Justice Secretary put his name to our amendment removing clause 3, but how we got here matters. It is not the first time that this ministerial team and this Justice Secretary have let their Back Benchers defend the indefensible and then drop them in it.”
House of Commons13 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to take part in the further consideration of the Courts and Tribunals Bill as we reach Report stage. Not for the first time with this ministerial team, this Justice Secretary and this Prime Minister, what we were told was necessary has turned out to be unnecessary, what we were told was impossible is now possible, and what we were told was unavoidable was avoidable after all. This Minister told us again and again on Second Reading and throughout the Committee that each and every one of the measures in this Bill—each and every part of their proposals—was the only way to get on top of the court backlogs. But apparently not, because only days ago the Justice Secretary appeared on national television to announce a significant U-turn: the Government are dropping clause 3.”
House of Commons13 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“What we are talking about is where we draw the ledger. I do not think the hon. Member is suggesting that we should have everything done by magistrates. Why not have everything done by magistrates? If it is fundamentally unfair to allow people to have a jury trial, why not let everything be done by magistrates? Then the victims do not have a say on whether it is a jury trial. The point we are clear about is that this is an unprecedented erosion of that right. It was not in the Government’s manifesto, it was until recently largely opposed by very large numbers of their own MPs, and it is based on a premise of necessity that I am afraid is paper thin. Ministers turned around and said that these were things that they had to do to get the backlog down. It turns out that they did not have to do that.”
House of Commons13 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I listened closely to the words that the hon. Member used: she talked about “perpetrators”. We heard the word again and again from Labour Members in Committee. May I remind her that defendants are not guilty until found guilty, and that this erosion of rights affects innocent people, too? Labour Members repeatedly forget that. Being accused does not make you a perpetrator. I ask the hon. Member to think about that carefully.”
House of Commons13 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We pressed the Government on the severe misalignment in legal aid—a defendant in a Crown court benefits from higher legal aid eligibility thresholds—but the Government rejected those amendments. Everything we sought to do to protect natural justice and lessen the impact of the Bill was blocked.”
House of Commons13 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If removing the right to elect a jury trial in either-way cases was wrong before, it remains wrong today. Dropping one element of a bad package does not make the remaining elements good law. In Committee, Opposition Members and Labour Back Benchers put forward a series of modest, constructive amendments designed to insert basic safeguards into the Bill, and the Government rejected every single one. We tabled amendments to preserve a natural justice exception, ensuring that where a defendant could demonstrate that a summary-only trial would result in a clear breach of natural justice, a jury trial would remain available. The Ministers defeated those amendments.”
House of Commons13 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Prior to this partial U-turn, dozens of Labour Back Benchers, including 37 MPs who signed a public letter, expressed deep opposition to the Bill’s proposals to curtail jury trials. They rightly described the stripping of jury rights as “madness” that “will cause more problems than it solves”. Labour Members spoke forcefully about the unique value of the jury, yet today, following the removal of just one clause—just one element of this damaging Bill—the Government expect those same Members to walk through the Lobby in support of it. I ask those Members: what has actually changed? Clause 1 still abolishes the right of an ordinary citizen to elect for jury trial. Clause 6 still pushes serious cases into summary courts, where backlogs are already surging, and clause 7 still cuts off automatic appeals.”
House of Commons13 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I notice that the Minister was happy to repeatedly say in Committee that opposing the measures does not suggest not having concern for victims; I hope that she sticks to that line during the rest of the debate, and I would encourage all of her colleagues to listen to the words that she said. Being concerned about the erosion of jury trial rights does not in any way mean that we do not care about victims, and I hope that the Minister repeats that later. I was able to visit the Supreme Court yesterday, and I encourage any Members mulling this over to head to the exhibition space and take a look at the replica of Magna Carta. They should read for themselves the words illuminated on the wall: at its heart, the highest and best form of justice is justice delivered by your peers. That brings me to the position of Labour Members.”
House of Commons13 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This Government, in which trust is so low, also seek for themselves an extraordinary power to do what they set out to do in clause 3 through the back door, via clause 4, in which they are not only introducing judge-only trials in the Crown court for what they describe as lengthy and complex cases, but giving themselves the power to add to the list of eligible cases through order alone, bypassing the fullest scrutiny of Parliament. That is quite extraordinary from a Government who, when in opposition, concerned themselves greatly with the proper use of delegated legislation. The Opposition remain as concerned as everybody else about the Crown court backlog. We know that victims and innocent defendants are suffering as a result of it, but so much of the Bill will not help, and may make matters worse. That is the reality.”
House of Commons13 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The hon. Gentleman is right. As I pointed out at the start, and as Labour Members have highlighted, it is not just people concerned about defendants who have raised concerns about the proposals; victims have as well. Victims groups wrote an extensive letter to the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister, asking them to think twice about the erosion of jury trials. Any criticism that Members make of me will, I am afraid, also have to be levelled at the victims who do not agree with them. Victims are not all of one voice on this issue, and we should respect that, instead of assuming that every victim agrees with Labour Members, which they do not. The erosions under the proposals are significant.”
House of Commons13 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The hon. Lady asked what we did to preserve the right to trial by jury. We brought the backlog in the Crown court down from the level we inherited from the previous Labour Government. Prior to the pandemic, our record on the Crown court backlog was better than the previous Labour Government’s, which is something that Labour Members all conveniently seem to forget.”
House of Commons13 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My right hon. Friend is right on both points. As he was speaking, the Justice Secretary said from a sedentary position that he removed that clause. Perhaps he does not understand his own Bill. You are retaining judge-only trials for complex and lengthy cases, and retaining the power to use delegated legislation to allow judges alone to sit on those cases. Exactly the sort of scenario that my right hon. Friend was describing would be produced. Magistrates have a degree of confidence and community support that is in proportion to the use of their powers. If we significantly increase the use of their powers, the pressure on magistrates, and scrutiny of them, is also likely to increase. Picking up on that point, I want to make sure—”
House of Commons13 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Government’s partial U-turn demonstrates that sustained scrutiny can force a rethink, but a partial U-turn is not enough. The central flaws of the Bill remain: the abolition of the right to elect trial by jury, the risky expansion of summary jurisdiction, the restriction of appeal rights and the creation of secondary powers to expand juryless trials. We should not erode centuries of procedural safeguards to achieve marginal administrative speed gains. I urge hon. Members across the House, and especially those who have previously spoken out against these measures, to stand by their previous words, to stand by their principles, and to reject these remaining clauses tonight.”
House of Commons13 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Government should replicate the proactive case management model successfully pioneered in courts like Liverpool, Preston and Cardiff, where active Crown Prosecution Service case ownership and early trial-readiness reviews have driven down backlogs. Our sunset clause draws attention to the true motivations of this Government. If the Government sincerely feel that these measures are a necessity to bring the backlog down, as they have argued repeatedly to their Back Benchers, our clause is quite clear that when the backlog is down to the pre-covid average for a period of four quarters, these damaging, rights-eroding measures should be withdrawn. I do not expect that the Government will support that proposal today, because fundamentally they do not have the same faith that we do in the importance and value of a jury trial.”
House of Commons13 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“They are clearly not succeeding with the measures that they are bringing forward, and a number of things are getting worse. We must improve case management and incentivise earlier case resolution, instead of forcing complex cases into the overburdened summary courts, where there are backlogs too. Extraordinarily, the Minister claimed that there was no backlog in the magistrates courts. I do not know how she decides what is or is not a backlog. Cases going up by 10% in one year is a backlog by any measure. I visited Liverpool Crown court, where the wait for trial is roughly half the length of the wait for trial in other parts of the country.”
House of Commons13 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Government must fix the operational failures that currently waste thousands of court hours every year. Last year, between 23% and 26% of Crown court trials were ineffective. Rather than stripping citizens of jury trial rights, the Minister should be focused instead on failures in prisoner transport, which result in hundreds of trials being derailed, simply because defendants are late to the dock. The Government must keep all existing courtrooms open and fully funded, and must use new artificial intelligence tools for disclosure and listing, and they must expand live-link video participation. [ Interruption. ] Ministers on the Front Bench chunter that they are already doing that. If that is the case, why is the Crown court backlog going up?”
House of Commons13 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Lucky you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I take that point. The schedule 1 powers that I have talked about are a significant Henry VIII power. Under proposed statutory instrument powers, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State will have the authority to add further categories of offences to schedule 1 by secondary legislation. I am not aware of any time before in this place when the Secretary of State could use secondary legislation to erode and remove the right to a jury trial from a particular defendant. That is completely unprecedented and indefensible. The Conservatives do not merely criticise this bad package of legislation; we have repeatedly sought to put forward practical, evidence-based alternatives that tackle the delays without taking a sledgehammer to our constitutional rights.”
House of Commons13 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As I said in my opening speech, a number of women’s victims rights groups were the leading critics of getting rid of jury trials. We cannot make out that victims have a singular view on this and that they are happy with it. There are different opinions among victims groups, and many of them agree with the hon. Gentleman.”
House of Commons13 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As my hon. Friend points out, the impact assessment says that this particular measure, on its own, will not make any difference to the harm done to children, but we absolutely recognise that the checklist as a whole, and the way that it works, does need to be reformed. We think a more wholesale reform of the checklist is more appropriate than just attracting interest in one particular element of it.”
House of Commons13 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Prime Minister likes to present himself as a straight-talking kind of guy, but again and again he has been asked a straight question and not given a straight answer. Can he rule out—yes or no—taking Britain back into freedom of movement while he is Prime Minister?”
House of Commons12 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Then there is something that perhaps seems benign but is sometimes very challenging: the patients who continually call out for help again and again and again, perhaps asking for a medicine or a meal that they have already been given, and refuse to be consoled. Most of the time, that brings out the best in our nature, as we would want—to be kind, caring and compassionate —but it can sometimes bring out the worst in our nature: our impatience, our intolerance and even our cruelty. While I have seen that happen in hospitals, I know that it goes on in private homes up and down the country every day.”
House of Commons11 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It happened because the staff in that hospital and on that ward had developed a culture of prioritising convenience in looking after patients over the value of their lives. It speaks to something that we often do not like to talk about and might feel guilty about: looking after people is not only challenging but can sometimes be deeply unpleasant. As a doctor, I have helped to look after people who, when someone approached them to give them care, would scratch or hit out at them. I have helped to look after patients who refuse to stay in bed even though it is in their best interests, and who continually wander the wards and need to be monitored all the time.”
House of Commons11 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The report describes what happened to some of them. One patient was admitted for respite care but deteriorated and became confused during his stay. Staff asked permission to give him diamorphine, but his daughter refused as he was not in pain. However, his wife later agreed, and he was started on diamorphine via syringe driver. He died the same day. A man admitted for dementia was started on a diamorphine syringe driver; staff asked his son for permission, and he gave it, but he felt that there was no explanation of what it meant to be given diamorphine. The dose was doubled, and his father died five days later. His son felt that the diamorphine had effectively killed him. Why did that happen?”
House of Commons11 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I welcome the opportunity to give my personal views on this Bill, as colleagues in health have taken over responsibility for it. I have spent most of my life as someone who was highly sympathetic to the cause of assisted dying and imagined that I would support it if I ever was an MP, but that changed in 2018 when I read the Gosport War Memorial hospital independent panel report published in that year. The report should be more widely read, and I often wonder why it did not get the attention that it deserved. It found that between 1987 and 2001, more than 450 NHS patients had their lives prematurely shortened by healthcare staff. They were mainly elderly—the average age being 81—but some were as young as 61, and more than 70% of them had been admitted to hospital not needing palliative care or being at the end of their lives.”
House of Commons11 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“While I understand why people think the Bill would bring benefits for some people, and I acknowledge that it would, I think that the price we are asking some of the most vulnerable and in-need people in our society to pay, and the risk we are asking them to face, is simply too high.”
House of Commons11 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I remain deeply sympathetic to the scenarios and circumstances that people have described, and I can personally foresee a situation where I would want to make use of this Bill and feel that it would benefit me, but we should not legislate for what we might want. We have to legislate for what is in the broader interests of our constituents and our country, not least because, as many have articulated, the Bill has serious flaws. There is, in particular, the arbitrary decision to implement it in four years’ time, regardless of what might be happening with our palliative care services, which have, even recently, faced new and very real funding challenges.”
House of Commons11 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will not; there is not time. While I do not seek to say that the Bill will be used in that way—to deliberately bring about an end to the lives of confused or elderly patients—my worry is about how it will insert itself into that battle in our country between the best and worst of our natures, in families, conversations and settings where people, as much as we do not like to believe it, actively, for selfish reasons, wish that their relatives were dead, and where those relatives know that their family wish that they were dead. I do not want a Bill, or a message from this Parliament, to go out to the wider country to say that not just Parliament but the mechanisms of the NHS—a wing of the state—will sometimes support and help them to end their lives.”
House of Commons11 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This might be an opportune moment for the House to pay tribute to Dolly Parton, who did an enormous amount of work across the world to encourage children of all ages to read.”
House of Commons4 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It was my mum who coached me after work in the evenings to pass my 11-plus, to get into grammar school. All those things came from my parents, including my dad in different ways.”
House of Commons4 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am not a parent—I hope to be one day, but I am not at the moment—so I wanted to offer that perspective that we have all had as a child on the receiving end of what we are talking about today. I began to reflect on how different the people I met and the scenarios I came across were from my own experience. My parents are divorced, so mine was not a perfect image of what a family looks like, but I felt incredibly supported and loved, and I was taught enormously the importance of values and morals in a way that only a parent a can, sometimes even in opposition to the state. I had an ambition to study medicine, and at a parents evening my A-level chemistry teacher told me I was predicted to fail that A-level and had no chance of getting into medicine. It was my mum who was determined that I would overcome that challenge.”
House of Commons4 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“All the way at the other end of the spectrum, as an A&E and general hospital doctor looking after older patients, I often wondered where their children were and what had gone on their family to lead to there being no bond or attachment—they often spent many days in hospital without anyone coming to see them. In my work as a volunteer policeman, I have met young people on council estates where membership of gangs and crime were rife. Some young people had managed to overcome those challenges, and the thing that seemed to stand out as a protective factor was their parental and family environment. We have heard a lot today about the challenges and perspectives of parents.”
House of Commons4 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It dates back to my time as a medical student and some of the experiences of meeting patients. In particular, I remember a lady who came to see me the first time I was in placement at a GP practice, when I was a student. She had come to see the GP because she did not know how to get her children to go to bed on time. I remember thinking, “What an absolutely valid thing to want help with,” but I wondered what was going on in wider society that resulted in the GP being the only person she felt she could get help from. I also remember from my paediatrics placement a dynamic professor who sat us down and gave us a seminar about attachment theory. I was astounded to learn that, at age four, a child can be tested for whether they are attached to their caregivers; if they are not, that is enormous predictor of their future health outcomes.”
House of Commons4 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Even just a few hundred years ago, the single biggest thing that a parent could do to successfully raise their child was to get them to adulthood, as 50% of all children died before reaching adulthood. In this country, the equivalent figure now is about 0.5%. Although the loss of every child is a tragedy, those figures show the big change in the challenge that parents face. In fact, as another way of illustrating the difference, suicide accounts for a quarter of all deaths of older teenagers in this country. More than anything, the challenge for parents now is to raise content, productive children who go on to lead fulfilled lives as part of a much more complicated society. My interest in this area is one of the main driving forces behind my wanting to get into politics.”
House of Commons4 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I begin by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) on his achievement in bringing this Bill forward. We all know how a varied job being in this place is, and he is testament to that: after all these decades, he gets to do something brand new. That encourages us all to keep doing new things in this place, however short or long our time is here. I support this Bill, because it is about one of, if not—I would argue—the most important issue that sits before any society: how to successfully raise the next generation. The manner of that challenge has changed enormously over the course of human history.”
House of Commons4 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“These people take that burden on, and it is natural and human to want to do that. I do not think we should be thinking about them doing it for money or paying them—people should want to look after their wider family network—but at the very least we should be spending money on making sure that it is as easy as possible for them to do that, so that if anybody ever said to them, “How was it being a kinship carer?” we would know that every single kinship carer would be a cheerleader and a champion for it. We want them to be able to say, “It was difficult, but I felt fantastically supported.” I do not think I have ever met anyone who says that about their experience of being a kinship carer.”
House of Commons4 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The third reason I support the Bill is the provision to report regularly. We all know that reporting does not necessarily create the impacts and change that we want, but it is a powerful tool for parliamentarians across parties to make it difficult for Governments to move an issue out of the spotlight, so I welcome that provision. I will also touch on the Bill’s terminology, and the fact that it talks about carers. I recently met a kinship carer in my constituency who was looking after her own grandchildren. Such people provide an enormous service to our society in so many different ways. I am talking not just about kinship carers, but adoptive parents and others. From a purely financial perspective, the money that would be spent on those children if they were in care of one form or another is astronomical.”
House of Commons4 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The first is its focus on babies, because anything else we do further down the chain will not be as good as anything we do at the start. The sooner we do anything we can to help a parent be more effective, to help them understand the role and to support them, the more we get back from that investment. Our funding pyramid in this area is completely the wrong way round. Money builds up as we go further along the journey, but if that money was spent on day one and from conception onwards, we would get much more from it. The second reason I support the Bill is clause 1(2)(b), which talks specifically about supporting the relationship between a parent or carer and an infant. This is about relationships as much as it is about anything else, and it is great that the Bill states that so clearly.”
House of Commons4 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I asked them, “What is the most important thing that you do?” The most important thing they say, consistently, to people from all backgrounds, was that it was okay to ask for help and to say, “I need help.” The most important thing they say, consistently, to people from all backgrounds, was that it was okay to ask for help and to say, “I need help.” It is about challenging the stigma, so that everyone feels it is all right to ask for help. We do not think we can necessarily do the plumbing, the gas or the electrics in our houses without help, and parenting is 10 times more complicated and difficult than any of those jobs. It is normal for people to think they might need some help at various points along the way. Returning to the Bill, there are a few reasons why I support it.”
House of Commons4 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will go on to thank the 1001 Critical Days Foundation later, but it has commissioned research into screen time for babies, showing the impact of excessive screen time even on babies, while our focus has been on older children. If we get this wrong, the consequences are for everyone to see. I am a shadow Justice Minister. Crime costs us between £170 billion and £250 billion a year. We know that if a child experiences four or more adverse childhood events, they are more than 20 times more likely to end up in custody at some point as an adult. All these things are interconnected. The question is: how do we help? I had the privilege of visiting Sidley family hub in my constituency relatively recently, and I spoke to the professionals there who meet and work with parents every day.”
House of Commons4 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention because it brings me nicely to my next point. In these scenarios we have to avoid any judgment or lecturing parents who are unable to do that, because there are many reasons why parents differ. It is not just about time or money; there is good research about the links between life outcomes and values and ideas in someone’s upbringing. There are all sorts of factors. It is difficult and things have changed so much. Several decades ago, most people were raising their children within walking distance of their wider kinship network. Most people saw their own parents at least every other day, and a wider network of people were involved in raising a child. That is much more physically difficult to achieve these days. We have had all the focus on social media and the challenges it presents.”
House of Commons4 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Member for Ribble Valley (Maya Ellis), I am an officer of the all-party parliamentary group on babies (pregnancy to age two), and I thank the Parent-Infant Foundation for the work it does as the APPG’s secretariat. This Bill is a great opportunity to channel so much of the work that we want to do as part of that APPG. I welcome this debate and the attention it has given to the most important task ahead of any society, which is to raise the next generation successfully.”
House of Commons4 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank the hon. Member for raising that point, because people stepping up in those circumstances is incredibly important. Those who have siblings will know the importance of siblings in helping each other out and supporting each other through life—I have experienced that. All these wider family networks do so much. If they were not doing it, the state would end up picking up the bill, and that would not be good for anybody, so I pay tribute to how this Bill recognises the wider set of people who are involved in raising children. I conclude by again thanking my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West and the 1001 Critical Days Foundation. I also pay tribute, as many others have done, to the right hon. Dame Andrea Leadsom for her work over many years. Like the hon.”
House of Commons4 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“One of the other challenges I heard about in the family hub I visited was that, in constituencies like mine, we have towns but also lots of villages that are perhaps very far away. I agree with people having to physically go somewhere, but this is an example of where funding for rural authorities needs to reflect the additional costs involved in providing all sorts of services, including family hubs.”
House of Commons4 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Justice Secretary has said that legislation will be brought forward, but the King’s Speech has been and gone, so what is the Government’s plan? If the answer today is only warm words, I think the 111 peers who signed the cross-party letter, the editors of The Times , The Sun and The Guardian , the National Union of Journalists, the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition and every Member who has spoken in this debate are perhaps entitled to a little something more. People must be free to defend their reputations in court, but wealthy individuals and corporations must not be able to abuse that freedom and use disproportionate legal firepower to silence legitimate free speech.”
House of Commons1 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The co-chair of the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition described action on SLAPPs as “a relatively easy win”, not only for a Government, but for the protection of public interest speech and the overall health of our democratic society. I acknowledge the work done in the other place by Baroness Stowell of Beeston. For some time, the Lords have been an important advocate of legislation in this area. The point I make to the Government is simple. They do not need to start from scratch; they have years of cross-party debate, expert testimony and the lived experience of victims. They have campaigners, journalists, lawyers and Members from across both Houses calling for action. The building blocks are there, and the Government have accepted the principle. The previous Prime Minister has called SLAPPs intolerable.”
House of Commons1 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), described the abuse of courts by the rich and powerful as intolerable. In October 2024, the Justice Secretary promised legislation as soon as parliamentary time allowed, but it did not appear in the King’s Speech. We then learned that plans had been drafted and were ready to go, but they were reportedly shelved due to fear of the backlash from some lawyers. Some 111 peers, including eight former Cabinet Ministers, signed a cross-party letter in April demanding action. In its 2022 model law, the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition set out a possible clear legislative framework and has been waiting for a response ever since.”
House of Commons1 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The previous Conservative Government introduced the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 that provided the first statutory definition of a SLAPP and created a power to strike out abusive claims at an early stage in cases relating to economic crime. We recognise, as the motion notes, that those provisions were narrow, but they were a start. The previous Government also ran a call for evidence in 2022, covering the wider landscape of SLAPP abuse, and supported the private Member’s Bill from the then Member of Parliament for Caerphilly that would have extended those protections significantly. That Bill fell before the election and a new version of it was not proposed by the new Government. The current Government’s record on the issue has been underwhelming. The former Prime Minister, the right hon.”
House of Commons1 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“During a previous election campaign, a so-called journalist decided that my record as a volunteer policeman was entirely fantastical and made up, and that I was a criminal, and I had to get a solicitor involved to get that taken down. I am sure that we have all had similar experiences. Clearly, at the moment the balance is wrong. The question is whether the courts should be used by those with the deepest pockets to intimidate critics, bury investigations and frighten others into silence. They should not. It is important, as many hon. Members have already done, to recognise the progress to date.”
House of Commons1 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗