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 ↗
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“My hon. Friend is right, and I will discuss his point in more detail. My hon. Friend said, “words to the effect”, but that was the exact wording that Ministers used in this Chamber, on the Government website and in press releases: the Government said that the most serious offenders would be excluded. When we challenged that, behind the scenes—and even on live television, on Sky News—Ministers said that what we were saying was not true; as we now know for sure, it was. Labour tells us that this move is necessary. I imagine that Labour Members who genuinely care about these issues have been told by Ministers that here is nothing else they can do—that they have no choice and it is all because of the prison overcrowding crisis. I want to tackle that in detail, because that is not true. There are always different choices to be made.”
House of Commons29 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Government may be about to change their Prime Minister, and with that the MOJ will more than likely welcome a new Lord Chancellor, so policies announced with great fanfare may quietly disappear over the summer, but the people waiting for Crown court hearings and the victims seeing criminals walk free will still be there. We will not oppose the estimate, but we will not let the Government off the hook, either. They have had nearly two years and the numbers are not getting any better. The public deserve better. The Opposition will hold them to account for every one of these figures, whoever happens to be sitting in Downing Street when we do it.”
House of Commons29 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Total spending on asylum support remains at over £4.5 billion, and the decision of the Government to put even more asylum seekers in more expensive locations such as Crowborough in Wealden in the constituency of your fellow Deputy Speaker, Madam Deputy Speaker, is going to cost more money than if they were to be kept in their original places. Let me close with this. The Chair of the Public Accounts Committee said that the focus of the debate can be distilled to concerns about the risks to public safety and trust, and he is right. We are spending more than ever before on our criminal justice system—billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money flow through the estimates we are debating—but reoffending is rising, rape gang survivors are being told that their abusers may be freed early and police officer numbers are falling.”
House of Commons29 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Government cannot simultaneously claim to want swifter justice and a safer society while allowing the frontline workforce who investigate crime, make arrests and build prosecutions to continue to shrink. The Conservatives’ plan would put 10,000 extra officers on the streets, triple the use of stop and search, and introduce facial recognition technology in the worst crime hotspots. On asylum, the Home Office estimates that there are more than 400,000 illegal migrants in the UK—people in this country illegally—but nearly half cannot be removed because of outstanding asylum and human rights claims.”
House of Commons29 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Members will understand that it is not the day-to-day responsibility of the Minister or I, but we both know that what happens at the front end—policing, charging, and bail—flows directly into the courts, with probation and prisons at the back end. Police officer numbers fell by more than 1,000 in just one year under this Government, from September 2024 to September 2025, and the total number of people involved in policing fell by 3,000. The National Police Chiefs’ Council said in response to this year’s funding settlement and the estimates that we are debating that many forces are planning service reductions, with consequences for officer numbers, staff capacity and overall resilience.”
House of Commons29 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We know that that was not because there were no cases to hear, no juries or no defendants. It was because of issues such as listing challenges, staffing shortages and the underutilisation of available court space. To date, the Government have not listened and have refused to drop those parts of the Bill that are, as the hon. Member for Chichester said, clearly unwelcome to so many in the workforce. I hope we learn today that what we are told about the views of the right hon. Member for Makerfield is correct and that this unacceptable plan to erode our jury rights will be dropped. Let me turn to the Home Office elements of this debate, because the two Departments are inextricably linked.”
House of Commons29 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In the north-east of England, they are down 2.9% in three months. In Wales, they are down 2.4% over three months. Meanwhile, the figure for magistrates courts shows an all-time peak of more than 370,000 cases at the end of March this year, up 2% on the previous quarter—and the magistrates courts are where the Government want to send more cases. We heard again and again in the first stages of the Courts and Tribunals Bill that the workforce, whether it be in the courts, judges or legal representatives, can bring the backlogs down, but that the jury reforms were an unnecessary distraction. According to the X feed of the monitoring account Idle Courts, recently as many as 123 out of 516 Crown courtrooms—nearly a quarter—were standing empty on working days.”
House of Commons29 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“While the backlog is still much too high, the backlogs in Crown courts are stabilising and even coming down in some areas. The Government have announced uncapped Crown court sitting days for 2026-27, and we absolutely welcome that, even though it took much too long. It is exactly what we have called for consistently, and I give credit where it is due. We have seen the first quarterly decline in Crown court backlogs across England and Wales in three years in the most recent data. The Criminal Bar Association points out that in particular areas of the country, the reductions are more significant. In the south-east of England, the backlogs in courts are down 3.1% over three months and 4.2% over six months. In the north-west of England, they are down 2.3% over three months and 3.3% over six months.”
House of Commons29 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We are awaiting a date for Report stage of the Courts and Tribunals Bill. Given the political situation, and considering the Minister’s planned capital and revenue expenditure in this area, I think it is entirely legitimate to ask whether the proposal on jury trials is even still Government policy. When the legislation that is meant to address the central crisis in our criminal justice system is dependent on who wins an internal party election in the next few weeks—if there even is one—that is not a functioning legislative programme; it is chaos dressed up as reform. Are the Government laser-focused on what will actually work to bring the backlog down? No. Instead, they have been laser-focused on driving through unnecessary vandalism on one of our oldest constitutional rights.”
House of Commons29 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is difficult to understand how the Government can lay these estimates before the House and put forward a proposal for changes to sentencing if they do not even know how many people they are letting out of prison and for what reason. I cannot believe that the Minister thinks that that is acceptable, and it will be difficult for her to justify. But, to be fair, she may also struggle to answer a basic question about her own responsibilities—about her plans to erode our right to jury trial and to abolish our right to elect. The Conservatives will oppose any erosion of the right to jury trial. It is a constitutional protection that belongs to people, not to the convenience of a Government. The evidence does not support the case that jury trials are the cause of the backlog; empty courtrooms are.”
House of Commons29 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If you will forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, I am talking about a major issue that relates directly to the estimates: the prison building programme, the need for that programme and what the Government are doing to manage the prison population. I believe it is directly related to the estimates in that regard. I repeat, sincerely, that multiple Governments of different parties have let prisoners out of prison early in order to manage prison crises, but they have never let rapists and child groomers out early. Government Members are therefore backing a totally unnecessary way of managing prison capacity. They really do not have to do it. They are being forced into doing so, and I feel very sorry for them as a result.”
House of Commons29 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Minister is completely wrong. The releases are automatic. There will be no prevention of a release of someone on a standard determinate sentence, regardless of what the risk assessment shows. The Minister must at least be accurate in describing the policy.”
House of Commons29 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The challenge we have at the minute is that not only do we have a shadow Opposition, but we have a shadow Government—a whole set of Ministers who will soon be in place. We have someone who is potentially about to become Prime Minister, but we know almost absolutely nothing about his priorities on defence, on the strategic challenges or on welfare. Does it concern my hon. Friend that we are going to get somebody new, when we know very little about his position on these incredibly important issues?”
House of Commons23 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I recently met Littlewood Fencing, a company in my constituency that makes specialist fencing for secure and sensitive locations, and it is facing crippling increases in costs. It might be noble to try to save jobs in the steel industry, but if jobs are lost in other parts of our economy, we are not really achieving anything. It is all about the rate of change that the Government are seeking to introduce. It is clear to many Members of this House that the rate of change currently proposed is not right. Will the Minister rethink and, if necessary, pause to ensure that we do not lose jobs in constituencies like mine in order to save jobs in other parts of the country?”
House of Commons17 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The former Defence Secretary knew what was in the defence investment plan, thought it was inadequate and resigned as a result. I am sure the Minister would not be so shameless and disrespectful to the House as to spend an hour defending that plan if he himself had not seen it in full, so I have a very easy question for him: has he seen the defence investment plan in full, yes or no?”
House of Commons15 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I understand why making use of the NHS app and online appointments is sensible and works well for many patients, but I cannot be the only MP to have heard from constituents—you may even have heard from your constituents, Mr Speaker—who struggle with that. They may not have a smartphone. I have met many elderly patients who simply cannot make use of online forms and too often GP practices do not make it easy for them to make appointments by telephone or by walking in. It is important that the Government make it crystal clear to all our GP providers, who I know are doing their best, that no matter how far we go with digital innovation, our patients must always be able to access primary care through traditional routes, such as making an appointment by telephone or by walking in.”
House of Commons9 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Deep geothermal has great potential for left-behind communities in this country, and it is a first-class transition industry for our oil and gas workforce. I welcome the Minister’s comments and the positive engagement with the Minister in the other place, who is a huge champion of deep geothermal, but the message from industry is that that is not enough, and that the funds that the Minister mentions are not doing the job. A deep geothermal strategy, giving the Government’s vote of confidence in deep geothermal, could go a long way, and would not necessarily cost very much. Industry tells us that that in itself would drive growth. Will the Government consider a strategy for deep geothermal?”
House of Commons2 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Right now, there are people in prison for the rape of their partner, or sexual offences against their own children, who will get out of prison earlier because of the steps that this Government have taken. I will continue to press that matter with them, whatever else they are doing that is positive. People go to the court system because they want justice, and seeing rapists being let out early is not justice. That is something the Government should continue to reflect on.”
House of Commons21 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As we have heard, 10 of 43 courts have now been implemented. I would like to understand the Government’s timetable for the very welcome decision to roll them out more widely. The Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter), talked about the interdependencies around access to specialist services to make that a reality. I think requesting a timetable is not asking too much of the Minister. Those are important things that we are all in agreement on, but at the same time this Government are taking what I think are catastrophic decisions in relation to the justice system. The Government have legislated for perpetrators of domestic abuse as serious as rape, child abuse, stalking and harassment—very many offences—to get out of prison earlier.”
House of Commons21 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Certainly, in the Conservative party we are working on how we can introduce much more accountability in the judiciary—not to make them accountable to the Government, because the separation of the judiciary and the Government is very important. I draw on my experience as a doctor; we have done loads to improve the accountability of highly trained, highly specialist medical professionals who we would not want the state interfering with. It is simply about ensuring they are not a law unto themselves when it comes to making poor decisions. Previously, the test was pretty much whether a doctor had made a decision that any other doctor thought was reasonable. Now, the test is much more about whether that decision was objectively reasonable. I also want to touch on the pathfinder courts.”
House of Commons21 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“She approached me because she was aware of all the mechanisms of accountability that everybody else in the system has to go through, particularly teachers and social services. She simply wanted to know what accountability was available for the judge. I wrote to the Lady Chief Justice and said, “Obviously, you can’t comment on this case, but what are the systems, for a case like this where things have gone badly wrong, for a judge to have to account for the decisions they have taken?” There are none, outside of complaints about extreme behaviour, which none of us would consider to really test the issues, or if the judge makes a legal error, for which the threshold is, again, really high. I think we have a lot to do.”
House of Commons21 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I have mentioned in the House before that I first encountered these issues as an MP through an amazing lady, a constituent of mine, who was fostering a young girl who had been removed from her family on a temporary basis. The wider family did not want that young girl to be given back contact with her immediate family, the foster carer did not think it was a good idea, and social services did not think it was a good idea—but the judge awarded custody back to her parents. That young girl is now in a wheelchair. She is highly dependent and severely disabled. The exceptional individual I mentioned went on to adopt her in those circumstances, which is one of the most noble things I have ever seen anybody do.”
House of Commons21 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In too many cases that is true, but whatever view people take, there should be broad agreement on one central principle: safeguarding and child welfare must come first. That includes ensuring that professionals throughout the system are properly trained to understand the dynamics of domestic abuse. Women’s Aid has argued that we need not just legislative reform but a wider cultural shift across the family justice system. There is real substance to that argument, because even the best legislation will fall short if victims feel that they are not listened to, believed, or welcomed and facilitated to participate. I will be grateful if the Minister says more about how the Government intend to deliver cultural change in practice. I also want to talk about accountability. We have heard discussion of the Sara Sharif case.”
House of Commons21 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In many cases, there are overlapping criminal and family proceedings, yet delays and backlogs can mean that family courts proceed before criminal matters are resolved. That can have a huge impact. If an individual subsequently receives a criminal conviction, that may well unpick and call into question the original rulings. These are not easy issues to solve. I recognise all of the work done and the arguments made by campaigners, but legislating in this area is incredibly challenging because the dynamics of families, particularly those experiencing breakdown, are very complex. There are also strongly held views in different organisations on, for example, the presumption of parental involvement and how family courts should approach contact arrangements. Many campaigners argue that abuse has historically been minimised in decision making.”
House of Commons21 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There is still room for mediation and other measures to reduce the burden on our courts and save them for the most complicated and difficult cases. Last year, the independent “Everyday Business” review painted a deeply worrying picture of how survivors often experience family court proceedings. Survivors described feeling that their abuse was minimised or treated as secondary to maintaining contact arrangements. Judges and magistrates identified serious pressures on them arising from limited court time, delays and lack of continuity. Only 21% of cases reportedly had judicial continuity—a striking figure that shows that even when cases as complex as these go through the court process, we cannot rely on a single judge seeing them through from start to finish. The report also highlighted siloed working between different parts of the system.”
House of Commons21 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Those changes and others reflect society’s growing understanding in recent decades of the importance of confronting and tackling domestic abuse and abuse of children. The previous Government also commissioned the harm panel review in 2020, which was an expert-led review into how family courts handle domestic abuse and serious offences. We launched a review into the presumption of parental contact, and we piloted the pathfinder model, now the child-focused model, to improve information sharing, increase judicial continuity and ensure that children’s voices are heard more effectively throughout proceedings. Alongside that, we invested £3.3 million in the mediation voucher scheme, helping thousands of families to resolve disputes outside the courtroom where it is appropriate and safe to do so.”
House of Commons21 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We agreed that, on balance, a threshold of “serious offences” was the suitable way to go, but that if that worked well and was effective, we should consider lowering that threshold. Why should anyone who commits any sort of offence against a child not automatically have to argue for their own parental responsibility? It is important to recognise the work that was undertaken by the previous Government, which others have mentioned. In particular, the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 recognised as victims in their own right children who see, hear or experience the effects of domestic abuse. Dame Nicole Jabobs and others long advocated for those changes, and the Act made victims automatically eligible for special measures in court.”
House of Commons21 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“For example, I recently worked with Paula and Tony Hudgell and their MP, my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and Malling (Helen Grant), to secure the establishment of the child cruelty register, so that parents and other individuals who commit child cruelty offences are monitored and tracked in the same way that child sex offenders are. The Opposition also supported the Government’s measures to restrict the parental responsibility of serious child sex offenders. During the passage of that legislation, we successfully argued, alongside others, that the provisions should go further than was originally proposed. They would only have applied to parents who perpetrated offences against their own children, but with Members across the House, we persuaded the Government to change that to those who commit offences against all children.”
House of Commons21 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“According to Women’s Aid, over the last 30 years 67 child deaths have been linked to unsafe contact arrangements, with 19 having occurred since 2016. When we discuss safeguarding in family courts, we are discussing not peripheral procedural matters, but the core responsibility of the state to protect vulnerable people—women, children and also men. I want to acknowledge the work of survivors, campaigners and charities who have driven progress in this area through their extraordinary courage and persistence. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Wokingham for bringing representatives from Kaleidoscopic UK, who I understand are attending the debate. I would be grateful to catch up with them afterwards, if that is possible. Many other groups and individuals work in this area.”
House of Commons21 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“For too many people, the family justice system is not an abstract institution; it is the place they have to go to where decisions are made that will shape their safety, their relationships with their children and often the trajectory of their lives for years to come. That is why getting the system right matters so much. As we have heard, domestic abuse is present in 73% of active family court proceedings and 87% of closed cases. One in five children in the UK experience some form of domestic abuse, and 78% of those children are directly harmed by the perpetrator. Those are sobering figures, and they remind us that domestic abuse is not something that exists separately from family justice proceedings. We also know that children are too often affected directly by failures of the system.”
House of Commons21 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones) for securing this debate on domestic abuse and safeguarding within the family justice system. Members in the Chamber will not be alone in having regularly encountered this issue in constituency casework. I expect all MPs across the House have constituents who are struggling with these issues, and perhaps even they are in their private lives. This subject demands seriousness, sensitivity and honesty from all of us. Behind every statistic in this debate are children living in fear, survivors trying to rebuild their lives and families navigating court processes at moments of enormous stress and vulnerability.”
House of Commons21 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is all very well to send people on training. As a doctor, I have sat in on training sessions. People can be in a training seminar together, and some will pay attention and some will not. Some will take it seriously, and some will not. If there is not a system of accountability at the other end, training can become a tick-box exercise if we are not careful.”
House of Commons21 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I have asked the Minister about this before, and she did not answer. Maybe I will get an answer this time. One thing she might set those additional support services to do is let people know when perpetrators will get out of prison earlier because of the Government’s decisions. Can she at least commit to writing to victims to let them know in advance that their perpetrator is going to be let out of prison earlier?”
House of Commons21 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I welcome the new Minister to her post. For all the policies she might be glad to inherit, she is also inheriting a plan later this year to let out potentially thousands of the worst offenders against women and girls, including rapists and those responsible for sexual assault. The Government are refusing to be transparent about this and are not answering freedom of information requests and written questions about how many rapists and sexual assault offenders will be allowed out of prison earlier. Will this new Minister turn over a new leaf and at least be transparent about how many rapists the Government will be letting out of prison early later this year?”
House of Commons19 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I ask the Minister to think about a situation in which a victim of rape comes to her constituency surgery whose rapist is currently in prison but will now get out of prison earlier. I wonder what that victim would think about the answer the Minister has just given to a serious question about a serious issue. If she refuses to tell the House that information, will she—at the very least—commit to writing to all the women and girls whose offender is currently not due to come out of prison for two or three years, but who will now be getting out this year? Will she at least have the good grace to tell the victims when that is going to happen?”
House of Commons19 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“One thing this sorry episode has achieved is to make the Minister an absolute expert on warm words and platitudes. I want to go back to the issue of disappearing messages, which was raised earlier. Obviously, those messages are not retrievable, but the very minimum we should get is a detailed breakdown of all those who were asked to supply information and said they could not do so because they had disappearing messages on their phones. We are entitled to know which Ministers’ communications and which conversations are no longer accessible to us.”
House of Commons19 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Further to that point of order, while I do not have the same experience as my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis), the Minister has said that the documents are ready to publish and that the only issue is securing Government time to do that on 1 June, the first day back after recess. What advice can the Speaker provide to the House on what other mechanisms are available to ensure that there is time on that day, if the Government are unwilling to allocate it?”
House of Commons19 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We are already seeing appalling erosions of the punitive element of the justice system by the Labour Government; I would be wary about doing anything that adds to that.”
House of Commons28 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I wish to make some brief remarks. I am keen to see suggestions of alternative approaches, but we have to be careful when it comes to discounts for guilty pleas, because there is a balance to be struck from the perspective of victims and complainants. We do not want to be in a situation where they feel that justice is undermined, particularly given the many other things the Government are doing to reduce the punitive element of the justice system. I am sure the Committee will know that thousands of serious violent sexual offenders will be getting reductions in their prison time. For example, two thirds of those sent to prison every year for rape will have their prison time reduced, and more than 90% of those sentenced for child grooming offences and similar offences will have their prison time reduced to one third.”
House of Commons28 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Independent analysis by the Institute for Government suggests that judge-only trials in the Crown court might save as little as 1.5% to 2.5%— [ Interruption. ] The Minister is right to say, and I do not mind accepting, that the saving is higher for the broader package—that has never been a point of dispute—but we are less concerned about the broader package, and there are things in it that we agree with. We are concerned about the much smaller saving that the IFG has pointed out. The Criminal Bar Association has pointed out that the Government’s modelling assumes that the trials will be completed twice as fast as is realistic. We must ask whether the trade-off is proportionate, especially when there is another option.”
House of Commons28 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“They are crafted in different ways—for example, new clause 2, tabled by the hon. Member for Warrington North, is more prescriptive about how the courts would operate—but the intention and outcome are essentially the same. Specialist courts equipped with trauma-informed training and access to independent sexual violence advisers would recognise the unique complexity of these cases in a way that a simple bench division cannot. As I have said, the Government frequently refer to the experience of rape victims waiting years for justice as a significant justification for restricting jury trials. They argue that moving towards judge-led trials in 50% of cases will streamline the process and reduce the backlog, but the evidence for the broader claims of efficiency is highly contested.”
House of Commons28 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Sometimes, Governments do things that were not in their manifesto one way or another, or were not touched on in any way, but it would be difficult for people to argue that the public had a specific idea that they were not going to get certain things. However, if a Government put in their manifesto a particular element of direct relevance, as they did in relation to specialist courts, the public would have every right to be aggrieved if something entirely different, and significantly so, appeared as Government policy instead of what was in the manifesto. Opposition new clause 25 asks the Government to return to their original vision. It is similar to the other new clauses tabled by the Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for Chichester, and by the hon. Member for Warrington North.”
House of Commons28 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Government’s proposals to halve the number of jury trials was not in the Labour party manifesto, but on page 67 there was a commitment to “fast-track rape cases, with specialist courts at every Crown Court location in England and Wales.” It could therefore be argued that—as much as we can debate what in an entire manifesto the public vote for—the public voted for a system that would prioritise these types of cases through specialisation and resourcing, and did not vote for a system that would instead prioritise administrative throughput by removing the right to elect to be judged by one’s peers.”
House of Commons28 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Opposition have been clear that that is an oversimplification of how the listing process works, and that some of those examples are extremely unlikely to be in the queue in the Crown court, except for in specific circumstances. Nevertheless, the Government have been advancing that case. A commitment to introduce specialist courts was actually in the Government’s manifesto. By fulfilling the promises made to the electorate, the Government can deliver swifter justice for a group of victims they have centred in the debate, without dismantling the constitutional right to elect for jury trial.”
House of Commons28 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“When talking about jury trial reforms, she said: “Does it make sense that the queue of the victim of rape or of a homicide is shared with someone who has stolen a bottle of whisky”? —[ Official Report , 7 January 2026; Vol. 778, c. 278.] In December, the Deputy Prime Minister and Lord Chancellor said: “if someone is charged with an offence such as theft of a bicycle, theft from a vehicle or employee theft, they can opt for a trial that, by necessity, goes into the system and will delay a rape trial”. —[ Official Report , 2 December 2025; Vol. 776, c. 807.] That point has been made by a number of Labour MPs, including the hon. Member for Bolsover (Natalie Fleet).”
House of Commons28 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. We are all here because we recognise that the current state of our criminal courts is untenable. Complainants and defendants alike are facing unacceptable delays, and victims and innocent defendants are suffering as a result. The Government’s response, as set out in the Bill, is a radical restructuring of our trial processes, most notably in the removal of the right to a jury in a vast number of cases—around half, in fact. We believe there is a strong obligation on the Government to institute a more targeted, and potentially more effective, way to address the specific delays that they most frequently cite, through the establishment of specialist courts for rape and serious sexual offences. The Minister herself raised this issue in the Chamber on 7 January.”
House of Commons28 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Minister cannot say, “We’re pretty much doing what we would have done anyway, and this is all fantastic from both sides of the paper.” It is really not.”
House of Commons28 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Minister is in danger—there is a bit of a pattern here—of wanting to have things both ways. She is suggesting that waiting for Brian Leveson’s review, and the parliamentary time and effort going into the legislation, has had no impact or delay on the measures regarding specialist rape courts, which were in the Government’s manifesto and they could have just got on with from day one. That really stretches credibility. The Government must accept the consequences of their decisions. If they have decided that the erosion of jury trials is the way forward, they should just say that and accept that there has been a negative consequence on their manifesto commitment to introduce rape courts.”
House of Commons28 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Thank you, Sir John. I just want to make a simple point. The Minister said that what the Government want to do does not require primary legislation, but in the same speech referred to primary legislation that we are considering today as part of introducing specialist rape courts. It is obvious to anybody that there is a requirement for primary legislation. We waited a year for Brian Leveson and we are two years into the Parliament. There are uncontroversial clauses that we have not opposed; the Government could have got on with those and passed them within six months, and they would be operating right now. I just do not think the Minister’s argument that nothing has been lost from progress on these issues because of the jury trial reforms stands up to scrutiny.”
House of Commons28 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Again, the read-across could not be more direct. We could have courts with trained staff to consider particular types of cases that had been assessed in advance as suitable for such sessions. Those courts could be set up to make the most of that, whether it is a Saturday or an evening. It is not just in those approaches that we see the Government and the NHS thinking more innovatively about how to make use of resources. Many of us now have community diagnostic centres in our constituencies. I know from when I was a junior doctor that, previously, it was extremely difficult to organise certain types of scans out of hours. The NHS have reformed the whole approach so that such tests, which had typically been restricted to just the working day, can now take place seven days a week to maximise capacity.”
House of Commons28 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗