Jess Brown-Fuller MP: speeches

Speeches

• 20 Jan 2026 · Sentencing Bill · Hansard source

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  The victims code lays out that if a victim is deceased, the immediate family—parents or siblings—would be included. That is why I asked that question of the Minister. Subsection (3)(c) of the amendment in lieu allows the Secretary of State to provide exceptions to the requirement to provide a transcript of sentencing remarks. What sort of exceptions do the Government anticipate, and as per subsection (3)(d), what sort of information may be omitted from a transcript? If the Secretary of State does not plan to use sweeping powers to except or omit, why are such provisions included in the amendment? The previous Government ran a very limited pilot of free court transcripts. Will this Government publish a detailed review of that pilot? We believe that this provision could and should go much further, and as per the campaign by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park and Baroness Brinton in the other place, we have tabled an amendment to the Victims and Courts Bill that would mean that all transcripts are provided free of charge, including judicial summaries and bail decisions. The Lady Chief Justice recently spoke to the Justice Committee about a pilot with HM Courts and Tribunals Service on the use of AI for transcripts, especially in the asylum and immigration courts. She described it as a “great success”, so I would be keen to understand if the Government will work with the Liberal Democrats to progress this work. We do appreciate the growing cross-party support on this issue and the work of all in the other place to achieve this important first step today. We also welcome the Government committing to a statutory annual report into the state of prison capacity and, importantly, the Probation Service. This is an important mechanism for oversight that will improve long-term assessments of the health of our justice system. We were very happy to see the Government accept our amendment to remove clause 35 from the Bill, which did nothing to address the crisis in our justice system and was totally at odds with the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. We welcome the amendments tabled by the Government to strengthen protections in relation to the Lord Chancellor’s approval of sentencing guidelines. We have been supportive of many of the provisions in the Bill aimed at addressing some of the key failings in our crumbling justice system. Our courts, prisons and the Probation Service are all at breaking point, and without urgent intervention they are at risk of failing completely. The Bill offered an opportunity to ease some of the pressures our system faces, where currently the needs of victims, offenders and the system more widely are too often ignored. We also need to ensure that our prison system is one of rehabilitation—one that ends the cycle of reoffending and reduces long-term pressures. All of the Liberal Democrats’ work on this Bill has been in that vein, in order to get the legislation into a better place to achieve those aims. To conclude, we realise the mess that our justice system finds itself in. We have always aimed to work collaboratively and productively in a cross-party way to ensure that we can begin to turn the tide on this crisis, and we will continue to do so. We need a sustainable solution, which includes cutting reoffending, tackling the court backlog to reduce the number of people in prison on remand, and properly resourcing our Probation Service, which will no doubt feel the impact of this legislation most acutely. The Bill contains a number of proposals that Lib Dems have campaigned for as part of the wider package of reform, but it still could go much further to ensure that it is fit for purpose to protect victims and safeguard our justice system for the future.

• 9 Dec 2025 · Water Scarcity · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart, as much as it was 15 minutes ago. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham for securing this important debate. The south-east, where my constituency is, has been designated as water stressed since 2021. As reflected in many of the contributions, that sometimes feels quite hard to believe in such a wet country. Much of my constituency is a low-lying coastal plain, and weather volatility is causing severe conditions on both ends of the scale. Droughts and floods are a commonplace occurrence, whereas before they were less likely. I would like briefly to talk about chalk streams. I am very lucky to represent two of England’s 200 chalk streams, and over-abstraction on the River Ems over many years means that the point of constant flow has moved two kilometres downstream since the 1960s. That means that a large proportion of the river is drying up every summer when it never used to. Constituents have told me harrowing accounts of trying to rescue the salmon that migrate down the River Ems, and it feels like a total catastrophe when people are trying to save those fish. The Test and the Itchen, just outside my constituency, are also rare habitats and important chalk streams. They, too, are really impacted by over-abstraction. To address that, Portsmouth Water is building the first new reservoir in more than 30 years, the Havant Thicket reservoir, just on the border of my constituency. That was largely favoured by the local community, because it would create a new space and an exciting environment for people to visit and walk around. Then Southern Water got involved. It saw this brilliant idea that was popular among the population, and it put forward a proposal to invest in Havant Thicket with Portsmouth Water by introducing an effluent recycling scheme, the first of its kind in this country to supplement our drinking water supply. By investing in that technology, Southern Water can use clever accounting tricks to maintain its bottom line by describing the technology as an asset rather than investing in fixing its existing infrastructure, which is much less appealing to its shareholders. The cost of the scheme to introduce effluent recycling into the drinking water supply at the Havant Thicket reservoir is estimated to be £1.2 billion, but the costs are spiralling every year. There is also no lasting legacy to this project. The plant will become redundant in 60 years, but customers will be paying for it in their bills for far longer. It is also hugely energy intensive. At the same time, as many hon. Members have mentioned, Southern Water wastes 100 million litres of water every day from leaky pipes that it has failed to maintain.