Kieran Mullan MP: speeches

Speeches

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Thank you.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you. Are there particular parts of the process that you have observed and want to raise? Police officers often attend court and are often witnesses. In your experience, what are the processes that fall down? What makes you sit there shaking your head and wishing it had not happened? What prevents you from getting a conviction secured or a court hearing brought forward? Chief Constable Hatchett: Obviously, there are the adjournments and the upset to victims and witnesses, including police witnesses. I just want to make the point that for the whole time the adjournments are taking place—you are sometimes looking to 2030—the risk in the community is being managed by policing. Whether the person has a tag or is on court bail, with or without conditions, they are being managed in the community by policing.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Thank you.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q As you picked two things that have been agreed, what things that have not been agreed would be on your list of further things that would help? Daniel Flury: On the principal sources of delay, you have mentioned the police and the effectiveness of trials, and we see lots of ineffective trials because of an absence of an advocate—an advocate is engaged in a case elsewhere. The situation with the Prison Escort and Custody Services—the delivery vans—is well known, and well documented in the Leveson report. Finding a way to improve that is pretty near the top of the list.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q The other thing that Sir Brian says—this is in relation to the Crown court bench division, but it is replicated across all his major recommendations—is: “Should the MoJ consider pursuing this course of action, it may wish to consider undertaking further detailed analysis in order to understand the potential time-saving fully.” Besides the stakeholder engagement exercise, are you aware of any of the “further detailed analysis” that Sir Brian said was necessary before coming to any conclusions about the time savings of the policies? Samantha Hillas: No.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q To pick up on what you said—“do away with”—I think you will agree that we are talking about not the removal of jury trials, but a significant and historically unprecedented reduction in their use. Tim Crosland: What I said was do away with jury equity. Jury equity—the principle that a jury can acquit a defendant irrespective of the directions of the judge—only applies to cases where people are unlikely to receive a sentence of more than three years. It applies to cases of conscience where people have acted in the public interest, at least in their own self-understanding, and that is what they want to present to the jury. Those people are very unlikely to get long sentences of beyond three years imprisonment. In reality, this measure will do away with the principle of jury equity altogether.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thanks very much for coming. I want to start with some questions for Fiona and Emma. Am I right in thinking that you were both signatories to the letter from what we might call the violence against women and girls grouping to the Deputy Prime Minister, which said that we should not move forward with these proposals? Is that correct? Emma Torr: Correct.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Do you think that the Institute for Government’s classification of some of those assumptions as highly uncertain would be a fair classification? Daniel Flury: I would not like to comment on that. The analysis is primarily undertaken by the Ministry of Justice; I am here representing the courts service and the operational side.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I do not know whether you heard the evidence this morning in which the Victims’ Commissioner characterised that letter as predominantly being on behalf of women and girls who end up as defendants. When I read a specific part of the letter that said, “Well, actually, it’s also about victims,” the Victims’ Commissioner said that I was unfairly representing the letter. I wanted to give you both an opportunity to talk about whether, when you put your name to that letter, you included women and girls as victims as part of your considerations. Fiona Rutherford: I certainly did. I cannot speak on behalf of the other organisations, but certainly from my behalf, that is exactly my understanding. Emma Torr: I would agree with that.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Very good. I want to pick up on your experience in Liverpool. I am sure you are familiar with this, and it has been discussed in Parliament, but the Liverpool Crown court does not have a backlog—it sees cases within the time limits. Based on your experience there, how were you able to achieve that, what else might the wider system learn from it, and what things can we not learn as they are not replicable? Clement Goldstone: First, every Crown court has a backlog—they need one to function. Why was Liverpool a success? It was a success, first of all, because it is an excellent single court centre; secondly, because it has a very positive interactive relationship between the bench and the Bar and the Bar and the bench; and thirdly, because the staff are always willing to go the extra mile, which is probably because of the way they interact with the judiciary. The fourth reason, which I know is something inherited by my successor, is that, as recorder, I believed that if you want to bring out the best in people you give them responsibility. Everybody wants to be part of a success story, as Liverpool in that way was. What has happened over the last seven years since I retired is that the same standards have been maintained—albeit, it must be said, in much more difficult and trying circumstances than when I was in the position.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Great. Thank you very much; I appreciate that.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q But how are you currently rating them? Thank you for telling me what the risks are, but do you think you have a low risk of failure to deliver, or a high risk? Daniel Flury: It is a medium risk.

• 23 Mar 2026 · Court and Tribunal Transcripts · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) for opening the debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee. He is proving himself to be a consistent and doughty champion of victims and the issues that they raise with him. I also acknowledge the long-standing campaigning of the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) in this area. I welcome today’s opportunity to discuss this issue as part of our wider debate about transparency in the justice system. Sadly, I think that I can predict to some extent what the Minister will say: the phrase “14 years” will make an appearance; there will be lots of rhetoric about how terrible the previous Government were; and there will be a complete absence of any idea of how the current Government would have managed differently the challenges that the previous Government faced. I can also be pretty confident about what the Minister will not say. There will be no real engagement with what the challenges of covid presented to our justice system, even though they truly were unprecedented. However, that is the standard that Ministers and Labour have set, not just for justice, but across the Government on issues such as inflation and energy bills. There is no acceptance of the challenges that the previous Government faced and no exceptions made for things outside their control. It therefore should not be any surprise when the present Government are held to exactly the same standard. In reality, this issue is a good example of what more fair-minded commentators accept as a multi-decade failure to give the justice system and those involved in it the priority and resources they deserve. I am sure that if the Minister and I were to design the justice system from scratch together, we would agree that free access to transcripts was important and, indeed, should just be the default. However, we are where we are. Sadly, I am realistic about what success we will achieve on the issue of transcripts today, even when a petition has been signed by an impressive 200,000 people. After all, this is the Government who tried to delete the Courtsdesk archive, which has been one of the biggest steps forward for transparency in our justice system in recent years. I raised that issue in the main Chamber because I was deeply concerned about the decision to delete a unique archive of corrected and correlated court listings. In the absence of retrospective access to court transcripts, the work of journalists is absolutely vital, and Courtsdesk had become a valuable tool for journalists, campaigners and others seeking to identify patterns in offending and to expose failings in our justice system. Rather than seeking to preserve that transparency while dealing constructively with any data protection concerns, the Government moved towards deleting the archive altogether. Of course, the Government’s defence of that decision did not hold up to scrutiny. When the Minister for Courts and Legal Services came to the House and said that there were serious data protection concerns with Courtsdesk, she did not tell us that the Government’s internal processes had found the incident she cited to be low-risk, not even warranting referral to the Information Commissioner’s Office. At a time when confidence in the justice system depends on greater openness, the Minister for Courts and Legal Services was going to deliver the exact opposite, and that is part of the context for today’s debate. It relates to the broader question of whether the Government are approaching transparency in the justice system with sufficient urgency and seriousness. The petition speaks to the basic principle that access to justice should not depend on the ability to pay, and open justice is not an optional extra to be considered only once the administrative convenience of the system has been satisfied. The petitioners are right to identify transcript fees as a paywall. For too many people, they are exactly that: a barrier to understanding what happened in court; a barrier to considering making an appeal; a barrier to holding the system to account; and, in some cases, a barrier to justice itself. That matters not just for journalists and campaigners, but for victims, bereaved families and ordinary members of the public who are trying to make sense of a justice system that is supposed to work for them. There is clearly public demand for greater transparency in the system, which was why the previous Conservative Government started moving in that direction, including through the pilot of making sentencing remarks available free of charge to victims of rape and other sexual offences. That was a start, although I now think that we should have moved faster and further while we were in government. I find it hard to think of any other walk of life in which we would expect a member of the public who is part of such an important process—it is important for them, for their friends and family, and for the wider justice system—to be asked to remember key things that may or may not have been said in court, and to be asked to be in court every single day if they want to understand the full process, although that might not necessarily be appropriate. What disappoints me in particular is the Government’s resistance not just to making full transcripts available, but on the much narrower and more readily resolvable issue of making transcripts of sentencing remarks available. The Government have refused to accept our proposal—it has been voted on in the Lords—to have such transcripts produced within 14 days and free of charge. They will accept doing that only from spring of next year and not necessarily within 14 days. As we have heard, given the unduly lenient sentence scheme, people need those transcripts quickly if they are to be able to make good use of them. It is particularly clear that there is public interest in sentencing remarks. I look forward to the Labour Members who spoke today backing amendments that the Conservatives, with cross-party support, are attempting to pass so that transcripts of sentencing remarks are made available. As the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller), pointed out, similar amendments have been proposed to allow victims to have even more made available to them, including the route to verdict and bail decisions. Those amendments have cross-party support, so I hope that Labour Members and others will support them when the House considers them this week. My right hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay) showed his ministerial experience through the well-articulated questions that he put to the Minister. I will add my own questions to his. It is all well and good for the Minister to talk in warm words about access to sentencing remarks and court transcripts, but do we have an actual date for when the Government will deliver that? What cases will it apply to at first, and what barriers are preventing us from implementing this much more quickly than the Government have committed to? I pay tribute to everyone who signed the petition, particularly those campaigners such as Fiona Goddard, who my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley mentioned and focused on grooming gangs. That has been a key driver of the demands for greater transparency in our justice system. The Government resisted an inquiry on that matter in a similar vein to how they are resisting transparency in our justice system. I look forward to the Minister giving us concrete answers about how we will make progress, rather than just warm words.

• 17 Mar 2026 · Rural Roads · Hansard source

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  I cannot possibly do justice to the frustration of my residents about their local roads in one minute, but I will try my best. They contact me all the time to say how appalled they are at the quality of their local roads. The Labour Government fail to understand the challenges in rural communities, making the situation all the worse with their funding decisions since they came into office. First, since my constituency has a lot of older people, the Government’s cutting off of our plans to reform social care spending have left us with huge financial burdens. Secondly, they cut the amount of money that was due to be given to East Sussex county council to pay for road improvements. Thirdly, to make it all the worse, they changed the funding formula to make it much harder for rural counties such as East Sussex and so many of the rural constituencies represented by Members in this Chamber to make ends meet and repair their roads. Will the Government finally start listening to rural MPs, councillors and councils, and sort these issues out once and for all?

• 17 Mar 2026 · Rural Roads · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way on that point?

• 17 Mar 2026 · Rural Roads · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 17 Mar 2026 · Rural Roads · Hansard source

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  Does the Minister accept that the changes to the funding formula have made rural areas worse off—yes or no?

• 17 Mar 2026 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  Right now there are potentially thousands of rapists, paedophiles and perverts, who are responsible for some of the worst offences against women and girls, who this Government are going to let out of prison earlier. That is a disgrace, and at the very least the Government should be transparent about it. When I asked them to tell us what their estimates and modelling were on the number of people who were due to be let out, at first they denied they had any of that information; then they admitted that they did, but refused to publish it. Does the Minister not think that they should be transparent about the consequences of their own policies?

• 17 Mar 2026 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  I wish that the Minister got as angry about the fact that her Government are releasing thousands of rapists, paedophiles and perverts from prison early. If the Government will not tell us about the reality of the consequences, surely they should at least tell the victims. One of the worst aspects of this policy is the fact that many of those victims will have been given an estimated date for when the perpetrators would be released. That date will now be brought forward, and the perpetrators will get out of prison earlier than the victims were led to believe. Does the Minister think that, at the very least, the Government should write to the victims in advance to let them know that they are letting the perpetrators of those horrendous crimes out of prison earlier?

• 16 Mar 2026 · Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address · Hansard source

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  The problem with these sorts of scandals is that as time moves on, more and more people are tarnished by them. Last week, when the papers revealed that Mandelson received £75,000, I asked the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister whether the Government were worried about what he might say at an employment tribunal. He said, “That was not the rationale. The documents will speak for themselves.” —[ Official Report , 11 March 2026; Vol. 782, c. 367.] Of course, the documents do speak for themselves. They say that part of the business case for the payout—which the Minister was aware of, because it was sent to him—was that “Given the reputational impact for HMG, a modest settlement as proposed is the recommended course of action”. They also say that “the individual has a high profile which could give rise to reputational damage to the FCDO and HMG were a court or tribunal claim to be pursued”, which is exactly what I suggested based on what was in the papers, but which the Minister denied was part of the reasoning. Does he want to apologise for inadvertently misleading the House, and does he agree that those papers show that the Government broke Treasury rules on how such payments should be made?

• 12 Mar 2026 · Marriage Regulations · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I warmly congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell)—who I consider a friend—on securing the debate. I could characterise him as a romantic perhaps, given his decision to focus on this topic, and I know from his early-day motion that he has taken a close interest in these issues. From the perspective of the justice system, marriage is not simply a social institution, but a legal status that carries significant consequences in areas ranging from inheritance and family law to taxation, immigration and parental responsibility. Because of that, the framework governing marriage rightly sits within the responsibilities of the Ministry of Justice. With that responsibility comes an obligation to ensure not only that the legal framework is workable in practice, but that it continues to uphold the seriousness and integrity of marriage as an institution. The statutory 28-day notice period, the processes surrounding registration, and the complexity of guidance for couples all deserve periodic scrutiny to ensure they continue to serve their intended purpose. Safeguards are essential, and notice periods allow registrars to verify eligibility, while also helping to prevent sham marriages or coercion, but the experiences of couples and registrars suggest there may be circumstances where greater clarity and flexibility would improve how the law operates in practice. However, any move to modernise the framework must be undertaken with care. Reform should not create a system that treats marriage casually or allows the institution to be diluted. Rather, modernisation should reinforce the seriousness of marriage while ensuring the law functions effectively in practice. My right hon. Friend drew attention to the perspective of Gretna Green—one of the most historic and recognisable wedding destinations in the United Kingdom—which is in his constituency. For centuries, Gretna Green has occupied a unique place in the story of marriage law in these islands. Following the Marriage Act 1753, couples famously travelled north of the border to marry under Scotland’s more flexible rules. That history has become embedded in the cultural identity of the place and has helped to shape a thriving wedding destination that continues to attract couples from across the UK and beyond. Today, that tradition supports not only the ceremonies themselves, but a wider network of hotels, restaurants and local businesses that rely on the wedding sector, and for which my right hon. Friend is a champion and advocate in all the right ways. The “Love Shouldn’t Wait” campaign launched by Gretna Green Ltd raises a number of practical questions about whether aspects of the current system create avoidable delays for couples wishing to marry. Although the MOJ must rightly approach such proposals with care, it is appropriate that we listen to the experience of those who work daily with couples navigating the system. From a justice policy perspective, my right hon. Friend’s EDM raised several points: first, whether the current framework provides sufficiently clear and transparent mechanisms for urgent marriages in exceptional circumstances; secondly, whether the system of guidance and administration should be simplified so that couples and registrars alike can navigate it more easily; and, thirdly, whether the continued development of secure digital processes could streamline elements of the marriage registration system, while preserving safeguards against fraud. However, in pursuing such reforms, we must be careful that the pendulum does not swing too far in the other direction. It is worth remembering that the question of modernising marriage law is not new; over the past decade, successive Governments have recognised that aspects of the legal framework governing weddings in England and Wales warranted wider review. Most recently, the Law Commission set out a comprehensive package of recommendations for reforming wedding law in its report published in 2022. Among its key proposals was a shift away from the current system in England and Wales, which largely regulates weddings through the buildings in which they take place, towards a model centred on the officiant conducting the ceremony. Alongside that longer-term review, the previous Government introduced more limited reforms where there was a clear practical need, such as the changes made during the covid pandemic to allow weddings to carry on. However, Ministers at the time were clear that more fundamental questions about wedding law should be considered comprehensively, rather than through piecemeal change. My right hon. Friend has also suggested the appointment of a marriage tsar; I do not know whether he is suggesting that he might be a candidate for that role, but it is something we should look at. As a member of the all-party parliamentary humanist group, I wanted to touch on the contribution from the hon. Member for Luton South and South Bedfordshire (Rachel Hopkins), because I have a lot of sympathy for the point she made. The Conservative party has not reached a settled policy on it at this stage, but I am personally very sympathetic to her suggestion. My right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale has rightly drawn attention to the experience of communities such as Gretna Green, where the intersection between legal regulation and real-world practice is particularly visible. By listening to those experiences, and by considering the practical reforms highlighted in EDM 2200 and the substantial work already undertaken on wider wedding law reform, Ministers can help to ensure that our marriage laws remain legally sound and practically workable, while continuing to respect and uphold the institution of marriage itself. I once again thank my right hon. Friend for securing the debate, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s thoughts on the concerns raised.

• 11 Mar 2026 · Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address Motion · Hansard source

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  The Minister will know that the Government have a Bill about the duty of accountability and candour going through the House; one of his colleagues on the Front Bench will confirm that that requires Ministers to answer questions with candour. Several weeks ago, three Members of this House asked him what Mandelson’s pay-off was, and he refused to answer. I ask him to reflect on whether he acted with candour. Back to the question of whether Mandelson deserved a pay-out, is it not the truth that the Government know that this tissue—this story or suggestion that they were lied to and that there was no possible way they could have found out the truth—would have been torn apart in an employment tribunal, and that is why they did not want to take the case to one?

• 10 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill · Hansard source

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  It has been a positive debate in terms of the exchange of ideas, and there have been some fantastic contributions. I pay particular tribute to the hon. Members for Bolsover (Natalie Fleet) and for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) for the very personal way in which they made their cases. There is consensus that for victims, the current waits are terrible and an experience that they should not have to go through. It is not only damaging for them as individuals, but some of them drop out as a result. We see perpetrators who would have been found guilty walking away and escaping justice, and we see defendants who would have been found innocent having to wait too long to have the accusations over their head removed.

• 10 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill · Hansard source

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  Not yet. We must have a serious discussion about why that is. It was disappointing for those who sought to put forward a credible analysis of what has happened that the Justice Secretary and most Labour Members did not mention the word “covid” once. In reality, the backlogs in the Crown court under this Government before covid were lower than those we inherited from the previous Government. It is fair to say that for many years—25 years, as we heard from the hon. Member for Congleton (Sarah Russell)—it has been accepted that not enough political attention has been paid to our justice system. The question is, what do we do about it? There is no single answer to that question, because there is no single problem. A whole variety of things are going wrong in our justice system. We are seeing late pleas because of insufficient early advice, faulty courtrooms, a lack of reports from probation services, and problems with prison transport. All those problems, and others, cause the delays and other issues. The central recommendation of the Leveson report was for more sitting days— 130,000—and that will require more venues, more court staff, more prosecution staff, more solicitors and more barristers. However, as I have mentioned, there are simpler things that we can do ahead of that, and we need look no further than Liverpool Crown court under the leadership of Andrew Menary. At a time when the national average wait from charge to trial is 321 days, that court manages an average wait of 206 days. As far as I am aware, neither the Justice Secretary nor any of his team has visited Liverpool Crown court to speak to the judge and hear how he does that. In fact, he achieves it partly through the use of early guilty pleas. Nationally, we lose court time because too many people—31%—plead guilty on the day of a trial. In Liverpool, the proportion is just 6%. Those are not bold reforms. They are not measures that allow a Secretary of State to give a grand speech and consider himself a great reformer. It is just hard work, or what one Member described as “pretty boring” stuff that gets the job done. As was pointed out by the hon. Members for Warrington North and for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy), these reforms will not only fail to achieve what the Government claim they will; they will be an overbearing, destructive distraction from that sort of hard work. And what will the Government gain? Certainly not what they claim in the impact assessment, which is full of assumptions and fantasies, and certainly not anything that might be described as modelling. The Government want us to believe that 24,000 Crown court days will simply be converted into 8,500 magistrate days, but they have no evidence for that claim. They want us to believe that trials without juries will be 20% shorter, but they have no evidence to support that claim either.

• 10 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill · Hansard source

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  I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman read the entire statement. What the institution actually said was that the modelling “relies on several assumptions—some of which are highly uncertain.” Did he read that part of the statement? I do not think he did, because it claims that there will be reductions of only 2% in trial time as a result of these reforms. What are we being asked to give up? We are being asked to give up 800 years of English legal history. A sledgehammer is being taken to the cornerstone of our system, and to fundamental rights. Thousands of accused people risk spending years in prison, losing their livelihoods, losing their families, losing their homes, and not being able to make the simple request for a forum of their peers to make that decision—a part of the justice system that is trusted and supported more than any other. That is perhaps why it is being defended so robustly by those within it. Just today, thousands of retired judges and retired and working legal professionals asked the Justice Secretary to think again. What has been the Government’s response to that? It has been to denigrate the role of jury trials. We have had the appalling sight of the Lord Chancellor comparing three years in prison to a scraped knee. We have heard the Minister for Courts say that being accused of an offence of sexual assault, which could be considered either way at the moment, was not serious—an accusation that, if proven, would lose someone their livelihood. It is shameful and desperate stuff from a desperate Government. In contrast, what did the Prime Minister say? He said: “The right to trial by jury is an important factor in the delicate balance between the power of the state and the freedom of the individual. The further it is restricted, the greater the imbalance.” Now he asks us to upend that balance in a historically unprecedented way. Of course, we can talk about the facts and figures, as woeful and thin as they have been, but at the end of the day, these decisions come from political instinct and a deep sense of what is right and wrong. That is not shallow; it is based on knowledge and years of experience —the sort that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and Tavistock (Sir Geoffrey Cox) have. That experience told them, before they saw the figures, that the Government’s approach was not going to work. They have been proven right by the figures. Is it any surprise that the Prime Minister does not understand this? Time and again, we have seen that he is absolutely devoid of any sort of deep political instinct. His only instinct is to chop and change his mind as it suits him on any particular day. No wonder he has been, more than any other Prime Minister in recent history, an agent of the civil service. He has forgotten the golden rule that civil servants advise and Ministers decide. The Conservatives have said yes to more resources, to efficiency and to the hard work of getting things done, but we have said no to eroding a fundamental right, no to more overbearing state power, and no to gutting and scouring away the mechanism by which all of us watch the watchmen. The Courts Minister tells us that the Bill has been introduced on a point of political principle, whereas other Members have argued that it is a matter of necessity and resource. Too often, Labour Members have said yes to a Prime Minister to whom they should have said no. They have an opportunity tonight to say no to the Prime Minister when it counts. Let us hope they have the courage to do so.