Kieran Mullan MP: speeches

Speeches

• 4 Sept 2026 · Infants, Parents and Carers Bill · Hansard source

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  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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

• 1 Sept 2026 · Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation · Hansard source

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  I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) on securing it and the hon. Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) on his previous efforts. I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) for his long-standing work in this area. It was helpful that he set out in his contribution that the issue is not new and that similar attempts to use the law in such a manner go back quite some time. Free speech is not simply a “nice to have”—it is one of the foundations on which free society is built. It allows whistleblowers to come forward, victims of abuse and misconduct to tell their stories and be heard, and journalists and campaigners to hold the powerful to account. However, free speech is not real if it can be exercised only by those wealthy enough to defend it. When people are frightened into silence not because what they have said is false but because of the cost of being right is too high, something is fundamentally wrong. That is the danger posed by SLAPPs. At their worst, SLAPPs are not really about winning in court but about using the process itself as a punishment. They are designed to make the journey to court so expensive and exhausting that the journalist, campaigner, whistleblower or victim gives up before a judge ever considers the merits of the case. That chilling effect is not accidental—it is the point. Claims that go all the way to trial can cost an enormous amount in legal fees. Even a defendant who wins can be left with thousands of pounds of unrecovered legal bills. The threat being made is not always “We will win”; very often, it is “We can afford this for longer than you can.” Asymmetry is the weapon. We have seen that in some of the most high-profile cases involving British journalists and publishers. Catherine Belton and her publisher faced multiple legal actions after the publication of “Putin’s People”; Tom Burgis and HarperCollins faced litigation over “Kleptopia”; and Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat were pursued through the courts by Yevgeny Prigozhin. I pay tribute to those publishers and businesses who resisted that pressure and were willing to pay those legal bills that enabled those publications to survive, when we know others do not. These cases show how wealthy and powerful overseas actors, including Russian oligarchs, Kremlin-linked figures and large foreign corporations have been able to use or threaten to use English courts to put pressure on British journalists who are investigating corruption, kleptocracy and misconduct. That should concern every Member of this House. We have to have a situation in which journalists can continue to act without fear or favour. We want charities to be able to raise concerns about wrongdoing and survivors of abuse to speak publicly about what happened to them. I have spoken in the House before about how the UK is the most frequent international origin of legal threats against journalists, accounting for 31% of all such cases. There are lots of things that we can be proud of about our judicial system and its popularity around the world, but that should give us pause for thought. Around 30% of SLAPPs in 2023 were used to prevent reporting of sexual misconduct. We cannot think of that as an intangible threat to freedom of speech alone: it is being used to silence victims of some of the most personal violations imaginable. The shadow Justice Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy), put it plainly in a previous debate on this subject: “SLAPPs have been deployed by those with deep pockets against company employees, non-governmental organisations, campaign activists, survivors of abuse and people from many walks of life.” —[ Official Report , 21 November 2024; Vol. 757, c. 423.] He was right. This is experienced not only in Fleet Street, but by charity workers who have documented wrongdoing at care homes, by campaigners who have published evidence of environmental harm and by the victims of sexual violence. Let me be clear about the Conservatives’ position: we support the principle of regulating further to stop abusive SLAPP litigation. It is not right that wealthy individuals, foreign oligarchs or large corporations can use disproportionate spending power and the threat of financial ruin to silence legitimate public interest. Any legislation must be well drafted and carefully considered. People must still be able to defend their reputations in court. If a person is genuinely being defamed or false allegations have been made against them, they must have access to justice. I am sure we have all had our own experiences. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

• 14 Jul 2026 · Coastal Communities: Isolation and Hidden Deprivation · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West (Richard Quigley) for throwing the spotlight on the challenges that many of our communities face. More than 20% of Bexhill’s neighbourhoods are among the most deprived in England. Many of the speeches this morning have focused on what central Government can do, but I will use this opportunity to recognise and thank the organisations that do amazing work in my community to tackle the challenges we face, right here, right now. For example, funded by the previous Government’s levelling-up fund, Heart of Sidley has shown what can be achieved through years of grassroots work, local partnership and community leadership, developing a vision for a brand new community hub at the heart of Sidley. I thank Tanya and her team, the chair, Jay Carroll, and all the volunteers involved in that project. The Pelham is helping to tackle the causes and consequences of social isolation and poor mental and physical health through youth work, counselling and volunteering. It is also home to the suicide prevention-focused running group RunningSpace, founded by Jacky Youldon, who has direct experience of how exercise helped her. The Bexhill Family Collective provides a local nursery service, Dragonflies, as well as a community pantry, and outdoor learning and gardening activities for families. Bexhill Caring Community has for decades provided affordable and vital support to older, housebound and lonely residents. Freedom Church in Sidley provides a community marketplace, which redistributes food that would otherwise go to waste to households that are struggling. Many others, including Bexhill Foodbank Advice Service, Warming Up The Homeless, and Bexhill and Rother Homelessness Unity Group, are all doing their best to tackle the challenges in the community, and they provide hope, advice and support to so many people. The Government have a role and I echo the comments of the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West about the funding formula and the challenges it has created. Of course, as a coastal community with a lot of hospitality businesses, the damaging jobs tax and the increase in business rates have made things difficult. However, in Bexhill we are looking ahead to our £20 million town deal, which was awarded by the previous Government. I know that residents are excited about what we can achieve with that money, because Bexhill, at its heart, is a community of positive people who want to get things done and want to improve their lot in life. We will do everything we can with that money to support them in doing so.