Kieran Mullan MP: speeches

Speeches

• 17 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I just point out that the statement is used post conviction, so it would not influence the jury—it is for the judge. Do you accept that our amendment, which emphasises that it is for the judge to distinguish between remarks that would or would not be rightfully taken into account in sentencing, will address your concerns about the wider use and impact of the statement? Alex Davies-Jones: I think it is important to note that it is considered by a judge or jury in sentencing, and it is still classed as evidence. It needs to be factual and there are also restrictions placed on what victims can say about a perpetrator. For example, they are unable to threaten a perpetrator in the victim impact statement. I agree that victims need more education and support in understanding what they can say, but I do not want to be in any position where I am restricting a victim in how they can put forward the impact that a crime has had on them. Therefore, I am actively looking at what mechanism is best to do that.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Finally, one welcome measure in the Bill flips around the concept of where offenders can go and where victims are protected from seeing them, because it should be the offenders that we restrict. We should restrict their mobility so that victims can know that as long as they are not in certain places they will not run into offenders. Your organisations have probably called for that in the past. I am interested in your perspective on how important that will be for victims. Suky, would you like to start? Suky Bhaker: It is paramount that victims themselves should not feel that they are the ones being restricted by restraining orders. Often our service users tell us that exactly that happens and that the exclusion zones are not broad enough. Without knowing where the perpetrator is or making the zones wide enough, the victims themselves end up being the ones who feel imprisoned and restricted: they do not know where it is safe to go, because they do not know where the offender will be. Those exclusion zones definitely need to be made wider. Andrea Simon: We also need to think about the practicalities and who will actually ensure that the exclusion zones are adhered to and monitored, and that actions are taken if there are breaches. That is in the broader scope of how we resource probation and policing to make sure that victims can feel reassured that these measures will result in their safety. That is absolutely vital. Farah Nazeer: We often see orders that just do not make any sense—for example, where a perpetrator and a victim work in quite close proximity and that has not been taken into account, and where children go to school and so on. There needs to be a victim-centred approach when it comes to thinking about the exclusions and where a perpetrator can be. It is a really important principle and a good principle to have, but what we need is the training, the thought and the care that sits behind that, and also the enforcement. Even the orders issued currently are broken on a regular basis and there are not the resources to address that. It is one thing to set this in motion and put it in place, but how it works on the ground is something that the Committee should really consider when it comes to statutory services’ ability to deliver to the aspirations and ambitions of the Bill, and equally the ability of services on the ground to support victims through varying processes.

• 11 Dec 2024 · Finance Bill · Hansard source

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  I rise to support new clause 8 in the name of the shadow Chancellor, because it will help ensure accountability on this policy, and ensure that its impacts are fully understood. I want that because of the policy itself, but perhaps more because of how the Labour party has framed it, which I have found deeply concerning. I know all parties in this place are sometimes less than accurate in how we describe tax and spending, and about how it works for political advantage at different times, but the one thing out of all the things that the new Labour Government have done that I find genuinely appalling is the vindictive way in which they have rolled the ground for this measure by pitching schoolchild against schoolchild and parent against parent. I have genuinely found it really deplorable. We do not have hypothecated tax or spending in this country. Money from road taxes goes on things other than roads, and our national insurance payments do not get put into a pension pot. The Government know that, so to suggest that someone spending money on their own child without being taxed is taking money away from other children is completely and utterly wrong. The UK Government spend more than £1 trillion a year, and the Government can choose what they spend that money on. The suggestion that this money is going into a legally defined pot of money for education, and that if it was not there, there would be less money available for education, is completely without merit, not least because if there was such a pot, the parents we are talking about would for many years have been contributing to it, not taking money out of it. They would already have been subsidising mainstream education, according to the Government’s own arguments. The idea that schoolchildren in mainstream education are going without directly because we did not have VAT on private schools—that all sorts of parents for all sorts of reasons are choosing to invest some of their money in their own children’s education, but because we have not been taxing that, children elsewhere are missing out on their education—is a deeply unpleasant and unnecessary way to frame this argument. Imagine being a parent who—like people I know—had a modest start in life but then perhaps went on to medical school and became a GP. They are honest, hard-working people, and the fact that they were not being taxed on that spend means that they are now being made to feel that somehow that has been taking away from the education of other children. That is completely wrong. It really is the worst sort of politics. It was exemplified by the despicable tweet from the Education Secretary, which was rightly and roundly criticised. A private school having a swimming pool does not in any way affect the availability of mental health support in other schools, any more than spending extra money on potholes or defence or healthcare does. I reiterate that the Government have more than £1 trillion to spend every year on what they want, and ways in which to raise that.

• 9 Dec 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T2. On a recent visit, I saw the benefit of the SEN unit in All Saints school in Sidley. Does the Minister think that SEN units have a bigger role to play, and will Ministers meet me to discuss the funding challenges such units face?