Rebecca Paul MP: speeches

Speeches

• 3 Jun 2026 · Seasonal Hospitality Businesses in Coastal Areas · Hansard source

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  I agree with the hon. Gentleman, as I often do. Hospitality businesses are valued employers, community anchors and, for many young people, the first step on the career ladder. I think we all agree that such businesses should be supported right across the country—a point that the hon. Gentleman just eloquently made—but that support especially matters in coastal areas, as has been highlighted so clearly. The first point I want to make is that seasonal hospitality is, by definition, seasonal. That may sound obvious, but from studying the Government’s approach to employment regulation, one sometimes wonders whether Ministers have grasped it. A seaside café does not have the same staffing needs on a wet Tuesday in January as it does on an August bank holiday. A hotel in a resort town cannot pretend that February occupancy and summer occupancy are the same thing. This sector hinges on the weather, the school holidays, domestic tourism and the reality that coastal footfall rises and falls sharply across the year. When Ministers push forward employment laws that make flexible and seasonal working harder, they are striking at the operating model that has sustained the coastal hospitality sector for generations. The Employment Rights Act 2025’s approach to guaranteed hours puts seasonal employers in an impossible position. The Opposition have warned the Government of this, which is why a future Conservative Government would repeal every job-destroying, anti-business, anti-growth measure in the Act as a matter of urgency. Additionally, the Government’s national insurance rise has made it more expensive to employ people. The threshold has fallen, the rate has risen and labour-intensive businesses, especially hospitality, have been hit particularly hard. At the same time, business rate relief for retail, hospitality and leisure was cut from 75% to 40%, and it is next set to end entirely. For seasonal businesses of all types, that is a brutal combination. Tragically, and infuriatingly, I know that many will not survive it. The truth is simple: this Government are hammering hospitality left, right and centre, with higher employer national insurance, higher business rates, more regulation, more risk and more costs piled on to the very businesses they claim to support. Ministers say they want growth, but their policies are doing the opposite. Businesses are closing. Pubs that have stood at the heart of their communities for generations are wondering how much longer they can last. Cafés and restaurants are looking at the bills landing on their doormats and asking whether they can afford to open their doors at all. However, there is a better way. This Government could adopt our policy of taking 250,000 high street businesses, including pubs and hospitality businesses, out of business rates entirely. That would make an immediate difference—for many, it would be the difference between thriving or closing up for good. We would also repeal the family business tax, because family firms should be able to last across generations, rather than being bled dry by the Government when one generation tries to pass a business on to the next. I will be visiting the Isle of Wight myself later in the summer for my friend’s wedding at Osborne House, which I know will be the wedding of the year. My friend has deep ties to the communities there, and she has told me much about the brilliant local businesses—from the Gossips Café in Yarmouth to traditional rural pubs such as the Horse and Groom and the Chequers Inn, whose owner, Mark Holmes, has been commendably vocal in calling for more support so that pubs can survive. These are exactly the sorts of unique places that give coastal and island communities their character.

• 28 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I speak in support of amendments 59, 35 and 36 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle, and the new clauses tabled by the hon. Member for Chichester. Those new clauses are constructive, and the Government should engage with them seriously. They seek to address the right question: how can we increase capacity, improve efficiency, preserve public trust and make better use of the system before cutting into long-standing criminal justice safeguards? The Opposition amendments would ensure that before clauses 1 to 7 are commenced, the Government must show that they have exhausted the practical alternatives, such as more sitting capacity, better use of buildings, fewer lost sitting days from late guilty pleas and prisoner transport delays, proper funding for sitting days and a serious examination of extended sitting hours. That is the right order of operations. The Government’s approach too often appears to be about restricting rights first and hoping that savings arrive later. Our approach is to build capacity and fix operational failures first and contemplate introducing legislation only then, and if truly necessary. Our approach is encapsulated perfectly in amendment 59 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle. The amendment would prevent clauses 1 to 7 of the Bill from coming into force until reasonable steps have been taken “to increase Crown Court sitting capacity, including but not limited to— (a) using buildings not currently in use as courts to hear cases where cells are not needed, and (b) reducing lost sitting days as a result of late guilty pleas and prison transport delays.” That is exactly the right approach, and it is at the heart of the argument we have made throughout proceedings. The Government say that the backlog is so bad that they must remove the right to elect a jury trial, create judge-alone trials, expand magistrates’ sentencing powers and restrict appeals. We say that before they do any of that, they should show us that they have used all the practical means already available to increase capacity and reduce wasted court time. We are seeking to draw attention to the tangible, everyday causes of courtroom delay, which, as the Minister well knows, is often about the case not being ready, defendants not arriving, late pleas, poor listing, lack of courtrooms or staff, or failure to use the estate properly. If those are the root causes of inefficiency, it is extraordinary to reach first for the curtailment of our ancient right to jury trial rather than for more mundane operational fixes. I would go as far as to suggest that the evidence that the Committee has received from the Bar Council could almost have been written in support of the amendment. It says that the current backlog was not caused by the availability of jury trials. It supports “opening all…courts so they can hear cases”, “intense court listing” and “proactive” CPS “case ownership”, “revising” the PECS contract so that “defendants are delivered to the dock on time”, “better use of technology” and “proper resourcing”. It also specifically identifies PECS as a problem, and warns that the Government’s impact assessment does not contain enough modelling on the changes needed to make prisoner transport work under the new system. Amendment 59 also references late guilty pleas. Late pleas waste enormous amounts of time. They consume preparation time, courtroom hours, witness time and judicial energy that is better spent elsewhere. If the Government can reduce late pleas by better case progression, better early engagement or stronger listing discipline, that should happen before constitutional rights are reduced. I am in danger of repeating myself, but this point is central to the Opposition’s position: it is far more sensible to make the existing system work properly than to redesign it around its current inefficiencies. Another question we should ask is whether every possible physical capacity option has been explored. Are there hearings that do not require cells and could be heard in other suitable buildings? Are there underused spaces in the existing estate? Are there ways to free Crown courtrooms by moving appropriate administrative or preliminary business elsewhere? Those are practical questions to which I have not seen a satisfactory answer. It seems logical that the Government should be required to answer them before commencing clauses 1 to 7. In essence, if the Government are minded to oppose this amendment, they are effectively saying that they are content to shred legal rights before making the effort to prove that they have exhausted all possible operational reform first. That is the wrong way around. That is also the crux of our case for amendment 35, which was also tabled in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle. It would prevent clauses 1 to 7 from coming into force until three conditions have been met. First, the Lord Chancellor must have “provided funding for at least 130,000 sitting days in the Crown Court in the financial year following the coming into force of this Act”. Secondly, HMCTS must have assessed that “the Crown court has, so far as possible, used that allocation of sitting days”. Thirdly, the Lord Chancellor must have “made a statement to the House of Commons that the funding provided…has not reduced the number of cases pending trial in the Crown Court compared with the start of the financial year.” Put as simply as possible, before the Government curtail fundamental safeguards in the criminal justice system, they should first fund and use the Crown court at maximum practical capacity. If that works, there is no need for clauses 1 to 7. If it does not, Ministers can come back to Parliament having at least proven that the obvious operational fix was seriously attempted. One of the persistent weaknesses in the Government’s case thus far has been the “do nothing” comparison. Too often, the Government present the Bill in the context of a binary choice: do nothing, or accept the package as it is. But that is a false choice; there are other options. One of the most obvious is to run the Crown court at full sitting capacity and see what happens. The Bar Council has welcomed the removal of the cap on sitting days and has long argued that courts should sit at maximum capacity. If increased sitting days are now being funded, those additional days should be allowed to take effect before Ministers demand more controversial, and likely irreversible, changes. The Institute for Government has also weighed in on this issue. It says: “There is a lot of uncertainty attached to the potential benefits of the government’s proposed reforms.” It also says that there is a serious risk that these reforms could backfire and actually cause a decline in court performance. It identifies productivity as central, noting that the assumptions behind the Government’s proposed savings are “uncertain”. If boosting productivity and increasing sitting capacity are critical, then amendment 35 is exactly the right kind of test. Let us see whether properly funded sitting days can reduce the backlog before proceeding with more radical measures. Amendment 35 is therefore one of the strongest amendments we are considering today. It does not deny the reality of the backlog—the Opposition never have. Rather, it confronts it directly. It does not say, “Do nothing,” it says, “Do the obvious thing first—fund the Crown court, use the capacity, report back and only then consider whether more fundamental changes are genuinely necessary.” I also support amendment 36, also tabled in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle. It would prevent the Lord Chancellor from “bringing sections 1 to 7 into force until he has…undertaken a consultation on the potential benefits of introducing extended sitting hours in the Crown Court, and…laid before Parliament a report on the outcome”. The consultation would have to consider “potential rates of fees and remuneration for legal professionals and court staff working extended hours” and the availability of HMCTS staff. The amendment is a reasonable one. It simply requires the Government to consult and report before commencing clauses 1 to 7. Given the scale of the changes the Government are asking us to approve, that is not an excessive demand, in my view. The amendment also seeks to address one of the practical concerns around extended sitting hours. It recognises that extended hours may have benefits but also inherent costs. It explicitly requires consideration of remuneration and staff availability. We all understand that we cannot run a court system merely by wishing it to sit longer. Judges, advocates, court staff, legal professionals, witnesses and support services all have to be able to make the model work. If hours are to be extended, that must be properly resourced. That is precisely why a consultation is needed. The Government should not be able to say on the one hand that extended hours are too complicated to consider, while on the other hand pressing ahead with sweeping reforms to jury trial and appeal rights. If their position is that extended hours are impractical, Ministers should set out the evidence. If extended hours are practical in some settings, Ministers should explain where and how. If remuneration is the problem, the Government should consult on it. If staffing is the problem, they should say so. What the Government should not do is ignore the question altogether, as they seem to have done here. There is also a simple point of fairness. The Government are asking defendants, victims, witnesses, lawyers and the public to accept major changes to the criminal process. They should therefore be willing to accept a much smaller burden: to consult, report and explain why a less constitutionally disruptive capacity measure is or is not viable. Taken alongside amendments 59 and 35, amendment 36 offers a coherent and moderate alternative path forward: build capacity first, fund sitting days first, examine extended hours first, fix operational problems first and only then ask Parliament to consider whether the more drastic provisions in clauses 1 to 7 are necessary. That is a measured and responsible approach that the Government should consider accepting. I will speak briefly to new clauses 3, 4, 5, 13, 17 and 22, which would improve the Bill. They focus on delivering capacity, efficiency, transparency, public trust and practical reform in line with what the Opposition also seek to achieve. New clause 3 would allow certain Crown court locations or courtrooms to operate as extended-capacity courts, with a morning session from 9 am to 1 pm and an afternoon session from 2 pm to 6 pm. The purpose of that is to allow two different cases to be heard in the same courtroom on the same day. That is clearly a significant operational proposal, and while the principle is sound, it raises serious questions about the availability of judges, court staff, interpreters, security and CPS staff. It also raises questions about remuneration, because the criminal Bar, solicitors and court staff are already under enormous strain. A justice system running on exhausted people will not produce better justice simply because the building stays open for longer. We need to consider all those things at the same time. New clause 3 is aimed at the right problem: capacity. The Government are asking us to make very large changes to jury trials, allocation and appeals. Before they do that, they should be able to show that every realistic capacity option has been explored. If courtrooms can be used more intensively without compromising fairness, quality or the welfare of those involved, that should at least be examined. The Bar Council’s evidence is clear that the backlog has not been caused by jury trials but by under-investment, poor management of the estate, failures in prisoner transport, listing problems, technology issues and inadequate resourcing. New clause 3 seeks to address that; it asks how we increase throughput while keeping the basic architecture of justice intact. New clause 4 takes a more cautious approach, and for that reason, it may be the more attractive version of the idea. It would require an independent report into the feasibility of holding two trials a day in designated courtrooms, followed by a Government response and proposals for a pilot, if appropriate. That seems to be a serious and reasonable way to proceed. It does not assume that the model will work: it asks for independent work; evidence; consideration of the effect on defendants, victims, witnesses, judges, practitioners and staff; and an assessment of cost and resource implications. New clause 5 would require the Lord Chancellor to publish annual targets for reducing the Crown court backlog, both nationally and in each HMCTS region, and to report to Parliament on progress. Again, that appears useful and sensible. If backlog reduction is the central justification for the Bill, Ministers should be willing to define what success looks like and be judged against it. The regional element is especially important. We know that the backlog is not the same everywhere, and it is undeniable that some court centres have done better than others, sometimes because of stronger local leadership, better listing or more effective case progression. Others face particular estate, staffing or operational problems, and a national figure alone can hide those differences. If the Government are relying on predicted reductions of sittings days and caseload, Parliament should be able to see whether those predicted benefits are actually being delivered, and where they are and are not being delivered.

• 23 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Tenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  No, I’m okay. I would gently say to the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire that I hope she has heard—and even seen—enough from me to know that I am here to protect children. Of course I am horrified by any loss of a child, but my point is that I am trying to step back, be objective and say, “What is the reason that those children lost their lives?”. I am not convinced that it was the parental presumption—I am not saying that I am right on that; I am just open-minded to it. I have seen a particular case quite closely—I should declare that I am a serving county councillor in Surrey—and that is the case of Sara Sharif. I have gone through the safeguarding reviews in a huge amount of detail; it affected all of us councillors in Surrey greatly. It was an absolutely awful case. So many things went wrong throughout her life. From the family courts to social services, her GP and the school, there was just a barrage of failure that led to that poor little girl being murdered, and that absolutely could have been prevented. People might argue, “Well, if we had removed the parental presumption, that would have saved her.” Having gone through all that, I can tell the hon. Member that, in that case, it would not have done anything. It was safeguarding failures. People just made mistakes. They got things wrong. They were too worried about offending people to take the right actions. What I am saying today is just that it is really important, when we look at these things, that we diagnose what went wrong. We have to do that quite objectively. That is difficult when we are hearing from lots of different people who have gone through awful things, but our job is to try to not be emotional—I say that having got emotional myself—and to look at it logically. At the end of the day, we all just want to deliver the outcome that protects children. That is what all of us on this Committee want to do. But it is important that we can talk about that without the hon. Member suggesting that I somehow do not care about children, because what I am trying to do is to have that objectivity, because it matters to me so much that we do protect those children that I want us to have that proper debate and to say, “Is this really the right way or are there other things we can be doing? Do we need to do multiple things? Maybe this isn’t enough.” I am not saying that we should not do it; I am saying that we just need to make sure that we have thought this through. I will be really keen to hear from the Minister; I know this really matters to her as well, and she will have done that thinking, so I look forward to hearing her thoughts on the challenges I have brought up today. But, as I say, I keep an open mind, and we all share the same objectives.

• 23 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I do not support clause 7 or schedule 2. I welcome the debate on various amendments and the comments from the Minister. Clause 7 and schedule 2 would replace the current automatic right of appeal from the magistrates court to the Crown court with a much narrower permission-based system. At present, a defendant convicted in the magistrates court can appeal to the Crown court against conviction or sentence, and that appeal is heard by way of a full rehearing, usually before a Crown court judge sitting with between two and four magistrates. About 40% of conviction appeals and 47% of sentence appeals succeed. We are now being asked to introduce a system that would instead require permission for such appeals, would usually proceed on written grounds, would be heard by a single judge and would limit the grounds on which permission is granted. The Government say that that would save about 500 Crown court sitting days. I feel that I may be running out of ways to phrase this sentence, but yet again we are seeing a significant roll-back of an important safeguard, justified on the basis of a small hypothetical gain. We should ask ourselves whether an important protection is being weakened for anything like a proportionate return. On clause 7, I do not believe that it is. I strongly emphasise that appeals are not historical oddities or a procedural quirk; they are one of the principal safeguards against the risks inherent in summary justice. The Bar Council is very clear: “The proposed change would remove a vital safeguard against wrongful summary conviction and excessive (or unlawful) sentences imposed by magistrates. The consequence risks adding to the burden on the criminal courts rather than reducing it.” It goes further and says that the current right “does not appear to be exercised frivolously or vexatiously.” The Law Society made similar points in its written evidence: it said that the automatic appeal route is a “vital safeguard” and that in 2024 it was used in 2,487 cases, overturning magistrates’ decisions in 41% of convictions and 44% of sentences. It describes about 1,000 miscarriages of justice as being corrected through that route. That is the central fact that the Government cannot really get around. If four in 10 conviction appeals and nearly half of sentence appeals succeed, that cannot be read as evidence that the appeals process is being abused. In fact, it is the opposite: the process is demonstrably being exercised appropriately. I am deeply concerned that if we roll back the right to appeal, we will be locking the door on an unknown number of cases in which a conviction might have been found to be erroneous, but will now not be identified as such. That is an unknown number of miscarriages of justice not put right, and an unknown number of lives ruined. I am not willing to pay that price for the gain of 500 sitting days, and I cannot bring myself to believe that Government Members are differently inclined. We do not particularly need to speculate about what the safeguards protect against, because we can point to recent examples. In the notorious Hamit Coskun case, a defendant convicted in the magistrates court of a section 5 public order offence had his conviction quashed on appeal to the Crown court. The appeal court found that the prosecution had failed to prove essential elements of the offence and stated plainly: “For these reasons we allow this appeal and quash…conviction”. That is the automatic appeal route doing exactly what it is supposed to do and correcting a conviction that should never have been imposed.

• 23 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is truly a pleasure to get to a part of the Bill on which I suspect we will agree more than we will not. I think we will all find that rather refreshing after the last few sittings. Clause 8 seeks to introduce a new framework governing the admissibility of evidence about the previous sexual behaviour of the complainant. I very much welcome the fact that we are now having this debate and looking to address some of the issues we currently see in the justice system with respect to sexual assault crimes. Rape and sexual violence are horrendous crimes that have a lifelong impact on victims. In oral evidence, we heard this directly from some of the brave witnesses who testified, and I thank them for giving their time so generously and for speaking so honestly and courageously. What was made very clear is that they are keen to see change in how the justice system deals with these types of offences. They want to see justice done swiftly and considerately. It takes a huge amount of bravery for an individual to report these types of crimes and to pursue their attacker through the courts, so we must do all we can to ensure that the process is quick, supportive, effective and efficient for them, while preserving the principles of natural justice. Although I may disagree with some victims on the limitation of jury trials being a way to achieve this, I share the same ambition: to speed up the process so that justice is no longer delayed and denied. It is important to remember that most of these crimes are committed by someone the victims knows, making the process even more of an intrusive ordeal. It is deeply personal. That is why it is important to treat victims with respect and care, not to diminish their experiences or feelings, and not to make them feel like they are the ones on trial. It is incredibly important not only for justice, but for deterrence purposes, that the state sends a clear message that those guilty of such crimes will face the consequences. This is much needed at a time when violence against women and girls is rife in our communities. If the state can get this right, we should see more victims coming forward and being more willing to undergo the stress of a trial in the confidence that justice will prevail. In June 2021, the Conservative Government published the findings of an end-to-end review of the criminal justice system response to rape, which they referred to as the rape review. What it found made for difficult reading. In the prior five years, there had been a significant decline in the number of charges and prosecutions for rape cases and, consequently, fewer convictions. One in two victims were withdrawing from rape investigations, demonstrating a big problem. The Home Secretary at the time, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), said: “We are not prepared to accept that rape is just ‘too difficult’ a crime to prosecute. We can, and must, do better.” The review set out that there are an estimated 128,000 victims of rape a year, that less than 20% of victims of rape report to the police, and that only 1.6% of rapes that are reported result in someone being charged. That means that considerably fewer than one in every 100 rapes actually leads to justice for the victim. That shows the scale of the issue. One of the actions set out was that “only evidence about the victim that is pertinent to the case should be used at court and a victim’s credibility should not be undermined by pre-conceptions or rape myths.” In the final recommendations issued by the Law Commission in 2025, it was made clear that the use of evidence relating to the previous sexual behaviour of the complainant—for example, previous consensual sex between the defendant and complainant, or between a defendant and a third party—is highly distressing, humiliating and even traumatising, and is often irrelevant and can prejudice a case. The admission of sexual behaviour evidence has, rightly, long been restricted through so-called “rape shield” legislation, which applies specifically to a trial where a person is charged with a sexual offence. No question can be asked about the sexual behaviour of the complainant without the leave of the court, and various gateways are considered in determining that. However, the Law Commission has criticised those gateways for being too restrictive, too broad and too complicated. Clause 8 seeks to address some of the issues raised by the Law Commission, and has incorporated the stage 1 recommendation accordingly. It amends the conditions that must be met before a defendant can adduce sexual behaviour evidence or ask questions intended to elicit evidence of sexual behaviour in criminal proceedings. It ensures that such evidence may be admitted only if it “has substantial probative value in relation to a matter which— (i) is a matter in issue in the proceedings, and (ii) is of substantial importance in...the case as a whole”. However, clause 8 does not include stage 2 of the two-stage framework suggested by the Law Commission, which prohibits the use of sexual behaviour evidence unless its admission would not significantly prejudice the proper administration of justice. The Law Commission has raised that specific deviation in its written evidence. I ask the Minister to give her reasoning for not adopting the second stage, so that we are all clear. It is reassuring to see the Bar Council welcoming the changes brought by clause 8, which it says “provide appropriate safeguards for victims and for fairness of trials.” The Law Society also supports the proposals, along with many other rape crisis and women’s organisations. Having said that, I note that a joint letter from Rape Crisis England & Wales, the Centre for Women’s Justice, Rights of Women, the End Violence Against Women Coalition and Imkaan, while welcoming much of clause 8, raises some specific concerns. It would be helpful to hear from the Minister on those points and whether she intends to make any changes.

• 21 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine. As the Committee has likely anticipated, I will argue that clause 3 should not stand part of the Bill. Clause 3 is the heart of the Government’s constitutional gamble. It creates a wholly new general rule for trial on indictment without a jury in a substantial category of criminal cases. Under the clause, a defendant charged with an either-way offence who has pleaded not guilty will lose the right to be tried by a jury unless the court considers that, on conviction, they would be likely to receive a sentence of more than three years’ imprisonment. It also allows reallocation later if the case changes, says that there is no right of appeal against allocation or reallocation, permits some decisions to be made without a hearing, and still allows a judge sitting alone to impose a sentence of more than three years. The Government continue to maintain that this change is necessary to reduce the Crown court backlog and reserve jury trials for the most serious cases. I note, though, that the very good House of Commons Library briefing points out that these provisions are based only in part on Leveson, and contain material differences from that which he recommended. Sir Brian proposed restricting, not abolishing, the right to elect, he did not propose the same increase in magistrates’ sentencing powers, and the Government’s model is more aggressive than the one on which much of the original discussion was based. JUSTICE makes the same point directly in its written evidence. It says that the Bill goes further than the review by removing the right to elect entirely, replacing the full rehearing appeal from the magistrates court with a permission stage, allowing the extension of magistrates’ custodial powers to 18 or 24 months, and introducing judge-only trials for either-way cases with likely sentences of three years or less. I say that at the outset because I am keen to avoid the suggestion that the Bill amounts to the Government reluctantly implementing a difficult but expert-led recommendation. That is simply not the case in clause 3. In fact, we are dealing with a discretionary political choice to legislate in a way that is broader, harder and less cautious than many of the evidence-based alternatives that are already on the table. As the Law Society put it: “Clauses 1 to 7 represent radical changes to criminal procedure without convincing evidence that they will improve efficiency.” The Bar Council says: “Radical changes to the availability of jury trials…are unnecessary and will consume resources without bearing down on the backlog.” That is the proper context in which clause 3 should be considered. As much for my own clarity as for the benefit of the Committee, I would like to dedicate a limited amount of time to clarifying what the clause actually does. It inserts into the Senior Courts Act 1981 proposed new sections 74A to 74D, which create a mechanism under which, in a very wide category of cases, the court must decide at the outset whether a defendant will be tried by a jury or by a single judge alone. The central test is the threshold sentence: whether the defendant, if convicted, would be likely to receive more than three years’ imprisonment or detention. If the likely sentence is above that threshold, the defendant gets a jury; if not, the default is a judge-alone trial in what the Government and stakeholders have described as the Crown court bench division, although that phrase is not used in the Bill itself. This is about not a tiny number of trivial cases but a structural redesign of the Crown court’s work. According to the Government’s own modelling, about 14,000 cases would continue arriving at the Crown court in 2028-29 and would require a trial, of which approximately 4,000 are expected to be heard by a judge alone, rather than a jury. The package is said to reduce Crown court sitting day demand by 27,000 days a year while increasing magistrates court sitting day demand by 8,500. Even if one accepts every assumption behind those figures—many serious people do not—they demonstrate that this is a major transfer of work and power. The offences within scope are not, as has sometimes been implied, confined to the sort of minor petty theft case used in media briefings. The written evidence from JUSTICE makes that point bluntly. Clause 3 would cover a huge number of either-way offences, including “sexual offences, sexual abuse of children, stalking, fraud offences, violence against the person offences and theft offences.” JUSTICE offers a chilling practical illustration with this observation: “Most of the postmasters wrongly convicted in the Horizon scandal received a sentence under three years.” That point ought to give the Committee serious pause. We are being asked to remove jury trial for the types of case in which miscarriages of justice have historically occurred. The centrepiece of clause 3 is the idea that a court can safely determine, at an early stage, whether a defendant is likely to receive more than three years if convicted, and that that prediction is a just and adequate basis for deciding whether the defendant gets a jury at all. I do not accept that. More importantly, the Bill itself does not truly accept it either. The Commons Library briefing I referenced earlier notes this contradiction plainly: “While cases that are less likely to result in a sentence of more than three years would be allocated for trial by a judge alone, the judge could still pass a custodial sentence of more than three years.” In other words, the very legislation that uses the three-year threshold as the decisive basis for removing jury trials simultaneously recognises that the threshold may not map on to the final seriousness of the case at all. The initial allocation may say that the case is not serious enough for a jury, yet the final outcome may be serious enough for more than three years in prison. If that is not an admission that the threshold is an unstable and unsafe proxy, I do not know what is. Does that not cut to the most basic but most profound concern about this Bill—that it just is not fair? If the threshold cannot reliably distinguish the cases that merit a jury from those that do not, the clause is not preserving jury trial for the most serious cases. It is rationing jury trial on the basis of an impressionistic and sometimes speculative sentence prediction. The written evidence from the London School of Economics says exactly that, stating that the three-year threshold “is a poor metric for determining the right trial procedure” and that if jury trial is a “cornerstone protection against the state”, alternative measures ought to be exhausted first. We cannot properly predict a sentence at the plea and trial preparation hearing, and in the context of clause 3, that is a problem. If the allocation decision is to be made at the hearing, the notion that a judge can decide the likely sentence then and there is, in many cases, unrealistic and, at the extreme, absurd. In many cases, the evidence is incomplete at the PTPH. In sexual offences, full achieving better evidence transcripts are often unavailable, and practitioners rely on summaries. CCTV may not yet have been watched in full, medical evidence may be outstanding and the victim impact, which can materially affect a sentence, may be unknown. Sometimes the complainant is still in hospital. It may well be that the psychiatric or psychological impact becomes clear only weeks or months later. Yet the clause asks the court to decide mode of trial at exactly this sensitive and uncertain stage. The Government are therefore building a supposedly rational system on a procedural moment that practitioners know, and I am sure the Minister knows, is often evidentially immature. The Committee will remember reading the Victims’ Commissioner’s written evidence, which accepts the need for reform but recognises the concern that sentencing ranges vary and that the evidential picture may be incomplete when the crucial decision is taken. JUSTICE likewise says that the proposal risks unfairness because the allocation and reallocation system lengthens the PTPH and depends on speculative assumptions about how much court time will actually be saved. The Bar Council adds that the Bill gives no schedule or annexe identifying categories of offence; instead, a Crown court judge will simply assess in individual cases whether the likely sentence exceeds three years, meaning that the determination is case specific, contestable and uncertain from the outset. I can well imagine the response to all that being that if circumstances change, the case can be reallocated, but to my mind that is not a defence of the clause; it is an admission that the initial prediction is often too flimsy to bear the weight placed on it. As any King’s counsel will readily point out, real criminal cases are not static things. Charges are amended, defendants are added and new evidence emerges. Perhaps a section 18 becomes a section 20. When something like that happens, is it seriously proposed that the case repeatedly cycles through reallocation every time? Clause 3 says yes, at least in substance. Proposed new section 74B provides for a formal reallocation mechanism where there is a relevant change of circumstances, including changes in the indictment or new evidence affecting likely sentence. The problem is that that does not solve the uncertainty; it adds another layer of litigation, or at least potential litigation. It invites both sides to argue over whether the threshold position has changed, whether reallocation is required, whether the change is sufficiently material, what prejudice would be caused by moving the case, whether delay, wasted cost or witness inconvenience should prevail, and what happens if the case is already part way down the tracks. Frankly, that sounds like a dream come true for a solicitor’s billing manager, but the rest of us can surely see the problem. JUSTICE and the Bar Council have both picked up on that point. JUSTICE notes that the “allocation of cases is going to lengthen the plea and trial preparation hearing as will the process of reallocation”, and it warns that the absence of any right of appeal against allocation decisions is likely to increase judicial reviews and Court of Appeal litigation. In the Bar Council’s written evidence, it states: “The proposed Crown Court Bench Division introduces an extra layer of hearings and complication…It could result in further litigation at an interlocutory stage.” It argues that one of the Bill’s fundamental flaws is precisely the fact that it presents a false binary: either do nothing, or do this. The Bill does not properly assess a range of other policy options. Having made those points, I would like to pose a question to the Minister, which I think may shed some light on where we are with the clause. Has the additional work needed at both Crown court and magistrates court level for allocation, reallocation, submissions and case management been factored into the claimed 27,000 sitting day decrease and 8,500 sitting day increase? If the answer is yes, can we get some insight into precisely where and how? If the answer is no, the core productivity claim behind clause 3 is overstated from the start. If clause 3 were merely a bad threshold coupled with an elaborate reallocation maze, that would be bad enough. However, the Government have compounded the problem by providing no right of appeal against allocation or reallocation decisions, and by permitting some decisions to be made without a hearing. Under proposed new section 74D, there would be no right of appeal against an allocation or reallocation determination made under proposed new sections 74A or 74B, and a reallocation determination could be made without a hearing. That is extraordinary. A defendant may lose trial by jury on the basis of an early-stage sentence prediction, under a mechanism that the Government know may need to be revisited as the case develops, yet there is no appeal. JUSTICE warns that the likely consequence of the proposal is judicial review pressure on the High Court, and appeal pressure on the Court of Appeal once written reasons are handed down, meaning that the supposed efficiency savings may be displaced into other courts. The Bar Council says much the same; it proposes, as a minimum safeguard, that there should be a hearing before reallocation, unless the parties waive it, and that there should be an appeal right. The absence of appeal is especially troubling because summary trial has historically been justified by two safeguards: lower-level offences and the ability to appeal. The Bill proposes to remove both. It moves up the seriousness of cases, while stripping away the classic safeguard of easy correction—that is not a tolerable bargain. Although the Committee has already debated the retrospectivity point at some length, clause 3 itself remains infected by it. The new allocation procedure will apply to cases already in the Crown court open caseload, including cases where the defendant has already been arraigned at a PTPH before the new regime comes into force, so long as the prosecution has not yet opened its case. For those cases, the court must make a determination under proposed new section 74A as soon as is reasonably practicable, and may do so without a hearing. That means that a defendant who chose a Crown court trial, expecting a jury, may wait months, prepare for that jury and then lose it retrospectively. The Minister herself has defended that approach by saying that the Government are on sound legal ground, and that there is no procedural or legal impediment, relying on advice from—as I recall—an unnamed KC. However, political defensibility and legal ingenuity are not the same as fairness. To put this in very plain terms, people did not opt to go to Crown court for the car parking or the architecture; they chose it for one thing only—a jury. To move the goalposts after the choice is made is profoundly unfair, regardless of other considerations. The Committee will recall reading through the written evidence from some eminent groups and individuals that, in as many words, call this retrospective application contrary to the rule of law. The Bar Council says: “The retrospective provisions may also be subject to numerous legal challenges.” Dr Samantha Fairclough argues that the plan is unfair, and she says: “It will also create significant additional work…and likely result in appeals.” That all points in the same direction. Retrospectivity here is not just constitutionally unattractive; it will ultimately prove to be practically self-defeating. A very large part of the Government’s case for clause 3 rests on the impact assessment, which says that clauses 1 to 7 will reduce Crown court sitting days by 27,000 a year, while increasing magistrates court sitting days by 8,500. It also says that the Crown court open caseload will fall by around 14,000 cases over 2028-2029, and that “overall the reforms will reduce demand on Crown Court time by almost 20%”. However, several stakeholders have criticised the assumptions and modelling, especially those on how much time judge-only trials would save. The Government’s core assumption is that hearing times will fall by 20% for judge-only trials, but Sir Brian himself accepted that this was associated with high levels of uncertainty, and the Justice Committee challenged how anecdotal the basis for that figure appeared to be.

• 21 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Eighth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to start the day with you and end the day with you, Ms Jardine. I am sure you are very much enjoying starting your day with me and ending your day with me, too. [ Laughter. ] I have just realised how that can be interpreted. My apologies, Ms Jardine; I cannot account for the minds of other Members. To get back to business, I do not support clause 6 standing part of the Bill. It will expand the Government’s existing power to increase the maximum custodial sentence that a magistrates court can impose for a single either-way offence. The current maximum is 12 months, but the clause will permit Ministers, entirely at their own discretion, to increase that to 18 months or even 24 months. That will affect consecutive sentencing for multiple either-way offences. The Government have justified the change on the basis that the power is needed so that sentencing limits can be adjusted swiftly to rebalance work between the magistrates courts and the Crown court. The Government estimate that increasing the maximum to 18 months would save 8,000 Crown court sitting days. That all sounds rather neat but, in reality, it is another example of the Government trying to force more serious criminal business into a part of the system designed for swift, relatively low-level justice, and doing so before they have properly shown that the courts can absorb it or that the benefits are worth it. The first and perhaps most important point is that even Sir Brian Leveson did not recommend the change. Sir Brian said that his recommendation on restricting the right to elect trial by jury was “contingent upon magistrates’ sentencing powers remaining at the current maximum of 12 months.” He also recommended that the Government’s ability to amend magistrates’ sentencing powers by statutory instrument be repealed, and that the current 12-month maximum be made permanent. Clause 6 therefore cannot be said to follow Leveson: it goes beyond him and, on this point, directly contradicts him. That is a serious weakness in the Government’s position. Ministers have repeatedly leaned on Leveson when defending the Bill as a whole, but in this instance he gave no endorsement of what clause 6 will usher in. More than that, he warned us directly against it. It is perfectly valid to ask, “If the very review on which the Government say the Bill is based said that 12 months should remain the ceiling, why are Ministers now seeking the power to raise it to two years?” Let me briefly touch on a second common-sense point. The move from six to 12 months took effect only for offenders convicted on or after 18 November 2024. In other words, the current system has barely had time to bed in and the Government are already asking Parliament to authorise a further jump to 18 or 24 months. The earlier increase to 12 months was justified as a response to court pressures, and the Government said it would save up to 2,000 sitting days. We have not had anything like enough time to assess properly how that change has worked in practice before Ministers seek power to go dramatically further. If the Government and the Minister wish to make evidence-based law, they should first show Parliament what the 12-month expansion has actually done: what kinds of cases have been retained, what sentencing patterns have changed, what effect there has been on appeals, what impact there has been on magistrates courts and whether the claimed savings have materialised. Instead, they are asking, through clause 6, for a much broader delegated power, and inviting us to trust that this will all somehow work out later. That is not good enough where a question as fundamental as the administration of good justice is concerned. The Bar Council puts its objection crisply and, I think, rightly. It says: “Summary trial is designed for the purpose of dispensing swift justice in low-level cases. The extension of summary justice to cases in which a defendant could receive up to 2 years’ imprisonment…particularly when combined with the removal of a right to elect Crown Court trial, and the removal of a right of automatic appeal” amounts to a “comprehensive rolling back of safeguards.” That is blunt language, but it is hard to disagree with. Clause 6 will change the kind of cases that summary justice is expected to absorb. The Law Society warns that under the clause magistrates will have the power to impose lengthy custodial sentences for serious offences such as actual bodily harm, grievous bodily harm and possession with intent to supply drugs “in proceedings that are intended to be quicker” and less formal than than those in the Crown Court. It warns that this raises the likelihood that “people will receive longer custodial sentences with fewer safeguards or opportunities to rectify wrongful convictions.” I will dwell on this point for a moment, as it is something that none of us who have been tasked with scrutinising the Bill in detail should forget. A system designed to be faster, simpler and less formal is being asked to shoulder cases in which the consequences are far more severe. Two years in prison is not some trivial matter: a custodial sentence like that can cost a person their job, their home, their family life, their good name and their future. A justice system that is appropriate for low-level offending cannot be assumed fit for cases that carry that sort of life­changing penalty. There is then the practical point that clause 6 will not solve the pressure in the system so much as move it around. The change will merely transfer the burden from one overstretched part of the system to another. The Law Society says that the magistrates court already has its own backlog of more than 370,000 cases, and that the Government have shown no convincing plan to deal with the added pressure brought by more serious and complex cases. JUSTICE makes the same point, and adds an especially telling practical detail drawn from the Institute for Government’s analysis: since magistrates’ sentencing powers were increased from six to 12 months in 2024, only around 30% of sentences in the six-to-12-month band were handed down by magistrates. That suggests a lack of confidence, or a continuing tendency to send more serious cases upwards, which in turn means the Government’s projected savings may not materialise in anything like the way they hope. If magistrates are already not retaining all the cases that the Government assumed they would after the jump to 12 months, what is the evidence that authorising 18 or 24 months will suddenly transform the position? If cases continue to be sent up, or bounce between jurisdictions, the supposed efficiency gain becomes much more doubtful.

• 21 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Eighth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It will no doubt be a relief to Members to hear that I am not going to talk for quite as long as I did this morning. I oppose clause 4 and schedule 1 standing part, and I support amendment 51, tabled in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle. As is becoming habit, I will begin with a very brief overview of what we are considering. Clause 4 and schedule 1 create a new framework for judge-only trials in certain complex or lengthy cases. The listed offences include fraud, tax evasion, false accounting, insider dealing, money laundering, terrorist funding, bribery and related offences. The court may order trial without a jury if it is satisfied that the likely complexity and/or length makes that appropriate, that it is not in the public interest for the trial to be conducted with a jury, and that there are no other reasons why it would be more appropriate for the trial to be with a jury. There would be no right of appeal against that decision. That is a serious and constitutionally significant change in its own right, but what makes it even more troubling is that it has been justified on the strength of a paper-thin theoretical benefit. The House of Commons Library states that the Government estimate clause 4 will save 200 Crown court sitting days. That is around 0.18% of current Crown court capacity, which indicates just how small the potential gain is—if there is that gain at all. That is the first and most obvious point I want to make. The Government are proposing a very serious encroachment on jury trials in return for a saving that amounts to just 200 sitting days. JUSTICE describes the change as “unnecessary,” says that it “will not impact the backlog in any meaningful way” and warns that it risks opening the door to restricting jury trials in other categories of case too. The Law Society is similarly clear: “Removing jury trials for serious fraud cases is unlikely to have a significant effect on the backlogs, but would significantly erode the fundamental principle of open justice.” That should be the frame for the whole debate on clause 4. We are not being asked to approve some modest efficiency measure; we are being asked to displace the jury in some of the most important and contested criminal cases for an alleged benefit so small that, even in the Government’s own case, it barely registers against total Crown court demand. That trade-off is so poor that I refuse to believe the Minister, in her heart of hearts, believes it is the right way to proceed. The second point is that the case against juries being used in serious fraud and related cases has never really been made. In written evidence, the Law Society tells us: “Serious cases of any complexity, including serious allegations of fraud, must be presented by the prosecution in a way that is understandable, not only to the judge and jury…but also, in line with the principle of open justice, to the public.” It goes on to say: “They should be subject to effective case management to ensure they take only a reasonable length of time, if necessary, by reducing the number of charges”. In other words, the answer to complexity is to manage it properly, not to remove the jury. It is worth reminding ourselves that the issues juries decide on in fraud trials are factual, not technical—in particular, whether the defendant was dishonest. That is judged by reference to the standards of ordinary decent people. Twelve ordinary jurors are far better placed to decide that than a single judge alone. That goes to the very nature of fraud. Fraud is not merely an accounting or regulatory puzzle; it is an allegation of dishonesty, and dishonesty, by definition, is exactly the sort of question on which the community’s judgment matters. Who should decide dishonesty: a single professional judge, or 12 citizens applying the standards of ordinary life? In a democratic criminal justice system, the answer should remain: the jury. The evidence that we have does not support the idea that juries are what make these cases collapse, drag on or miscarry. JUSTICE’s written evidence points to the Southwark Crown court data gathered by His Honour Geoffrey Rivlin KC, showing that the vast majority of fraud cases lasted less than three months, with only one or two per year lasting over three months and only two cases in total lasting over six months. That is important, because it rather punches the myth that these are all endless epics that juries simply cannot understand or follow. Rivlin’s evidence also says that jury trials compose a discipline that helps to keep fraud trials shorter. Without that discipline, judge-alone trials may end up running as long as, or even longer than, jury trials. More to the point, delays, collapses and miscarriages of justice in fraud are not caused by juries, as shown by R v . Hayes where convictions were quashed because of judicial misdirection, not because of anything the jury did wrong. That strongly refutes the suggestion that juries are the weak link in these cases. The Government have two problems here: first, they have not shown that such cases are generally too long for juries; secondly, they have not shown that juries are what is causing the failures when these cases go wrong. Unfortunately, that leaves the Government looking rather like they are indulging in ideological hostility to jury trials rather than evidence-based reform. There is also a wider constitutional point. The Law Society says, and I very much agree, that removing jury trials for serious fraud cases “would significantly erode the fundamental principle of open justice.” These are often cases involving major companies, financial institutions, public markets, public money, terrorism financing, bribery and corruption. They are exactly the sort of cases where the public must have confidence that justice has not simply been done inside a closed professional world by one member of that same world. Fraud and related financial cases often concern the conduct of powerful, well-resourced and sophisticated defendants. In those cases, public confidence matters immensely. A verdict reached by a jury of citizens commands a kind of legitimacy that a judgment by a single judge does not carry in the same way. That is not a criticism of judges, but a recognition of why juries exist in the first place. They are there to not just decide facts but connect the administration of criminal justice to the public itself.

• 16 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I speak in support of amendments 23, 39 and 24 which, taken together, would do something simple but important: they would build a measure of flexibility back into the clause, so that jury trial is still available where the cause of justice requires it. The Minister should think carefully. As drafted, the clause creates a very blunt regime: unless the court predicts a sentence of more than three years, the trial is to be conducted without a jury. The amendments would go a small way towards softening that rigidity and making the system less arbitrary, more proportionate and hence more just. With the amendments, two different Committee members take two different approaches to delivering the same outcome of additional flexibility in the clause. Amendment 39, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle, is broad in nature, setting out an additional condition for jury trial when needed to ensure natural justice, whereas the hon. Member for Bolton South and Walkden takes a more granular approach to the problem by listing the specific circumstances that might warrant the need for jury trial, again to ensure fairness. Both approaches seek to achieve the same thing. I will speak to each amendment in a little more detail, starting with amendment 23. Clause 3 is currently built on one single condition for preserving jury trial in relevant cases: whether the defendant is likely to receive a sentence of more than three years if convicted. Amendment 23 would change the wording from “the condition” to “one or more of the conditions”. This is the gateway to allow amendment 24, which lists various conditions, to work. The amendment matters because it opens the door to a more sensible approach, in which sentence is not the only thing that counts. That is exactly the right approach. When we deal with a constitutional safeguard as important as jury trial, the Committee should be wary of a system that turns entirely on a single mechanistic threshold. Human beings and criminal cases are not that neat, and Parliament should not pretend that they are. The amendment is therefore modest, tidy, entirely sensible and the necessary first step to add judgment, flexibility and common sense to a clause that has far too little of all three. On amendment 24 and its list of conditions, the Government’s model under the clause is to ask the court at an early stage to forecast the sentence that would likely be imposed if the defendant were convicted. If the forecast is more than three years, there is a jury; if it is not, there is none. That is far too crude a test to bear the full constitutional weight that the Government want to place on it. The Bill itself exposes the weakness in the logic, because although the allocation decision turns on a prediction about a sentence above or below three years, the Bill also expressly states that nothing prevents a court sitting without a jury from later imposing a sentence of more than three years. In other words, even the Bill recognises that the initial prediction may not tell the whole story; if that is so, why should that prediction be the sole basis on which a person loses the right to jury trial? Amendment 24 is so worth while because it states that in deciding whether a defendant should still have a jury, the court should not only look at the likely sentence but be able to consider whether: the defendant is of good character; they have previously been convicted of an imprisonable offence; they are treated as rehabilitated; conviction would cause significant reputational or professional harm; the gravity or complexity of the case might increase; and other exceptional circumstances. That does not strike me as radical. It is simply an attempt to make the law reflect reality and be less prescriptive. Additional flexibility makes for better outcomes. One of the strongest parts of amendment 24 is the recognition it gives to good character and to those who have not previously been convicted of an imprisonable offence. I raise this because the Government’s crude threshold risks producing perverse results. The people who may be hit hardest by clause 3 are precisely those who are newer to the justice system, those of previous good character and those for whom a conviction would be utterly life-changing. The Bar Council illustrated the point starkly in written evidence with the example of a 19-year-old student charged with possession with intent to supply after a small amount of Spice was found in their room—I am sure Members will remember my reciting that specific example in Committee on Tuesday. Because they are of good character, the likely sentence under the guidelines may be low enough that they lose jury trial altogether, even though the charge could destroy their future. Meanwhile, someone with previous convictions may be more likely to cross the sentencing threshold and so keep the right to a jury. That is exactly the sort of absurdity that amendment 24 tries to avoid. That is wholly consistent with the broader critique of the Bill. Conservative Members have repeatedly argued that the Government are treating this as an administrative exercise, when in fact people’s lives are at stake. The shadow Justice Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy), put it clearly on Second Reading when he said that the Government were proposing to remove fundamental rights “without a mandate, without a case and without any evidence”. —[ Official Report , 10 March 2026; Vol. 782, c. 207.] The Opposition also challenged Ministers on taking away jury trial for offences that cost defendants their jobs, their homes and their families. Amendment 24 responds precisely to that point. I note the inclusion in amendment 24 of cases in which the defendant would likely suffer significant reputational damage or have their employment or professional qualifications adversely affected. That is important because the seriousness of a case cannot be measured by custody alone. A sentence of under three years can still destroy a person’s livelihood, strip them of professional standing, end a career built over decades and permanently alter family life. The Government keep speaking as though anything beneath their threshold is somehow low level. The Opposition have rightly made the point that even where a sentence is below three years, the consequences can be catastrophic. Amendment 24 simply recognises that reality. There is an obvious point of fairness here, too. If the state wishes to prosecute a person in circumstances where conviction may ruin their livelihood or reputation for life, it is hardly excessive to say that jury trials should at least remain available. That is an ancient constitutional right and the Government should, even now, think very hard before removing it. I also support paragraph (f) in amendment 24, which deals with cases where there are reasonable grounds to believe that the gravity or complexity might increase. Again, this is simply common sense. Criminal cases often evolve, evidence changes, witnesses come forward, and issues that initially looked straightforward become anything but in the crucible that is the courtroom.

• 16 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine. I am pleased to speak in support of amendments 25 and 12, and particularly in support of amendment 43, tabled in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle. The amendments all engage with a simple point of fairness. Whatever one’s view of the Government’s wider proposals, it cannot be right to change the rules after a defendant has already elected for a Crown court trial. Such defendants made their choice under the current rules. They did not opt for Crown court for any reason other than the fact they would get a jury trial, so for the court to remove that choice from them without any hearing would frankly be shocking. Let us keep in mind that some of these people will be innocent, and remember that some may have chosen the magistrates route if they had known that going to the Crown court would not give them the jury trial they seek. The retrospective application of new rules is deeply unfair. Whatever side of the jury trial argument we are on, surely we can all agree that those who have already opted for jury trial should have that decision respected. The amendments differ slightly in drafting but all try to achieve the same thing: to ensure that where somebody has already elected for jury trial, that choice is respected and the new regime does not operate retrospectively. Amendment 25 would disapply the new allocation rules where a defendant has already elected Crown court trial before commencement. Amendment 12 would strip out the retrospective commencement provisions. Amendment 43 would instead tie the new regime to cases in which the first hearing in the magistrates court takes place after the change in the law. Those are different routes with the same fair and sensible objective. This should not be controversial. If the state tells a defendant that they have a right to elect for a jury trial and they exercise that right, it is manifestly unfair to turn around later and say that the right has vanished and that their case will now be dealt with under a wholly different system. In fact, to call it unfair fails to make the point seriously enough. It would amount to a violation of one of the most foundational principles of our legal system: that retrospective legislation of this kind runs contrary to basic rule-of-law principles and requires the strongest possible justification. As JUSTICE, the cross-party law reform and human rights organisation put it in written evidence: “The retrospective application of the provisions is contrary to the rule of law.” It went on to state: “It is deeply unfair for defendants who elected Crown Court trial in expectation of a jury to have their cases heard by a judge alone under a process that did not…exist when they made that choice.” I always endeavour to see all sides of a given issue, but in this case I honestly struggle to see any argument against those statements. I hope the Minister will agree that retrospective application is fundamentally unfair. If the Government are not moved by appeals to basic fairness, they should at least be moved by their own stated objective of reducing delay. The Bar Council is unmistakeable in warning us: “The retrospective provisions may also be subject to numerous legal challenges.” That is exactly the opposite of what Ministers say they are trying to achieve. If the Government push ahead with retrospective application, they risk drawn-out legal challenge, more hearings and more uncertainty in cases that are already in the system. Measures explicitly brought in to help to reduce the court backlog will, perversely, multiply it. This is exactly the sort of illogical thinking that Committee stage is intended to weed out. I very much hope that the Minister will engage on this point. Our concern is echoed elsewhere in the written evidence we received. Dr Samantha Fairclough’s detailed submission to the Justice Committee states clearly that the Government’s plan to give the Bill retrospective effect is “unfair…will create significant additional work in allocating those cases…and likely result in appeals.” JUSTICE makes a similar point, saying: “Reallocation of cases already in the Crown Court caseload” could lead to judicial review challenges, further hearings and additional “burdens on both defendants and the prosecution”. Even on a practical level, the amendments are eminently sensible. They seek to diffuse the legal landmine that the Government are in danger of stepping on, and would avoid yet more work for a system that is already under intense strain. As I have stated, the amendments are nothing other than fair and reasonable—in fact, they are a minimal safeguard. My colleagues and I have been clear that we should not be going ahead with these reforms, but if Ministers insist, the very least they can do is to ensure that they operate prospectively rather than retrospectively. People should be judged and dealt with under the rules in force when they made their election, not have the rug pulled from beneath them halfway through proceedings. That is why I support amendments 25, 12 and 43, and I urge the Government and the Minister to accept at least one of them.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for that point; he makes it eloquently, as always. I really enjoyed going through the groups that do not support these proposals. Obviously, the Government like to rely heavily on Sir Brian Leveson’s findings and recommendations, but when my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight East questioned him in the oral evidence session, he did not blame jury trials. Fundamentally, jury trials are not the problem. They are not creating the delays, so limiting them will not address the backlog. In fact, their curtailment will likely bring a whole host of other issues to the table that were not there before. The Bar Council believes that the changes “will produce serious adverse consequences that have not properly been considered by the Government.” In the light of such uncertain outcomes, I find it difficult to understand why the Government will not perform a pilot first to test the proposal or put in place a time limitation more generally. To plough ahead in this way, with no way back in the event of failure, is reckless by any measure. A more cautious approach might have been more positively received. As we heard from Kirsty Brimelow KC, the chair of the Bar Council, it is vital that we approach the backlog problem logically, look at where the delays are occurring and target them. For rape cases, the majority of the delay is actually at the investigation and charge point, which takes an average of two years. Although the one-year delay at court stage is too long, the lion’s share of the problem is pre-court—perhaps the CPS can help with that one—so let us deal with that. The Government should open all the courts so that they can hear cases every day. Yesterday, 11% of Crown courts were not sitting, and I am sure we will find out later what the percentage is today. Revising the contract with Prisoner Escort and Custody Services to ensure that defendants are delivered to the dock on time would also help. Giving proper consideration to specialist rape and serious sexual offences courts to deal with sexual offence cases and addressing the many inefficiencies and delays in the system through a better use of technology would no doubt greatly reduce the backlog. It is also important that we give the steps that the Government have already taken to address the backlog an adequate chance to filter through. One example is increased sitting days: in February 2026, the Justice Secretary announced that there would be no cap on sitting days for ’26-27, which will undoubtedly help. In addition, last month, powers were granted to suspend custodial sentences of up to three years, a change from the previous two years. Putting aside whether that is a sensible measure, it will undoubtedly increase the number of guilty pleas. That means fewer trials and a decrease in the backlog. The Government should properly model the impact of those significant changes on the backlog before imposing such a draconian limitation on jury trials. I would be grateful if the Minister could share any projections of the impact of those two changes on the backlog and clarify whether they have been factored into the “do nothing” option of the impact assessment. It looks as though they might not have been included, because they are not referenced. If clause 1 is accepted, there are several types of serious cases where the defendant might now lose their right to elect for trial by jury. It has been suggested by the Justice Secretary that only cases involving minor offences, such as stealing a bottle of whisky, will be impacted, but that is not the case. Let us start with causing death by careless driving. That is a serious offence—rightly so, given that a life has been lost—and it carries a maximum five-year sentence and driving disqualification. Currently, the defendant has the right to elect for trial by jury. That is especially important in such cases, where the difference between careless and unfortunate is not entirely clear. It is exactly that type of case where we see the benefit of 12 individuals, all with different experiences, using their judgment to decide whether the defendant crossed the line into “careless”. Under clause 1, that right is no longer available; the judge will decide on their own. Imagine a defendant who is innocent. Their whole life, and that of their family, is to be decided by one person—their bad day can destroy the defendant’s entire life. Their case might not even make it to a judge; it could remain in the magistrates court. Surely the intention was never for our magistrates courts to hear cases involving the loss of a life. Sexual assault is another serious offence. It carries a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment and inclusion on the sex offenders register. It is also completely life-changing for everyone involved. Under clause 1, the defendant’s right to choose a jury trial will be removed. Many of those cases could end up in the magistrates courts, but they are nothing like the normal cases seen in magistrates courts day to day: they are highly sensitive and complex, involving third-party disclosure, and video recorded and forensic evidence. They are not simple add-ons to what those courts already do. With the best will in the world, they do not currently have the capability or skillset to handle such specialist cases involving traumatised victims.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thank the shadow Minister for that point; I share his concerns. There is also a question regarding whether unpaid volunteers will even want to take on such a serious role that involves handing out two-year sentences—that is quite a responsibility. The outstanding caseload in magistrates courts has been increasing in recent years. In September 2025, the outstanding caseload was around 373,000, which was a 74% increase compared with pre-pandemic levels in September 2019. The shift of cases from the Crown court back into the magistrates court is simply moving the issue to a less suitable court to deal with it. It is simply moving the problem around, rather than actually addressing it. Summary trial through the magistrates court was always designed for the purpose of swift justice in low-level cases. By removing the right to elect for a jury trial, in combination with increasing magistrates’ sentencing powers to two years’ imprisonment and removing the automatic appeal against conviction, important protections are being removed, and the groups that will be impacted most detrimentally are ethnic minorities. Magistrates are unpaid members of their local community who volunteer to act as magistrates. There is no requirement for them to be legally qualified. That may well be fine for summary-only offences, such as low-level motoring offences and minor criminal damage, but it is not appropriate for more serious offences. Many magistrates do an excellent job and give up their time selflessly for the benefit of their community. In spite of that, I do not believe that they should have the power to send someone to prison for two years. Let us all remember that magistrates can be as young as 18. In closing, I want to make one last point. This change was not in the Labour manifesto; indeed, there is no mention of any changes to trial by jury at all. Only one such commitment was made, which Government Members appear to have forgotten. To quote from the Labour manifesto: “Labour will fast-track rape cases, with specialist courts at every Crown Court location in England and Wales.” That is on page 67, if anyone needs to refresh their memory. That is what the British people voted for. The Bill could have been so different if clause 1 had started with that, instead of jeopardising fair justice for many defendants. It is such a shame that a Government with such a historic majority have so quickly forgotten the change they promised, and whom they fight for and represent.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady makes an interesting point, but we need to always be aware of the technical definition of the words that we are using. When the Government talk constantly about victims needing justice, and it all being about victims, I am not sure it is in the right spirit. What all of us in this Committee Room agree on, however, is that the Crown court backlog is a critical problem that needs to be addressed. But limiting trial by jury is not the way to do it. We have heard that repeatedly from knowledgeable and experienced people working in the justice system—we have even heard it from one of the Government’s own Members, the hon. Member for Bolton South and Walkden. The Bar Council does not support it, the Criminal Bar Association is opposed, and the Law Society says the Government’s proposals go too far.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for that explanation. I hope she will bear with me as I try to take it on board. Clauses 1 and 2 amend the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980 so that a defendant charged with an either-way offence is no longer able to elect trial by jury. As was clearly established earlier today, that right to elect is entirely abolished by clause 1. Instead, it will be for the magistrates court alone to decide where the case should be tried; it can either remain in the magistrates court or go up to the Crown court. Clause 2 deals specifically with situations where there is a written indication of a guilty plea. Section 17ZB of the Magistrates’ Courts Act, as inserted by section 6 of the Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022, sets out that the court can, on the material before it, without any hearing or representations, be satisfied that it is highly likely that, were the accused to plead guilty at summary trial of the offence in question and be convicted, the court would commit the accused to the Crown court for sentencing. Section 17ZB(5) then provides the accused with the opportunity to object to being sent to the Crown court for trial for the offence. Clause 2 amends that so that the accused and the prosecutor do not have the option to object and can instead only make representations as to whether the sentencing powers of the court would be adequate. I note that “Crown Court” in the original section 17ZB is replaced with “court”. I assume that that refers to either the magistrates court or the Crown court, but I would be grateful for the Minister’s confirmation and explanation of that quite technical point, and of how it works with the Crown court bench division in the mix. The Bill’s explanatory notes suggest that it just means the magistrates court, but I went through the law— I should say that I am not a lawyer, but I dug it all out and read it—and, like a lot of Committee members, I am thoroughly confused. Normally, if something is logical and makes sense, I can follow it, so I am worried that it does not quite tie together. I am worried, even though I cannot quite articulate why, that the fact that the section will now just say “court” introduces some ambiguity. How is that defined? Quite often, these little bits of detail can be the speck of sand in the eye that can cause more problems than we realise. This is a very technical issue, and I appreciate that it is difficult to go into it here and that the Minister is very good on the technical side of things—we have worked together on other things with very technical points, so I know that she is very thorough—but I think it is worth going through it again and making sure that the whole thing hangs together, so that we do not end up in a situation where the wrong place is doing sentencing or the wrong estimate of a sentence is made, and there is no way to unwind it. I am just a bit worried that there is potential for some problems to come out of this. I appreciate the Minister’s helpful clarification that section 17ZB has not yet been commenced. However, if it had been, or if it were to be in future, it would, in a similar way to clause 1, remove powers and rights from defendants and give them less choice in how justice is dispensed in their case—essentially, a roll-back of rights. As I mentioned, I think we need to look at what will happen if the sentence estimate is wrong and how that will work its way through. I thank the Minister for explaining that the provision is procedural, but it still strips people of the right to object and replaces it with the much weaker right merely to make representations. The explanatory notes are really clear on that point, even if they are not clear on a lot of others. They say that the changes made in clause 2 “remove the ability of the defendant or the prosecutor to object to the case being sent to the Crown Court for sentence”, and instead create “a process for each to make representations about whether the magistrates’ court’s sentencing powers would be adequate.” That might have no impact if the section is never commenced, but if it ever is commenced, and we do not make sure that we have got clause 2 right, it may cause a problem and prioritise convenience over procedural protection. When someone’s liberty, livelihood and reputation are at stake, it is a serious thing indeed to say that they may no longer object and may only make representations. Once again, the defendant is being moved further from the centre of the process, and the state closer to it. That is not right. Earlier in today’s proceedings, the Minister was reminded from the Opposition Benches that the legal system is balanced in favour of the defendant. That is not the spirit in which this change is being made. Indeed, that is the common thread running through clauses 1 and 2: at every stage, the defendant’s agency is reduced and the system’s convenience is elevated. The Government call that reform and improvement, but it is not; it is a distortion of our centuries-old legal protections. There is a broader point here about confidence in the justice system. If the Government’s answer, again and again, is that defendants should simply trust the state’s estimate of seriousness, trust the allocation decision, trust the sentencing forum and trust that everything will work out in the end, that is not a strengthening of justice. It is a narrowing of the safeguards that make justice legitimate in the first place and will do nothing to address the backlog, which I recall was supposed to be the rationale for making these changes in the first place. Clauses 1 and 2 in combination are not what is required to address the Crown court backlog. It appears that the backlog may be starting to come down already, as a consequence of uncapped sitting days and other changes that have been implemented, so why are the Government not taking a more cautious approach and exhausting all the good ideas that we have heard from expert witnesses before taking a sledgehammer to jury trials? Obviously, the first problem to address is the fact that up to 24% of Crown courts are not sitting on any given day, and getting the many defendants who arrive late to court there on time would be transformational. Why are we not solving those much more straightforward issues before pressing ahead with exceptional structural reform? We need to get the basics right, address inefficiencies and, most importantly, listen to those who know how to do it, such as the Bar Council and circuit leaders, and learn from the courts that are already making progress, such as Liverpool. The Government are absolutely right to take the backlog issue seriously, but it is wrong to think that limiting jury trials will improve the situation. It could make the whole situation worse by creating years of transition and uncertainty and by moving one backlog from the Crown courts over to the magistrates. Furthermore, the cases moving over will be more complex, more technical and more sensitive. The Government are about to create a massive backlog in the magistrates court, which will then start to impact on low-level cases such as speeding offences. I say that the Government should be more cautious because they have already accepted that there are other levers available. Ministers have announced that there will be no cap on Crown court sitting days next year, and that both the Crown court and magistrates courts will be funded at their highest ever operational level. That is much welcomed, but if the Government say that investment and capacity matter, why on earth would they not wait to see the full effect of those changes before pushing ahead with exceptional constitutional reform? The Opposition position on that has been perfectly clear. On Second Reading, the Opposition’s reasoned amendment did not deny that the backlog is serious, but argued that the right answer is to improve case management, encourage earlier pleas, increase sitting days, increase the hours per day that courts are able to sit through better use of technology and improve the efficiency of prisoner transport. Those are practical, common-sense reforms; they go with the grain of the system, rather than taking a sledgehammer to jury trials and then hoping for the best. The Government’s own impact assessment rather proves the point that this issue is as much about shifting pressure as solving it. It estimates that removing the defendant’s right to elect for jury trial would reduce crown Court demand by around 16,000 sitting days, but at the same time increase magistrates court demand by around 8,500 sitting days. The same document expressly recognises that reallocating cases to the magistrates courts is expected to increase the open caseload there and is likely to extend waiting times for hearing and sentencing in that jurisdiction. Even on the Government’s own figures, it is not some clean efficiency saving. It is a transfer of burden into a part of the system that is already under strain. That is why clause 2 is more important than it first appears. Clause 1 removes the right to elect. Clause 2 then narrows the ability to resist where a written guilty plea is involved. Piece by piece, the Bill is building a system in which more serious, either-way cases are kept down, defendants have less say and the magistrates courts are expected to absorb ever more complexity. Ministers may present each provision as a small adjustment in isolation, but taken together, they amount to a very significant constitutional and practical change. That change also carries transition risk. The Government are assuming that work currently taking place in the Crown court can be absorbed more quickly elsewhere. I know I am not telling the Minister anything that she does not already know, but the magistrates courts are not just a spare room in the system waiting to be filled. They will have to take more serious, more technical and more sensitive cases while continuing to deal with the huge volume of everyday criminal business that only they can process. If the Government get this wrong, they will not have solved the backlog. They will simply have displaced it and degraded the quality of justice in the process. My plea is a simple one: “Proceed with caution. Let the effect of unlimited sitting days bed in. Fix the operational failings that everybody in the system can already see. Get defendants to court on time. Keep courtrooms sitting. Use technology better. Learn from the parts of the estate that are already improving, but do not dress up the removal of long-standing protections as if it were the only grown-up response to backlog. It is not. It is simply the most drastic one.” That is why I cannot support clause 2. On its own, it may look technical, but in context it is part of a broader attempt to reduce rights, safeguards and the defendant’s role in how justice is administered. That is the wrong direction of travel.

• 13 Apr 2026 · Statutory Menstrual Leave · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank everyone for their powerful and often personal contributions today. First, I want to recognise Michelle Dewar, the tenacious campaigner behind today’s petition for menstrual relief. She is a great champion for women suffering with endometriosis and adenomyosis, and I congratulate her on securing over 100,000 signatures—not an easy task, but it showcases the strength of feeling from many on this important topic. Endometriosis is a condition where endometrial tissue, similar to the lining of the uterus, grows in other places such as the ovaries and fallopian tubes. One in 10 women of reproductive age suffer with it, making it the second most common gynaecological condition in the UK. Common symptoms include chronic pelvic pain and heavy menstrual bleeding, making normal activities difficult. It predominantly affects women during their reproductive years. Adenomyosis, an often overlooked condition, has similar symptoms, but is where the lining of the womb starts growing into the muscle in the wall of the womb. It is commonly diagnosed in women over the age of 30, but can also affect younger women, as we heard today. Similar to endometriosis, it affects one in 10 women, with nearly 70% of women waiting over five years to get a diagnosis. Michelle’s own journey with endometriosis began 24 years ago, causing her to miss school every month from the age of 14. Shockingly, it was not until she was 23, nine years later, that she received a diagnosis. Unfortunately, as we have heard today, her story is far from uncommon, with many women not receiving a timely diagnosis. It takes on average eight years and 10 months from the first GP visit to get a diagnosis. Women’s symptoms are often dismissed and normalised, leaving them to struggle on with their pain, without treatment, without understanding and without support. The lack of understanding and knowledge of what constitutes a normal period or menstrual cycle also delays women seeking help and can leave family and friends uncertain how to provide support. No woman or girl knows what a normal level of period pain is without input from others, and lack of awareness leads to her not being well equipped to advocate strongly for herself with medical practitioners. We also need to recognise that there is still embarrassment and stigma around talking about periods, which can add to the challenge of getting adequate medical care when something is not right. Recognising the challenges women face in their engagement with the healthcare system, in 2022 the then Conservative Government published the women’s health strategy for England, a 10-year programme committed to improving women’s health. The strategy seeks to address disparities in women’s healthcare and the under-representation of women in medical research. One of the strategy’s eight priority areas is menstrual health and gynaecological conditions, including greater awareness, earlier diagnosis and better treatment of endometriosis and adenomyosis. As we have heard many times today, all aspects of the lives of women struggling with those conditions and enduring awful pain every month are impacted. It affects their relationships, their overall wellbeing and also their careers, and such debilitating conditions impact on earnings in the long term. Office for National Statistics data published last year shows a drop in monthly earnings among women aged 25 to 54 diagnosed with endometriosis from one to five years after diagnosis, compared with the two-year period before being diagnosed with the condition. Average pay decreased each year post diagnosis, culminating in a £130 monthly reduction in the four to five years post-diagnosis period. Although it is likely that different factors contribute to this change, it is none the less worrying that there is such a statistically significant drop in earnings post diagnosis. Prompt diagnosis of these conditions is vital and the roll-out of community diagnostic centres will help immensely. Many of my own constituents stand to benefit from the recently opened community diagnostic centre in the Belfry in Redhill, which will deliver much needed extra capacity to perform diagnostic scans. That is exactly the kind of practical measure that can help women to get answers more quickly when their symptoms and pain suggest that something is wrong. When a woman is suffering symptoms that mean that she is unable to work, the current option available to her is to take sick leave. That option is available to any employee with any condition or illness that leaves them unable to work. It is a broad, non-discriminatory entitlement available across almost all conditions. From 6 April this year, following recent changes by this Labour Government, when a person is unable to work due to ill health, they are entitled to statutory sick pay from the first day of illness. It is also relevant to note that statutory sick pay is now available to all eligible employees, regardless of their earnings. The current approach to statutory sick pay therefore allows any woman who requires two to three days off every month due to endometriosis or adenomyosis to take the time she needs with sick pay. For that reason, the introduction of a specific menstrual leave is unnecessary as statutory sick pay already delivers what is being asked for. Statutory sick pay is the better mechanism to use, because it does not discriminate or restrict provision to highly specific conditions. Lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, and ulcerative colitis are just a few examples of conditions that are equally debilitating and involve regular flare-ups—so it is entirely right that they are covered too.

• 17 Mar 2026 · Rural Roads · Hansard source

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  A key point to make is that potholes are often a symptom that roads have not been resurfaced at the right time. In reality, we have billions of pounds in community infrastructure levy funds that are sitting across the country, often just earning interest. They are not being invested in resurfacing roads or our drainage system. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we can better spend that community infrastructure levy money and ensure that it is put into roads? That often means making sure that—

• 24 Feb 2026 · Local Transport: Planning Developments · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I am extremely grateful to the hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) for securing this really important debate. In my experience, nothing erodes public confidence in the planning system faster than development that is delivered with the promise of appropriate infrastructure that never materialises. People are often accepting and understanding of new homes being built if it is done in a thoughtful and considered way. What they are not willing to accept is development pushing local residents out of catchment areas for schools, it becoming impossible for them to see their GP, their homes starting to flood regularly, and no longer being able to get a seat on the train on the way to work. In my constituency, we face huge amounts of development with an absolutely ridiculous doubling of housing targets, all while London’s target comes down. Unfortunately, I see no signs of adequate investment in our local public transport to accompany this ludicrous target. As Members will be aware, the Government’s draft revised national planning policy framework is heavily tilted towards encouraging development around stations. I understand the logic to that. If we want to reduce car dependency and create opportunity, we have to build near public transport. To maximise the use of existing infrastructure, we have to build in more urban areas that are already well connected. If we want to protect high-quality green belt, we have to densify close to existing settlements. Those are sensible propositions, but the NPPF is too broad brush and does not discern between those bits of land close to stations that fit with these objectives and those that do not. Let us take Kingswood station in my constituency, for example. There is high-quality green-belt land nearby, yet the train service is far from ideal, there is no timetabled bus service and there are plentiful other brownfield sites and, indeed, greenfield sites that would be much better to build on first. I recognise the good intentions behind that change, and I support looking at land close to train stations first, but additional parameters are required to act as an appropriate filter to protect villages such as Kingswood. If the planning system is going to prioritise developments near stations above all other considerations, it must also be accompanied by extra investment and funding in transport capacity. If the infrastructure is not there or not credibly planned, the answer should be no. That approach would enable growth at genuinely suitable hubs while protecting small villages. On Gatwick expansion, I am concerned that Gatwick airport has been given the green light to operate a second runway without sufficient thought being given to what that means for surrounding public transport. Reigate station sits on a busy community artery, yet the Department for Transport has said nothing about the impact that millions of extra passengers heading down to Gatwick will have on the line or the station. The most transformational improvement for Reigate station would be achieved by extending its platform to allow additional and more efficient services. Back in 2020, a Network Rail scheme proposed the creation of a 12-car turnback platform to allow Thameslink trains to stop at the station and avoid the need for splitting and joining of trains at Redhill. I ask the Government to reconsider that project in the light of Gatwick expansion. Redhill is impacted, too, so I would be grateful if the Minister clarified what plans are in place for these stations and lines to meet the need for additional capacity and more frequent and reliable services. This is also a good opportunity to ensure that the facilities at those stations are fit for the 21st century and fully accessible, so that everyone can use them. On the topic of accessibility, I would like to raise the plight of Earlswood station. It serves a growing area, and one that could come under even greater pressure if the planning system encourages heavier development around it, yet Earlswood’s infrastructure is already creaking. Things have got so bad that the underpass was recently badly flooded and had to be pumped out. People are literally taking their shoes and socks off to get the train, and those with buggies, older residents and disabled passengers are effectively blocked from travelling. I am pleased to see that Network Rail has now replaced the pumps to help to address the situation, but there is still more to do in the long run. In closing, if the Government want public support for housing growth, they must improve support for public transport as well. Those two things must go hand in hand.

• 11 Dec 2025 · Fairtrade Certification · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Hobhouse. I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Martin Rhodes) on securing today’s informative and thoughtful debate. All the contributions have been insightful, but I particularly enjoyed the speech by the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) who spoke about the man from Del Monte, taking me back down memory lane. I had not thought about him for a long time, probably not since the ’80s. This is a timely debate. It rightly draws attention to a topic that has relevance to how the UK positions itself as a responsible trading nation and global partner. Fairtrade certification schemes have become a visible and recognised feature of British consumer life. They are well understood by the public, well supported by major retailers and increasingly used by UK businesses to demonstrate transparency and ethical practices across global supply chains. This debate invites us to reflect on how Fairtrade sits within the wider landscape of British trade and business policy, and how it might continue to support responsible sourcing, environmental sustainability and long-term development goals. At its core, Fairtrade is a voluntary certification scheme applied to consumer goods such as bananas, cocoa, coffee, tea and sugar. It sets minimum prices for producers, offers a Fairtrade premium to be invested in community projects, and lays out standards on labour rights and environmental protection. The scheme is built on a partnership model between producers in the global south and businesses and consumers in the global north. Over time, Fairtrade has come to play a role in supporting responsible UK sourcing practices. The UK has long been a leading market for Fairtrade goods, and British supermarkets were among the first in the world to adopt the Fairtrade label at scale. The distinctive mark is now found on thousands of product lines sold in every part of the country, from major supermarket chains to small independent stores. Beyond consumer familiarity, the benefits of Fairtrade certification also flow into business practices here at home. For British companies, certification helps to meet environmental, social and governance expectations from investors and consumers alike. It offers reassurance on the ethical provenance of goods and helps to reduce reputational risk in complex and sometimes opaque global supply chains. More broadly, Fairtrade fits into a wider framework of responsible sourcing in which UK firms are increasingly engaged. For example, the cocoa industry has seen significant improvements in transparency and long-term planning due to Fairtrade and similar voluntary schemes. British food and beverage companies, in particular, have drawn on Fairtrade principles to strengthen resilience and quality across key import lines. There is also a trade policy angle. Fairtrade is not only about individual transactions; it reflects a broader outlook on how the UK interacts with developing markets. As the Government have observed in the recent trade strategy, trade and development are not mutually exclusive goals. We can support UK business while also encouraging more ethical, sustainable and secure supply chains. The developing countries trading scheme, launched in 2023 under the last Conservative Government, is one such example. It reduces tariffs on goods from low and middle-income countries and allows for easier trade in value-added products, helping to support economic diversification. The previous Government were also clear that they recognised the role that voluntary schemes like Fairtrade play in complementing formal legal frameworks, such as the Modern Slavery Act 2015, which continues to apply to large UK businesses. In this context, Fairtrade certification can be seen as one of several tools that enable the UK to act as a responsible trading nation, championing higher standards while maintaining competitive access to key goods. One of the great strengths of Fairtrade is the strong grassroots support that it enjoys. I saw that at first hand earlier this year when I was contacted by my local Reigate Fairtrade steering group to draw my attention to the “Brew it Fair” campaign. The campaign highlighted that, while the Government have committed to protecting human rights and environmental standards by endorsing the UN guiding principles on business and human rights, and by passing the Modern Slavery Act, wages, incomes and working conditions remain inadequate for the majority of the people involved in tea farming. As such, the Fairtrade Foundation called on the Government to introduce a law on human rights and environmental due diligence. Again, good work was done in that space under the previous Conservative Government. The UK was the first country to create a national action plan to implement the UN guiding principles on business and human rights, which are widely regarded as the authoritative international framework to steer practical action by Governments and businesses worldwide on this important and pressing agenda. More recently, the UK has taken a number of steps through the Modern Slavery Act to ensure that no British organisation—public or private, and unwittingly or otherwise—is complicit through their supply chains in human rights violations. I am sure that the Minister will have more to say on that in a moment. I conclude by noting that this has been an excellent debate, and I repeat my thanks to the hon. Member for Glasgow North for securing it.

• 19 Nov 2025 · Specialist Manufacturing Sector: Regional Economies · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. I congratulate the hon. Member for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn) on securing this critical debate, which is very timely, given the forthcoming Budget. I acknowledge the very pertinent point that he made about the importance of apprenticeships for the specialist sector more broadly. The specialist manufacturing sector is one of those quiet national assets that rarely make front-page news but keep our economy alive. Its contribution to the UK is not abstract but is counted in highly skilled jobs, export strength and clusters of high-value industry. According to the latest figures, advanced manufacturing now accounts for more than 900,000 jobs across the UK and contributes more than £90 billion in gross value added to the economy. I am pleased that the Government’s industrial strategy recognises the reality of advanced manufacturing’s value, which is spread across the country. I welcome the emphasis that they are placing on specialist manufacturing, as it is clear that the industry offers Britain a comparative advantage in our trade with the rest of the world. The sector gives our communities certainty. I see that in my constituency, where we host a range of high-value specialist manufacturers whose work speaks directly to the issues raised in this debate. One such firm is Respirex International, a world-leading manufacturer of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear protective equipment, including gas-tight suits, respirators and chemically protective boots. Its products are not only exported worldwide, but used by emergency services and pharmaceutical and nuclear facilities across the UK, protecting lives in some of the most hazardous environments imaginable. We are also home to Risbridger Ltd, established in 1922—an engineering company producing advanced components for aircraft servicing and petrochemical infrastructure. It contributes directly to aerospace and energy supply chains. That is exactly the kind of innovative, precision-focused industrial capability that we should champion as part of Britain’s economic future. In Reigate and across our country, specialist manufacturing has always pulled in long-term capital because it deals in long-term capability. In 2025, the sector counted some 2,700 active companies, and the Government aim to increase annual business investment from £21 billion to £39 billion by 2035. That ambition matters, because regions such as the north-west already generate £14.4 billion in advanced manufacturing GVA. The west midlands generates £11.8 billion and the south-west generates £10.4 billion. Those are not marginal numbers; they are proof that British engineering remains globally competitive when it is backed properly. Defence manufacturing is a genuine force multiplier. The Ministry of Defence estimates that the sector supports 200,000 jobs, with 70% of spending flowing to areas outside London and the south-east. Indeed, aerospace and defence manufacturing are particularly strong drivers of regional growth. Employment in the advanced manufacturing sector in Northern Ireland has grown more than four times faster than the UK average, while areas such as north Wales remain world renowned for aeroplane wing production. In Glasgow, specialist shipbuilding and satellite technology lead the charge. Woven together in often complex supply chains, the specialist manufacturing sector demonstrates how fragile business ecosystems can be and why they need the Government’s support. But I must say, with deep regret, that the sector has received nothing of the kind, despite the Government’s lengthy blueprint earlier this year, which rightly identified eight key sectors as strategic priorities: advanced materials, agritech, aerospace, automotive, batteries, space, defence and maritime capabilities. But of course a strategy is only as good as its implementation, and manufacturers are seeing not policy support but punitive tax hikes, cost pressure and legislative risk. As the hon. Member for Calder Valley and many others said, it would be fantastic if we used more British parts in the UK, but we do not because of the cost. To address that, we must bring energy prices and tax down; warm words in this Chamber will not do it. Since their very first Budget, the Government have inflicted a barrage of attacks on manufacturing businesses. The spiralling uncertainty pouring out under the door of No. 11 is damaging the confidence of every business, but especially the specialist manufacturing sector, and the warning lights are flashing. Make UK reports that manufacturers’ operating costs have risen sharply, driven by energy prices, the Chancellor’s job tax and uncertainty around business taxation: 68% said that costs rose faster than expected, and more than half froze recruitment as a result. If specialist manufacturers are to keep delivering regional growth, energy competitiveness and a stable tax policy are not luxuries; they are prerequisites. Let us consider the UK’s industrial electricity prices, which are now estimated to be 40% to 50% higher than the International Energy Agency median for comparable industrial nations. Make UK has gone as far as to call energy costs an “existential threat” to many specialist firms. The consequences are already here. UK steel and chemicals output has dropped 35% compared with 2021 levels, while imports of those same materials are rising. Just yesterday, we heard that ExxonMobil is closing its plastics refinery in Mossmorran. Four hundred jobs are now at risk because of what the company called the “current economic and policy environment”. I am confident that in a moment the Minister will rise to spin away any criticism, but this is indefensible. The reality is that no Government that are serious about the future of advanced manufacturing in Britain would have imposed a jobs tax and changes to national insurance thresholds that hurt hardest those who employ the most. No Government who care about British advanced manufacturing firms and British workers would ignore energy costs that are four times higher than those of our competitors. No Government who believe in the future of our advanced manufacturing industry would introduce a 330-page unemployment rights Bill with job-destroying, hiring-freezing measures from cover to cover. No Prime Minister who wants to kick-start economic growth would look advanced manufacturing business in the eye and say that he has a done deal with the United States and then leave the industry in the dark as tariffs on items such as pharmaceuticals remain for months afterwards. And no Government who say they want to build skills would abolish level 7 apprenticeships. Just as night follows day, the Government will talk big on business, but their actions show that much of it is merely empty rhetoric. Our specialist manufacturing sector deserves better; it deserves a Government who stand with them, and leadership that understands that when specialist manufacturing succeeds, Britain succeeds. We have in this country the expertise, the heritage and the industrial DNA to compete and excel, but the specialist manufacturing sector will not survive on pride alone. It needs certainty, cost stability and a Government who truly get what it means to make things. We urgently need to reclaim our status as the nation that builds, and the best way to start is by listening to those firms that still do so.

• 13 Nov 2025 · Police Reform · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for her statement, and for recognising the great work that has been undertaken by many PCCs across the country. I want to take this opportunity to recognise Lisa Townsend, our excellent police and crime commissioner in Surrey, and her deputy Ellie Vesey-Thompson. We need to be aware that there are employees who support all PCCs’ activities who now know that their roles are going in the next few years. It is good to put on record that we thank them for everything they have done. Can the Minister confirm what the announcement means for Surrey, given that we are moving to a unitary model, but that the Government are yet to confirm solidly that we are getting a mayor?

• 30 Oct 2025 · Property Service Charges · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for that point. An important debate for us to have today is about what we do going forward, both for those who have not yet bought a leasehold and to help our constituents who are in this situation right now. I am really interested to hear everyone’s views on that. These companies are a symptom of the problem; they are opportunists making money from an inequitable system. It is this House that must take responsibility for addressing the intrinsic unfairness and urgently make the changes needed to unshackle leaseholders. I hope that we will today hear hon. Members’ views on the solutions, not just the issues. We cannot keep building new housing estates under this same model, perpetuating the problem. This is increasingly important in the light of the Government’s ambitious plan to build 1.5 million new homes over the next few years. I have to say, if nothing has changed when the time comes for my children to purchase a property, I will be strongly advising them not to purchase a leasehold on a private estate. To start us off, I will give the House my view. I think making it easier for leaseholders to change property service company is important, as is better regulation and higher standards, but that will not fundamentally transform the situation. What is needed—what is critical—is a change to the default model, so that homeowners are not paying both the council and a private company for the exact same services. One sensible and equitable option would be that local authorities are obliged to adopt communal land and infrastructure on completion of new estates in all but the most exceptional cases. For that to work in practice, developers would need to be obliged to ensure that the infrastructure meets the council’s standards before transfer. That way, owners of leasehold properties would be put on an equal footing with everyone else, paying for communal services once through their council tax. That would certainly deal with future issues. But what about those who, like our constituents, are already trapped? It may be that something more radical is needed, such as a mandatory direction to all local authorities to adopt communal land where requested by existing estates. It would be difficult, I know, in this current financial environment and with the likely variability of estate quality, but it would certainly address much of the issue and allow my constituents to sell their properties and move on with their lives. I know that this Government are also keen to move forwards and towards commonhold arrangements, especially for flats, which essentially put management of the estate in the hands of leaseholders themselves. There are some benefits to commonhold over the current model, but it is not the silver bullet that is needed and brings its own set of problems. Anyone who, like me, has been involved in a residents’ association or similar organisation—or, indeed, who simply understands human nature—will know that most people do not want to pay out for significant works, so the works will not get done, which in time will result in crumbling roads, failing roofs and falling home values. Again, it will become difficult for residents to sell their properties. It is just another version of the same trap, and one that pits neighbours against each other. I urge the Government to think again on plans to make commonhold the default tenure for new build flats.

• 30 Oct 2025 · Property Service Charges · Hansard source

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  I thank my right hon. Friend for providing that very useful context. I will come on to that in my speech. One of the challenges we have is that property service companies are seeking to make a profit, yet they are unregulated and free to do as they will. It is for this place to get a handle on that. I hope that today we can think constructively about potential solutions to address the problem, the scale of which, across the House, we all recognise. We do not want our constituents to continue to face it. I am afraid to say that FirstPort is not covering itself in glory. I have now heard hundreds of times over about its lack of responsiveness, lack of transparency on costs and inadequate explanations of service charge increases. Residents have told me about being billed for services they have never received, like window cleaning, with no avenue to formally challenge and remediate. Any opportunity to charge a resident is used to the full. These things are all symptomatic of an industry that prioritises extracting maximum value from leaseholders, regardless of the human cost. There is no incentive for property service companies to act any differently. It is incredibly hard for leaseholders to remove them, so the companies have free rein to do pretty much what they like. This fundamental power imbalance must be addressed, and it must be made easier for leaseholders to take their business elsewhere. The Park 25 service charge for the year ending 30 April 2026 is estimated to be just under £1.9 million— 13% higher than last year’s estimate. The increase in costs is primarily to cover the future replacement of playground equipment, street lighting, road repairs and other infrastructure. Park 25 residents are also paying council tax for exactly those types of things outside the estate. Out of the £1.9 million service charge, FirstPort keeps around £142,000 in fees, which works out at just under 8% of the total service charge. How easy was it for me to find that £142,000 figure in FirstPort’s costs breakdown? Not very—I had to total up numbers across many pages of costs, as there is no nice, neat summary at the front showing the total amount. That 8% may or may not be out of kilter with industry—I found it difficult when researching to confirm one way or another, which is an issue in itself. The key point to recognise here, though, is that there is absolutely no incentive or requirement for FirstPort to keep the cost base low. In fact, the more money it spends on maintaining the estate and the more people it employs to deliver services, the smaller the percentage proportion its management fee appears to be—a perverse incentive indeed. It would be very easy for me to berate property service companies throughout my speech, and I suspect that others will take up that mantle during the debate. However, we must recognise that it is the current system that allows the companies to operate in this way.

• 30 Oct 2025 · Property Service Charges · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered property service charges. It is a privilege to bring this important debate to the House today. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting it. I remember vividly the day, over 20 years ago now, when I picked up the keys to my first flat in south-east London. It took time to get to a position where my salary was sufficient to secure a mortgage and to save up the deposit, but I managed to do it. I spent the first few weeks on a mattress on the floor while I saved for a bed, but it was the most amazing feeling in the world to own my own home. I was fortunate enough to have purchased the freehold, so I never had to face paying service charges that I could not afford and I never had to rely on a third-party management company to make essential repairs. When the time was right for me to move on, my flat was easy to sell. Others have not been so lucky. They have bought leasehold on a private estate, and with that comes a life sentence. Today, I want to give a voice to those people on the hook for ever-increasing service charges, trapped in homes they cannot afford but cannot sell either, who thought they were buying their dream home when actually it was the start of a nightmare. Make no mistake—this is no exaggeration on my part—people’s lives have been and are being ruined by excessive service charges. Let me start, Madam Deputy Speaker, by telling you about Park 25, a housing estate in Redhill. It was built 18 years ago and has 500 homes, a mixture of houses and flats. It is a contemporary and stunning site, with the type of homes that people want to live in. It is particularly attractive to key workers, such as doctors and nurses, due to its proximity to East Surrey hospital. Like many new estates, it was built by private developers with no arrangements made for the local authority to adopt the communal land after completion, so FirstPort was appointed as the property manager to maintain the estate. This means that residents of Park 25 pay an expensive service charge to FirstPort, on top of their mortgage and on top of their council tax, for pretty basic services. Those service charges are going up significantly every year, driving some homeowners to the absolute brink. I first became aware of the issue when I met Louise, a single mum, at my first ever surgery last year—a meeting I will never forget. She told me how she had purchased a one-bedroom flat on Park 25 when they were first built, but the service charges quickly increased, becoming unaffordable for her, in part due to the expensive biomass communal heating system. In desperation she tried to sell, but three times over she lost her buyer. She now lets out the flat and has moved back in with her family, unable to access the equity that would allow her to buy somewhere else. She is trapped, not able to move on with her life. Then there is Alfie, who purchased a two-bedroom flat in 2018. He was “thrilled to get on the property ladder at the age of 23, thinking it was a valuable investment.” His first service charge payment was just under £2,200 per annum. Six years later, it is over £3,600—a 70% increase. For that, he says “they basically cut the grass and insure the building”. When heating is included it gets even worse, due to the biomass system. The first amount becomes £3,400, going up to a whopping £8,000 per annum—a 135% increase. Again, Madam Deputy Speaker, I remind you that he is paying council tax and a mortgage on top. Alfie did consider challenging the service fees at a tribunal, but he was advised by the Leasehold Advisory Service that for any chance of success he would need to appoint a surveyor to review the service charges. However, to do that there needed to be a recognised tenants’ association, and to set that up, over 50% of leaseholders needed to agree. In the case of Park 25, he quickly found that to be an impossible task as many rent out their properties and so are not easily traced. With that door closed to him, he tried to sell his property for over two years—even for £50,000 less than he bought it for just to cover the mortgage. There was lots of interest, but every time the potential purchaser found out about the service charges, they withdrew. Alfie says: “Understandably, nobody wants to buy it. The ‘we buy any property’ companies won’t touch it and even the auction sites which run a ‘no sale no fee’ policy don’t want to take it on”.

• 28 Oct 2025 · Stamp Duty Land Tax · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for that pertinent point. This is proper Conservative policy. This is the kind of thing everyone in this country is clamouring for—[Hon. Members: “More!”] This party is delivering that under our new leadership. For too long, stamp duty has been a dead weight on the housing market, a tax on aspiration and a barrier to the kind of home ownership that gives people a genuine stake in their community. It is time that we abolished it on primary residences. Surely we can all agree that our housing market is not working as it should. Far too many young people feel locked out, priced out and increasingly disillusioned. The average age of a first-time buyer in England is now 34, up by nearly a decade from where it was 40 years ago. In London, it is even higher, and across the country 20% fewer 25 to 34-year-olds own a home today than was the case in 2000. I have skin in the game: I have three children and I want them to be able to buy a house without coming to mummy and daddy to help them out.

• 28 Oct 2025 · Stamp Duty Land Tax · Hansard source

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  Yes, I should declare that interest. This amounts to an economic failure, but also to a social failure. Home ownership gives people stability, autonomy and long-term security. It encourages saving, it strengthens families and it fosters pride and a sense of genuine community in our towns and villages. Abolishing stamp duty will save families thousands of pounds and put the many benefits of home ownership back into reach for the next generation.