Commons
Debate
13 July 2026
Immigration and Asylum Bill
In the time that I have, I will focus my remarks on clauses 1 to 16, which create a new appeals body for immigration and asylum cases known as the independent immigration appeals authority. It will be staffed by non-lawyers or members of the public and will perform much of the work currently done by…
Commons
Oral Questions
Solicitor General
9 July 2026
Jury Trials
Sir Brian Leveson made 180 recommendations, very few of which concerned juries. His review covered the whole criminal justice system, including the CPS. The Government have never responded to Sir Brian’s review, and they have never said how each of those recommendations will be treated and how they …
Commons
Westminster Hall
2 July 2026
Air Pollution
My hon. Friend mentions the Mayor of London, who has made substantial strides, but I refer him to the matter of emissions from buses and the only partial electrification of the fleet in London and elsewhere. Pollutants from diesel buses are a continuing problem, especially when buses are allowed to …
Commons
Oral Questions
Justice
30 June 2026
Magistrate Numbers
I wish the Lord Chancellor luck with the recruitment campaign—I wish him luck generally—but even if he is successful, those magistrates will be newly recruited, and he is also asking magistrates to try much longer and more complex cases by increasing their sentencing powers. Those two things do not …
Commons
Debate
29 June 2026
2 contributions
Home Office and Ministry of Justice
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for this important debate. The debate follows a joint application by the Chairs of the Justice, Public Accounts and Home Affairs Committees. There is cross-Committee concern for our criminal justice system, as the Chair of the Public Account…
First, one has to look at the Leveson package—the two volumes that Sir Brian Leveson has put together over 1,000 pages. That has 180 recommendations, a very small number of which deal with this issue. It is undeniable that it will be one factor that has an effect. Where I agree with the hon. Gentlem…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
18 June 2026
5 contributions
Courts and Tribunals Bill
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for making time for this statement. The Courts and Tribunals Bill was introduced in February as a response to the Crown court crisis. There were over 80,000 outstanding cases as of December 2025, with some trials being listed into 2030. That harms victims, de…
The hon. Member is right to mention that there was a dissenting report, which was not approved by the Committee. Other members may wish to raise that issue. From my point of view, it was reassuring that the analysis in both reports was very similar. I hope that I correctly reflected some of those co…
+3 more contributions in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
Justice
19 May 2026
Family Courts
One of the successes of the family justice system is the family mediation voucher scheme. Two thirds of families who use the scheme avoid going to court, which takes a lot of pressure off the family courts. It started in 2021 and gets renewed every year, often at the end of the year or even when the…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
18 May 2026
Youth Justice
I welcome the White Paper, which shines a welcome light on an often-neglected part of the criminal justice system. The remarkable drop in the number of young people in custody, from a high of 3,400 a day, is sometimes box-ticked as “job done”, but when half those young people are on remand and a maj…
Commons
Westminster Hall
21 April 2026
Hammersmith Bridge
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Sir Alec, not least because you have allowed me the privilege of speaking although I was a couple of minutes late. I was chairing the Justice Committee, but I did not want to miss this debate. Fortunately, I can be reasonably brief because my …
Commons
Ministerial Statement
14 April 2026
Knife Crime
I thank the Minister for agreeing to meet me and members of the safer knives group, which brings together experts on the type of knives most commonly used in knife crime. Does she agree that restricting sales of pointed knives, and moving to rounded-tip versions for kitchen use, could limit the numb…
Commons
Westminster Hall
26 March 2026
2 contributions
Prison Officers: Mandatory Body Armour
It is a pleasure to talk about this very important matter under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I suspect there will be quite a degree of agreement across the House.
The first thing that struck me was a quote from some evidence that the Prison Officers’ Association submitted to the Lords Justice and H…
I thank my right hon. Friend for all the work that he and other Members present do in supporting the POA and making sure that its voice is heard. It is often the case with prisons that out of sight is out of mind. Both because of the conditions in prisons, which are deplorable in many cases, and in …
Commons
Westminster Hall
23 March 2026
Court and Tribunal Transcripts
I almost wanted to have a bet on who would mention AI first in this debate. AI is always said to be the solution, but for once it might be. Everything that the hon. Member is saying about the system of transcripts—that it is anachronistic, lacking in transparency, costly and baroque—is absolutely ri…
Commons
Oral Questions
Solicitor General
19 March 2026
Courts and Tribunals Bill
At her annual press conference this week, the Lady Chief Justice, Baroness Carr, said:
“I have grave security concerns if there are going to be judge-alone trials.”
Does the Solicitor General share those concerns, and what are the Government doing about it?
Commons
Oral Questions
17 March 2026
Topical Questions
I have noticed there is a lot of debate on the role of juries at the moment—nothing gets past me. It might be a better informed debate if the researchers and jurors could talk about what happens in the jury room. The Law Commission recommends decriminalising that so it cannot be a criminal offence. …
Commons
Oral Questions
17 March 2026
Violence against Women and Girls
I know that Members from all parts of the House support the Government’s aim to halve violence against women and girls. The metric on which that is based, the crime survey for England, deals with those aged 16 and over, but girls under 16 are also substantially at risk. How will they be included in …
Commons
Debate
16 March 2026
Grenfell Tower Memorial (Expenditure) Bill
The Grenfell Tower fire was a momentous as well as a tragic event. It fundamentally changed the way we look at fire safety, social housing and the emergency services. Most of all, it changed the lives of many people—not just those who lost their lives or were injured and traumatised, but their famil…
Commons
Debate
10 March 2026
3 contributions
Courts and Tribunals Bill
The number of outstanding cases in the Crown court is 79,619. The outgoing Conservative Government promised to reduce the backlog; it should have been 53,000 by April last year. Their abject failures led the present Government to ask one of the country’s most foremost experts on the criminal courts,…
Not yet; I am conscious of the time.
The removal of the right to elect for either way offences in clause 1 is the single most significant measure in reducing the caseload of the Crown court, with the Bill’s impact assessment indicating that that change will see 16,000 fewer sitting days in the Crow…
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
10 February 2026
Court Reporting Data
It is a pity that the shadow Minister is reducing this issue to one of his conspiracy theories, because I know that the Minister is an advocate of open justice, and the Government are doing a lot on open justice by televising the family courts, publishing transcripts and other means.
Courtsdesk gav…
Commons
Debate
5 February 2026
Occupied Palestinian Territories: Genocide Risk Assessment
Given what Minister said about adherence to international law, will he just put on the record why the Government have not responded to the advisory opinion of the ICJ for over 18 months now? Is it because the consequence of that response is that there would have to be sanctions against settlements, …
Commons
Oral Questions
Solicitor General
5 February 2026
Jury Trials
Now we have Sir Brian Leveson’s full review, it is clear that very few of the 180 recommendations relate to jury trials. The most controversial is really the use of a single judge in the new Crown court bench division. Given that that provision will likely not contribute very much to reducing the ba…
Commons
Oral Questions
5 February 2026
Water Bills
Does the Minister have plans to introduce a national social tariff? It was not in the recent White Paper, but Independent Age, which is a national charity based in my constituency, estimates that such a tariff could lift up to half a million pensioner households out of water poverty entirely.
Commons
Oral Questions
Justice
3 February 2026
Topical Questions
The Secretary of State will shortly make a statement on violence in separation centres. I apologise that I will not be here for it as the Select Committee has a long-planned court visit, but I will read Sir Jonathan Hall KC’s report carefully. Will the Secretary of State also look at violence on the…
Commons
Oral Questions
Justice
3 February 2026
Changes to Jury Trials
There is a lot of focus on replacing juries with a single judge in some criminal trials, but the Government also intend to increase magistrates’ sentencing powers, so that they can give sentences of up to 18 or 24 months, which is beyond what Sir Brian Leveson suggests. Is it the Government’s intent…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
29 January 2026
Prison Capacity: Annual Statement
The prison population is comprised in significant part of cohorts of prisoners who, for a variety of reasons, should not be there in current numbers. That includes prisoners serving indeterminate sentences for public protection, foreign national offenders, remand prisoners and, according to press re…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
21 January 2026
Water White Paper
Last night, a 30-inch water main burst at Holland Park roundabout on the boundary of my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell). Homes and cars were flooded to a depth of 3 feet, and since the water was diverted away from the burst, thousands of r…