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1. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Joe Robertson

   Courts and Tribunals Bill (Sixth sitting)

   Yes. Let us get back to principles here. I support what the Government are trying to do in reducing the backlog. Of course, that is the right thing to do, and it benefits both those awaiting trial and the victims and complaints who want to see justice. On amendment 25, my particular issue here the retrospective application of the law. Even if Members agree with the Government that either-way offences should go and that people who commit or are accused of committing a crime in the future should no longer have the right that people used to, the clause will apply that new law to things that have already happened. That is highly controversial and an affront to the common law legal system in this country.

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2. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Joe Robertson

   Courts and Tribunals Bill (Sixth sitting)

   I continue to be grateful to the hon. Member for hanging on my every word, and I am grateful for the opportunity to expand on that. As I said, it is a basic tenet of English common law, and the ECHR effectively replicates what is already in our legal system. I am very happy to engage in a wide-ranging debate on the ECHR, but I fear that you, Ms Jardine, are also hanging on my every word and may stop me.

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3. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Joe Robertson

   Courts and Tribunals Bill (Sixth sitting)

   Again, I invite a Tea Room conversation —although we may have to meet somewhere geographically in the middle of the Tea Room. Any measure that materially and detrimentally alters the regime to which a defendant is subject in a way not foreseeable at the relevant time engages article 7. The Government’s own ECHR memorandum on the Crime and Policing Bill of April this year acknowledged that article 7 is engaged where the defendant could not “reasonably have foreseen” the application of a measure “at the material time”. At least we can agree that article 7 is at least engaged. A defendant who elected Crown court trial under the existing law could not have foreseen that that election would be nullified, not least of all because some such defendants have been waiting rather a long time—and that is the issue this Government are trying to deal with. I say again that I support what they are trying to do, although I disagree with some of the means they are using to achieve those aims. This is precisely the kind of unforeseeable retrospective detriment that article 7 exists to prevent. While we are on the ECHR, I turn to paragraph 2 of article 6, on the right to a fair trial, and pending proceedings. Paragraph 1 guarantees the right to a “fair and public hearing” before an “independent and impartial tribunal”. The European Court has repeatedly held that the principle of the rule of law and the notion of a fair trial preclude any interference by the legislature—that is, Parliament—other than on “compelling grounds of the general interest”, with the administration of justice designed to influence the judicial determination of a dispute. This principle was established in a number of cases and applied domestically in Reilly (No. 2), 2014. Where a defendant has an existing elected case in train, the application to them of the new clause 3 regime is precisely the form of retrospective interference with pending proceedings that article 6 prohibits. The Government must demonstrate compelling grounds of the general interest. Processing efficiency—the rationale advanced for these reforms—does not satisfy that threshold, in my view. I say again that we are talking about cases that are already in proceedings. The Government’s own Criminal Procedure Rules 2025 identify, as part of the overriding objective, the recognition of the rights of a defendant, particularly those under article 6 of the European convention on human rights. Retrospective removal of the elected mode of trial is directly at odds with the overriding objective that the Government have enshrined in their own procedure rules. I turn to the more recent Reilly litigation that went on between 2013 and 2015, because, although this is a historic principle, it is one that has been repeatedly upheld. The R (on the application of Reilly) v. Secretary of State for Work and Pensions litigation provides, in my view, the closest and most instructive domestic parallel. In 2013, Parliament fast-tracked the Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) Act 2013 to retrospectively validate regulations that the Court of Appeal had already found to be unlawful. The Act was introduced before the Supreme Court appeal was complete. That is a direct analogy to the present situation, in which the Bill would alter the mode of trial for defendants who are already part-way through criminal proceedings. In Reilly (No. 2), Mrs Justice Lang held that the 2013 Act was incompatible with article 6(1) of the ECHR, in that it had interfered with—

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4. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Joe Robertson

   Courts and Tribunals Bill (Sixth sitting)

   I am grateful for that indication, Ms Jardine, and I understand. It had interfered with ongoing legal proceedings in favour of the state, which is exactly what is happening here: legal proceedings are being interrupted in order to favour the state, removing from appellants what would otherwise have been a conclusive ground of appeal without justification by compelling grounds of the general interest. The Court of Appeal upheld this conclusion, with Lord Justice Underhill emphasising the importance to be attached to observance of the rule of law. Mrs Justice Lang further held that the absence of consultation with the representative organisations, which I say has happened here too, and the lack of scrutiny by relevant parliamentary Committees may have contributed to some misconceptions about the legal justification for the retrospective legislation. She said that the Government’s ECHR statement to Parliament failed to explain that a departure from the legal norm—exactly what is happening here, in my view—was being sought. Those observations plainly apply with equal force to this Bill. The parallels are direct: the Government are introducing new legislation that will alter the legal position of defendants who are already engaged. As in Reilly, no compelling grounds of the general interest have been articulated for why existing elected cases must also be captured. Lots of arguments have been made about why either-way offences should no longer exist, but not why that must be the case for people who have already made an election in that way.

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5. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Joe Robertson

   Courts and Tribunals Bill (Sixth sitting)

   I intend to wind up quite shortly, Ms Jardine.

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6. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Joe Robertson

   Courts and Tribunals Bill (Sixth sitting)

   I will go on to my next bit, which is even more relevant than my previous bit. The Police (Detention and Bail) Act 2011 is Parliament’s most recent example of retrospective criminal legislation. It reversed the effect of the High Court’s decision in R (on the application of Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police) v. Salford Magistrates’ Court and Hookway on the calculation of detention time under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, and did so by deeming the amendments always to have had effect. They had not. The then Policing Minister described the matter as too urgent to await a Supreme Court appeal. This Government have made no case that the current backlog is so urgent that it must be all shifted to the magistrates court. It wants to tackle the backlog, yes, by changing the right to elect, but removing people who have made that election into a different court is something quite different. The Government have not argued that it is too urgent. That is unsurprising, because it is plainly not. Even in the emergency context of the Police (Detention and Bail) Act, when the Government faced systemic liability for unlawful detentions, the retrospective approach attracted intense criticism, just as I am criticising this Government. It was acknowledged in the explanatory notes that it was deliberately retrospective and it remains subject to potential ECHR challenge. It is interesting to note that this legislation may also be subject to challenge, even if it leaves this place and passes into law. No equivalent emergency exists here; there is no systemic liability to reverse. The War Crimes Act 1991 is cited as a paradigm case of retrospective criminal legislation, allowing proceedings for war crimes committed in German-occupied territory in the second world war, notwithstanding that the defendants were not British at the time. Parliament considered that the exception was justified by the gravity of the crimes involved—they were heinous crimes—but even then the Act was controversial.

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7. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Joe Robertson

   Courts and Tribunals Bill (Sixth sitting)

   I think it is for the Government to set out the state of emergency. I do not accept that there is one; in fact, I do not think the Government are saying that there is one, when it comes to taking away a right that someone has already elected. We are not talking about getting rid of jury trials for a trial for either-way offences. I disagree with that; we have dealt with that, and we will go back to it. In this clause, we are talking about applying that to a number of people who have already made an election. It is for the Government to set out the emergency. I do not believe that there is one, and I think that they have not set it out because they do not believe that there is one.

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8. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Joe Robertson

   Courts and Tribunals Bill (Sixth sitting)

   The shadow Minister is absolutely right. I invite the Minister to address that point head on in her speech. Even the Government themselves do not seem to be saying it is an emergency, whereas when any previous Government, Conservative or Labour, have tried to enact something retrospectively, they have at least made the case for an emergency. Heinous crimes committed during a war, loopholes that have left the state open to repeat, ongoing litigation into perpetuity—those are the sorts of threshold that have been met in previous times. I hope that that goes some way to answering the question asked by the hon. Member for Gloucester. Let us hear from the Government why retrospective application in this case is so urgent. The answer cannot be about future cases; it must only be about those who have already elected trial. I draw attention to a post on the UK Constitutional Law Association blog in July last year, which addresses and objects to the idea of using the Crown court backlog crisis to justify this provision. It is not an adequate justification that it is equivalent to wartime. Jury trials were not suspended even in the first world war, the second world war or the covid pandemic, all of which produced a more acute systemic issue than the one we have today. The present difficulties, however real they are—and I say again that they are real—do not plainly reach that threshold. The Government’s own stated policy is that they must balance conflicting public interests and consider whether the general public interest in the law not being changed retrospectively may be outweighed by any competing public interest with regard to ECHR. The Solicitor General’s answer to a parliamentary question set that out explicitly. For the sake of brevity, I will not repeat that answer. However, whatever views are taken about that balancing exercise, there appears to have been no such exercise on which to take a view. It is apparent in the Bill’s explanatory notes. No compelling justification for retrospectivity is advanced. It should be in the notes, and it should have been done already, but at least the Minister can address it now. This has not been a case of closing an unforeseeable loophole. It is not an emergency requiring same-day legislation. It is not a response to a systemic injustice in wartime. It is a policy reform that operates perfectly well on a prospective basis if that is what the Government want to do, although I do not agree with abolishing jury trials. But the retrospective reach of clause 3 appears—I hope—to be inadvertent. The amendments would correct it. The Government’s reform agenda could be delivered even if the amendments are made. Future cases would be fully captured by the new regime applied prospectively. Where defendants have already elected—and there will be relatively few of those over the lifetime of this law, compared with all the crimes that it will capture in future—their cases can be resolved under the existing system. It raises the question of what happens when we take a number of cases and put them straight into the magistrates courts now, rather than allowing the natural wasting away of the election to trial by jury for those who face what, today, are either-way offences. The cost of honouring the amendments is minimal, even to the Government. The cost of not honouring them is significant. I will not repeat the arguments that I have already made. In my view, the Committee should support amendments 25, 12 and 43. They are constitutionally proper and correct, legally secure and practically proportionate. The Government have offered no principled justification for the retrospective application of clause 3. In the absence of such justification, the presumption against retrospectivity must surely prevail. The Government can still achieve the aims of the Bill, no matter how much I disagree with a number of them.

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9. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Joe Robertson

   Courts and Tribunals Bill (Sixth sitting)

   Evidently, I support the amendment in the name of the shadow Minister. As he set out, this is about confidence in the trial when it gets under way. It is about understanding what a judge, in exercising their procedural decision making, may have seen prior to the trial getting under way and the evidence being heard. As I see it, the amendment would go some way to at least mitigating what is lost in the Government’s abolition of jury trials for certain offences: that is, the objectivity of jury trials, where a jury decide on the conviction—guilt or innocence, effectively—and the judge decides on the sentencing. In jury trials, there is separation between a judge’s procedural decision making about how the trial runs, including throughout the trial, and the facts of the case—whether someone is guilty or not—being decided on by the jury. When a trial is heard by a judge, the judge makes both those decisions. The disadvantage there, of course, is that when either party to proceedings—the defence or the prosecution—wishes to make representations about the way a trial is being conducted or about the evidence in a jury trial, the jury get sent out of the room. They do not see that argument, and their minds are not clouded by what is discussed in the courtroom on a procedural matter that a judge may rule is inadmissible in the hearing. Frequently in trials, that would be a dispute over evidence, such as whether a certain bit of evidence should be brought before a jury. The jury will not hear that discussion; if a judge says no, the jury come back in and they never see it. In a judge-only trial, where the judge is also deciding innocence or guilt, they have to decide whether a piece of evidence is relevant and, if they decide it is not, they have to effectively pretend that they never saw it and to disregard it. Our judges are capable of doing that because of their training, career, expertise and experience. I would suggest that judges in this country are among the best in the world; as I have said before, I believe our common law English legal system is the best, and I believe our judiciary is the best. But it is simply the case—it is human nature—that when someone has seen something they cannot unsee it. That is precisely one of the arguments for why we have jury trials in this country. This is about the arguments a judge hears and assesses when it comes to allocation. They could be fairly contested and, of course, the decision made by a judge could be controversial—not necessarily wrong, but controversial—and against what the defendant is seeking. When a judge chooses a judge-only trial, the defendant’s wishes are not disregarded but considered and set to one side, and the judge then hears the facts of the case. The argument is that the judge may be clouded in their view of a defendant, given the robust, perhaps sometimes controversial, arguments the defendant is making about where they want the trial to be heard. That may then unfairly cloud the judge’s view of the defendant when hearing the case itself. In the vast majority of cases, judges have a professional separation as they move on from an important single decision about where to hear the case to hearing the case itself. It is not just about whether a judge was clouded by the earlier decision-making process. In truth, in the vast majority of cases we can never know. We do not want to get into philosophy here, but some philosophers may argue that judges themselves do not realise when they are clouded. Probably more relevant in practice, though, is the confidence that the defendant has in the judge’s decision. If there has been a highly contentious, contested argument about where the trial should be held, if the defendant did not get their way, which in my view they should have, because I do not agree with this legislation, and if the defendant does not believe that their case is being tried properly and sees bias in the judge, that will make the trial harder to run even if it is not a reasonable view to hold. It could lead to defendants, some of whom may be representing themselves and giving evidence, not being able to set aside their disagreement with the judge. There will therefore not be a fair, objective process with a judge and a fair-minded defendant who at least has confidence in the system. Of course, not every defendant will have objective confidence in the system, but at least we can assist the process by not creating an opportunity for the defendant to disagree with a judge’s allocation decision and then have to face the same judge making a decision on their innocence or guilt in the trial itself. I use the analogy of juries, because that is what we are discussing, albeit not under this amendment. An important example arises in the family courts, when two people are contesting finances during a divorce. That is an area I am more familiar with, as a former family practitioner, and the principle is similar. I apologise if the language I use to describe the proceedings is slightly out of date; it has been a few years since I practised. A financial dispute resolution hearing is effectively an interim hearing before people get to a final hearing; they are seeking to avoid the final hearing by having a financial dispute resolution hearing. A judge hears the arguments made at that hearing and tries to assist the parties to at least narrow the areas of dispute, or indeed resolve their dispute and come up with an agreement by consent. If consent is not reached at that hearing, the FDR judge will not hear the final hearing, because they have seen things that they cannot unsee and heard things that they cannot unhear. The perception is that the judge has been unable to assist in the settlement, they will be unable to hear an objective final hearing and make a decision. The principle runs through not just criminal courts and jury trials, but family courts and the civil courts. It is a fundamental principle, in this country, that judge who makes a final decision should be as unclouded as possible by earlier arguments or decisions of a more procedural nature. For those reasons, I support the shadow Minister’s amendment. It would not drive a coach and horses through what the Government want to achieve in the Bill. I have already said that I disagree with a lot of the Government’s intentions, but the Government can still do what they want to do while taking the amendment on board. I hope that they will at least consider accepting some amendments. If not, what is the point of scrutiny of a Bill? What is the point of the process?

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10. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Joe Robertson

    Courts and Tribunals Bill (Sixth sitting)

    The hon. Member for Chichester has set out the reasoning behind her amendment very well. If the amendment were agreed to, it would not go anywhere near restoring jury trials, but it would plainly be an improvement. The leading argument in its favour is that it is what Sir Brian Leveson recommended. The Government have repeatedly cited Brian Leveson’s review, and rightly so—that is what the Bill flows out of—but as the hon. Member for Chichester says, it cannot be a pick and mix. The Government cannot cite Leveson on the one hand and ignore him on the other. Quite aside from the fact that the opinion expressed in the independent review has been ignored here, there are objectively good reasons why a trial heard by a judge and two magistrates is preferable to a trial heard by a judge alone. For a start, there would be three decision makers rather than one; with a jury there are 12, but clearly three is better than one. But it is not just a matter of numbers. Magistrates could be viewed, and certainly have been viewed, as a hybrid of jurors and judges. They are not judges, and they are not legally qualified people. They bring the quality that jurors bring—varied life experience—to the decision-making process. Of course, in a magistrates court, they are guided in the law by a legally qualified clerk. It is fairly obvious that magistrates as a group are less diverse than the population of the United Kingdom, from which jurors are drawn, but at least they represent a greater diversity and variety of experience than judges. Judges all share one thing: they went to law school, they are legally qualified and they have had a career that is privileged—that is not a criticism, but I do not think it is an unfair word to describe a judge’s career. Magistrates have a greater variety of life experience. To bring magistrates into the decision making alongside a judge, as Sir Brian Leveson envisaged, would be to bring at least some element of a jury trial: the quality of being unjaded by a career in law and being unencumbered by the experience of being a well-paid legal professional. I struggle to support the amendment, because it does not go anywhere near maintaining the system that we have today, but it would at least be a small improvement. It is an obvious point, but judges sit alongside magistrates today; it is a tried, tested and understood approach, not an obscure or novel one. Indeed, appeals are often heard in that way, as I understand it, because there is added rigour in having a magistrate sitting alongside a judge. Of course, having a judge sitting alongside magistrates is an improvement on having magistrates alone, because judges bring professionalism from their legal training and experience of the law as part of the judiciary. There is a benefit there, although of course the benefit is already delivered by the Government’s own amendment, notwithstanding that it is worse than what we have today. I commend, or at least understand, what the hon. Member for Chichester is trying to achieve. It comes from a good place, but unfortunately—this is not her fault, but the Government’s—it does not go anywhere near maintaining the status quo, which in my view is plainly greatly preferable both to her amendment and to the Government’s approach.

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11. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Joe Robertson

    Courts and Tribunals Bill (Sixth sitting)

    I echo the points made by the shadow Minister. The issue here is where sentences may go above three years. A sentence of three years or more is fairly significant. The crime, of course, will match the sentence; no one is suggesting that the sentence is inappropriate in these cases—someone has been convicted. However, the issue is that the trial—the fact of innocence or guilt—will have been decided by a judge. Without raking over too much old ground, the point in a jury trial is that on more serious offences, jury decides innocence or guilt. What we have here, without the amendment, is a back-door way for a judge to decide what turns out to be a more serious case than perhaps had originally been thought, because the sentence passed is more than three years. As I understand it, it is not the intention of the Government to capture more cases of that serious nature than they had originally intended would be decided by a judge. They themselves are not arguing that jury trials do not have a place in this country for a great number of cases—unfortunately, not enough after this legislation. The hon. Member for Rugby made the point in an earlier sitting that other Governments have adjusted the threshold, notwithstanding our disagreement over what is being proposed in this legislation. Clearly, the issue with this provision, if it remains unamended, is that more serious crimes, with a sentence of more than three years, will inadvertently get caught. I cannot quite understand why the Minister will not accept the amendment, but I am sure she will address that. Once again, it would not, in any material way, move away from what she is trying to achieve with the legislation, which is tackling the backlog of Crown court cases. Again, that intention that is perfectly well meant. The amendment would not, in any way, get rid of her primary intent to get rid of either-way offences so that they are not heard by a jury. Notwithstanding the fact that I do not agree with her on that, the amendment would not defeat what she is trying to do there. Effectively, what it would do is close a loophole. I invite the Minister to address that point about instances where a judge decides, on their own without a jury, that a case is of significant seriousness—and that may mean complexity that was not apparent at the outset but became apparent during the trial—that he or she wishes to pass a sentence of more than three years. Three years is a serious length of time for someone to be locked up and deprived of their liberty. Wherever we think that the threshold should sit, I think that we all agree that jury trials have a role in this country for more serious crimes. If the threshold can rise above three years through that avenue, how high a threshold is the Minister willing to tolerate? In how many cases is she willing to tolerate that apparent loophole? Maybe she does not see it as a loophole. Maybe there is purpose behind it. If there is, perhaps she can explain why it is important enough to risk even her principle by having more serious crimes—those with a sentence over three years—potentially being heard without a jury. Again, I reiterate that I disagree with the primary disapplication of jury trials for what are now either-way offences. That is not what this is about; this is about the Bill doing something more than the Government may wish to do. I invite the Minister to address that in some detail.

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12. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Jesse Norman

    Business of the House

    Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?

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13. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Jesse Norman

    Business of the House

    As the House will know, this has been a week of sporting triumph. I think of the Lionesses’ 1-0 world cup qualifier against the world champions, Italy—or former world champions, I should say—and Rory McIlroy defending his Masters title, which was another great moment. Whether or not we play, watch, or even like golf, it was an extraordinary, gripping achievement.

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14. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Jesse Norman

    Business of the House

    And he is from Northern Ireland to boot. He is an honest man facing his demons and triumphing. What a contrast with the Prime Minister’s failure to answer, or even to engage with, the question at Prime Minister’s questions. The last four Prime Minister’s questions have focused on the Iran war, fuel duty, North sea oil and gas, and the defence review. Of the 24 responses given by the Prime Minister to the Leader of the Opposition, 23 have ignored the question and changed the subject. Yesterday, Mr Speaker, we even saw the Prime Minister hectoring you in your Chair, on live television, just for doing your job. That is a shameful record, for which the Prime Minister should write to you—and therefore by implication to this House—and apologise. This behaviour is contemptuous—of you, Mr Speaker, of the Leader of the Opposition, and of all MPs, now and in years gone by. Our job, however imperfectly we may do it, is to pursue the truth on behalf of those we represent. If we give that up, then heaven help us. It is the Prime Minister’s job to answer, and to hold himself accountable for those answers. No Prime Minister likes to do that, but those are the rules. If the Prime Minister does not like the rules, does not want to offer honest answers, or is not up to it, he should step back and let someone else do the job instead. I thank you, Mr Speaker, on behalf of all of us for maintaining the traditions of this House. I have three questions for the Leader of the House today, and I ask him first if he shares my view that the Prime Minister’s behaviour is wholly inappropriate and disrespectful of this House. This is just part of a wider problem to do with accountability and disrespect for Parliament. My noble Friend Lord Gilbert’s parliamentary question of 16 March asked the Government about authorised Budget briefings to the media. Lord Livermore replied on the Government’s behalf: “Consistent with these principles, there are occasions where the Government will trail and/or announce policy ahead of a Budget to provide context and help the public understand major fiscal events.” This is nonsense. The rules are perfectly clear: major events must be announced first to this House. To do otherwise is a breach of the rules of this House, a flagrant violation of the ministerial code and contempt of Parliament. Previous Governments, as we all know, have done this on occasion, since 1997 at least, and previous Chancellors of the Exchequer have been fired for inadvertent briefings to the media before a Budget, but never before has it been a Government’s declared policy to ignore Parliament. The deeper constitutional point is, of course, that in our representative system of government, the people are Parliament, and Parliament is the people. Nothing good can come of an attempt to undermine the British constitution by this means. I ask the Leader of the House, secondly, to comment on this, and to set out what he will do to get this policy of non-announcement of major measures withdrawn and revoked. Finally, Lord Robertson spoke of the “corrosive complacency” of current political leadership, and of putting our country at risk. He said, “We cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget.” No one has more experience and expertise on defence across the whole of Parliament, in both Chambers. This man, the noble Lord Robertson, was a political activist for Labour since 1961. Just think. He is the last person one could imagine wanting to offer public criticism of a Labour Prime Minister, let alone in these terms—a man Labour to his boots, but a patriot first. It is impossible to blame previous Governments for this. This Government and this Prime Minister created the defence review and the defence investment plan—no one else. It is their choice and their decision. It matters because in every constituency across the country there are companies wanting to know what the Government have decided. They are waiting for leadership. They need to know the numbers and the commitment, and, of course, our adversaries need to know that we are serious in our resolve, and they need to see the measure of that seriousness. My great fear—perhaps it is also Lord Robertson’s great fear—is that the Government will never publish this document, or they will do so in a completely insubstantial and lightweight way, and that 10 months of delay will end in nothing, and it will all have been a colossal waste of time and energy. The Prime Minister has been utterly hopeless on this. He told the Liaison Committee weeks ago that the document was on his desk, yet nothing has happened. I leave it to colleagues to judge the truth of his remarks. I ask the Leader of the House, thirdly, if he will give this House a cast-iron guarantee on behalf of the Government that the defence investment plan will be published, and not simply shelved and forgotten. The one-year anniversary is in July.

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15. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Jesse Norman

    Modernisation Committee Report: Access to the House of Commons

    I thank the Leader of the House for his remarks, and fully echo both their detail and their sentiment. As he says, accessibility should never be an afterthought. In the case of the House of Commons, there is not just the common decency that goes with trying to support anyone with a disability or another need. A vital aspect of being an effective parliamentarian is that every single Member of Parliament, whatever their background and personal needs, should be able to discharge their full capabilities on behalf of their constituents. That is why it is so central to what we do as a House. Let me join the Leader of the House in welcoming the report. I also very much welcome the response from the House Administration, which is a very constructive document, by and large. We on the Committee are grateful for the constructive way in which the House Administration engaged with our concerns all the way through. I pay tribute not just to the current and previous members of the Committee, but to the former Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), and indeed to the current Leader of the House for steering this ship home to port. I have a couple of reflections to add on this topic. Of course, when we think about accessibility, it is very easy just to think of physical changes to the structure of the House of Commons, but the Leader of House was absolutely right to think about not just Members but visitors, staff and people who use this building in many different ways, and about accessibility in relation to the public’s understanding of what we are trying to do. There is a tradition in British political thought that the House of Commons should have not merely an efficient aspect to it, as Bagehot would put it, but a dignified aspect to it and even a certain mystique. I think there is some truth to that—as a Conservative, I would say that, wouldn’t I? There is some benefit to sticking with procedures that have proven their worth, even if it requires a little bit of effort to understand them. As a result, I would be very suspicious and concerned, on behalf of the House as an institution, about anything that I thought was dumbing down, but I do not think that is what is at stake here. What is at stake here are intelligent simplifications of language and presentation that allow Members to understand from the get-go how they can contribute constructively and effectively to what we are doing. Although the changes that were put through by previous House Administration officials in relation to the Order Paper did not come out of this process, I think that they were very constructive and helpful. The Order Paper is now unrecognisably better than what it was when I entered Parliament just a few years ago. Let me say a couple of other things. The report mentions restoration and renewal, and it is important to keep these two things separate. The House will know that I am an extreme sceptic on the restoration and renewal process. The content of what is being proposed is poorly conceived, and there is a lack of a fixed budget. I am also sceptical about the process that has been followed and the lack of what I consider genuinely effective governance, but it is important to recognise that the report talks about that in order to reflect the importance of accessibility to that process. Whatever decision the House makes on restoration and renewal—I hope it will go for a drastically different version of what we are talking about—it will respect the need for full accessibility to this House and the House of Lords. I do not think that is on the table or up for negotiation at all, but one key point is that when we discuss this, we should not regard restoration and renewal as any substitute—

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16. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Jesse Norman

    Modernisation Committee Report: Access to the House of Commons

    Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am afraid you may have been slightly misled by your officials. The report mentions restoration and renewal, and specifically refers to it as something that the Committee was invited to look forward to. Therefore, it is not inappropriate to mention it. The specific point that I am making, if I am allowed to make it, is that we should not defer changes out of an expectation that restoration and renewal, whatever it may be, will be a panacea; we should be getting on with changes as soon as they can be made. One of the things that is so attractive about the work that the House Administration did in responding to the report, and to the Committee, was the energetic way in which it started the process of making changes when they were pointed out. I remember the director general coming forward with several hundred potential changes that could be made, and on which the House Administration had started to make progress. Whatever the future may bring, let there be no delay in making this House as genuinely open and accessible as it possibly can be. Let me congratulate everyone on all the work that has been done so far, the officials who have made it happen and the Committee.

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17. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Jesse Norman

    Modernisation Committee Report: Access to the House of Commons

    Thank you very much indeed, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am grateful for the opportunity to say a couple of words about the excellent contributions to the debate. I will, if I may, pick up on a couple of points. I do not think that anything more needs to be added to what the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis) said about properly accessible toilets; he was absolutely right about that. The hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) made a well observed point about the diversity of experience and views among wheelchair users. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) for his gracious words about his predecessor, the brilliant Robert Halfon. I welcome the support of the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) for the sceptic’s view on restoration and renewal. I ask the Leader of the House whether it might be possible to have two debates on that. We could first have what one might call a digestive debate, to discuss the actual process of R and R, how it will work and what might be involved, and then a second debate on the motion. The figure of £40 billion is so big that it would be helpful for the House to pre-consider the matter, before considering the motion. I thank the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) very much for his moving remarks about his experience on the assisted dying private Member’s Bill. Finally, the hon. Member for West Bromwich (Sarah Coombes) reminded us how difficult it is to replicate the specific experience of individual disabled MPs, and how important it is to listen to what they have said. With all that in mind, I thank the Committee and the Leader of the House for all the work they have done, and the Administration for its response.

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18. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Jesse Norman

    Modernisation Committee Report: Access to the House of Commons

    The Leader of the House may not have been in his place, but I suggested that it might be possible to have two debates—a digestive debate and then a debate with a decision. Even if one of those is a Backbench debate, would that be something that he would support?

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19. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Greg Smith

    Tourism Sector

    12. What steps her Department is taking to support the tourism sector.

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20. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Greg Smith

    Tourism Sector

    I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that answer. With people coming to Buckinghamshire to enjoy the beauty of our countryside walking in the Chilterns, the tourism sector is important, but with the punitive levels of business tax hitting all those businesses—such as camping at Orchard View and country retreats at Starveall farm—talk of a tourist tax and an overnight levy could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Can the Secretary of State confirm that she is actively lobbying the Chancellor not to bring in such a levy?

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21. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Gareth Davies

    British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme

    I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement, and for coming to the House proactively this morning. I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and my former career in asset management. I very much welcome the Government’s recognition that industrial energy bills remain incredibly high. This is an issue that businesses across the country have been raising for many months. I have heard what the Secretary of State has to say, and there are a number of areas where I would appreciate further clarity. First, according to the Government’s figures, at least 99% of companies will not benefit from the scheme, even after the announced expansion. Pubs, restaurants, farmers and retailers also face energy cost challenges, and innovative companies such as OpenAI have halted planned multibillion-pound investments in our country. What action will the Government take to address those businesses’ concerns? Secondly, although businesses are being told today that they will be supported and that their energy bills will be reduced, no relief will actually come their way until next year, so what plan is there to provide a more timely relief for businesses who have to pay their energy bills right now? Finally, I am not clear on how this one-off additional payment next year will be funded. Just this week, the International Monetary Fund has expressed concern about the UK economy, saying that we are the most exposed of all major advanced economies, so can the Secretary of State provide clarity to the markets this morning about how this will be paid for? High energy costs for British businesses did not start with the conflict in Iran. We all know that energy prices have been far too high for far too long, and we now have the highest industrial energy prices in the whole G7. We should look at the root of the issue at hand: the structural energy challenges that we face as a country. I am pleased that in the regulatory consultation launched today the Government have committed to the removal of carbon price support from April 2028. That is adopting one of the key provisions of the Conservatives’ cheap power plan, so I very much welcome that, but why wait until 2028, and why stop there? The Secretary of State could go further and adopt the plan in full, ending the carbon tax and green levies right now, as well as scrapping the 78% tax on North sea oil and gas companies. Those pragmatic and sensible steps are actionable right now, today. If he does those things, he will have our full support.

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22. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Gareth Bacon

    Housing Needs: Young People

    This is the first time I have served with you in the Chair, Ms Butler. It is a pleasure to do so, and to take part in this debate about the housing needs of young people. I thank the hon. Members for Mid Dunbartonshire (Susan Murray) and for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) for raising this important topic. The housing needs of young people are multifaceted, with experiences ranging from those in temporary accommodation to those in the private rented sector, those who own their home and those who, for whatever reason, unfortunately find themselves sleeping rough. However, what is clear is that the Government are overseeing a growing problem, and forecasts for the rest of this Parliament predict further misery for young people, whether they are seeking their first home or merely a stable home. One of the core issues behind the housing problem facing young people is a lack of supply, and the axing of measures that were designed to bolster demand. The dream of home ownership should be a reality for every hard-working person in this country, on which I think there is collective agreement in this room, but that is not the case. The Government have not yet done enough to make that dream a reality. For example, recent ONS figures show that the Government’s record in house building is not just a sorry sight; in fact, it is significantly worsening. The statistics show that house building in England is on track to fall to its lowest level in more than a decade. During this Government’s first 15 months in office, just 175,290 homes were completed in England—a far cry from the lofty target of 300,000 needed to meet their manifesto pledge to build 1.5 million homes by the end of this Parliament in 2029. That crash is not showing signs of improvement either, with the three months to September 2025 seeing the number of dwellings drop to 30,880—the weakest quarter since the pandemic. Based on the pace recorded in the first three quarters of 2025, England is set for the lowest number of annual completions for over a decade, totalling just a measly 130,000. Those figures come alongside a release from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government last November, which showed that the number of net new additional dwellings in England was 208,600 in the Government’s first year in power—a 6% drop from 2023-24 during the Conservative Government’s final year in office. Some 190,600 new homes were built, which was a fall of 8,000, or 4%, from 2023-24, once again suggesting that the Government are on course to fall well short of their 1.5 million homes pledge. If they fail to increase the rate of house building, there will be fewer than 1 million new homes completed by 2029, which is well short of their target. What does that mean for young people trying to get on the housing ladder? It means it is becoming only more difficult to buy a home, not easier, and that young people are being failed by the Government. It is not just in housing supply that Whitehall currently presents more hinderances than help for young people. Demand for homes is far from insignificant in this country, not least among young people, but the Government are doing almost nothing to help that demand yield results. By November 2024, having been in office for just four months, they had taken an axe to the previous Government’s measures to get people on the housing ladder by cutting right to buy, first-time buyer stamp duty relief and the affordable homes to purchase programme. That has done nothing to help an already unaffordable housing market. It has in fact moved one of life’s primary assets—the ability to purchase one’s own home—further out of the reach of young people. Young people already face huge challenges in buying a home. For example, the average age of a first-time buyer in England has climbed to 34, as pointed out by the hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire. New research shows the growing difficulty of getting on to the housing ladder, with the average deposit worth around a 10th more than a person’s yearly salary. Research also shows that the average age is rapidly being pushed up by the collapse of the portion of first-time buyers aged under 25. They now make up just 6%, despite having made up one quarter of those buying their first home in the 1990s. To compound the misery, more than half of first-time buyers now need two incomes to make a purchase. Of course, it is important to consider not just those who are fortunate enough to consider buying their first home, but those who are renting, in social housing or in no house at all. On renting, a recent and very informative report by Centrepoint found that one third of young people in the private rental sector reported discrimination by landlords or agents, with the biggest issue being employment status. As unemployment among 16 to 24-year-olds hits 16% as a direct result of the Government’s economic policies—a higher rate than during the pandemic—on the current trajectory, this issue will only worsen for young people, not improve. On top of that, young people face the prospect of a reduced supply of rental housing and, correspondingly, higher rents, which we are beginning to see on the back of the Government’s rental reforms. For young people in social housing, the picture is no brighter. In the same report, Centrepoint highlighted that there are approximately 130,000 young households on housing registers. That means that if social housing were allocated at its current rate, with no new social housing applications from young households filed, it would still take more than six years to clear existing housing registers. To say the least, that is not a positive state of affairs. I hope the Minister will set out a clear path to addressing it in a couple of minutes’ time. There is also a need to tackle the frightening rates of youth homelessness and young people staying in temporary accommodation. I am sure we all agree that no one should enter adulthood without the stability of a permanent and safe home, but under this Government, rough sleeping has hit its highest level since records began. More young people were staying in temporary accommodation, and for longer periods, in 2024-25, and 123,934 young people faced or were at risk of homelessness between April 2024 and March 2025—a 6% increase in just a year. I doubt that the Government have done that on purpose, but young people deserve better. They deserve safe and affordable homes with demand-side support to make the dream of home ownership a reality. That is why the Conservative party has pledged that a future Conservative Government will abolish stamp duty on primary residences. It is a bad tax, and one that needs to be abolished on primary residences to get the housing market moving and to give young people a better chance of getting on to the property ladder. I call on the Minister to get behind that plan, to reverse his Department’s recent failures, to get Britain building, and to get young people to obtain a real stake in their community, their society and their own lives through affordable and targeted housing.

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23. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst

    NHS Federated Data Platform

    I was expecting a promotion there, Dame Siobhain. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) on securing the debate. He has brought forward an issue that sits right at the centre of how we shape the future of our national health service: how we use data, who we trust with it and how we ensure that technology supports care rather than complicates it. The debate has been a thoughtful one, and in many respects it has been revealing. It has shown both the promise of the NHS federated data platform and the unease that still surrounds it. That tension really matters. I am grateful for the significant contributions we have heard from right hon. and hon. Members, with 13 coming from the Back Benches by my count. Let me start by setting out where I think there is common ground across the House. The NHS is under enormous pressure as demand is rising, complexity is increasing and waiting lists remain too high. Too often, clinicians are working without the full picture in front of them. Anyone who has spent time in the health service knows that this is not a system that lacks dedication. It is, however, a system that too often lacks coherence. Data is part of that problem as it is scattered, fragmented and difficult to use in a joined-up way. Records do not always reliably follow the patient, and information is duplicated, delayed or simply not available when it is needed most. The consequence of that is not just theoretical; it is time lost, inefficiencies and, at times, patients not getting the care they should when they should. The case for doing things better is a strong one; in fact, it is unavoidable. The FDP is one attempt to respond to that challenge. It seeks to bring together information in a way that allows the NHS to work more effectively, helping clinicians and supporting managers with the ultimate aim of improving care for patients. There are some early signs that this is beginning to deliver; waiting lists have been cleaned up, and some hospitals have reported better flow through theatres and wards. Those are practical improvements. As is so often the case in government, the easier question is whether something can work; the much harder question is whether it will be accepted. There are clearly concerns here. We have heard about reluctance in part of the workforce. I am not suggesting there is uniform opposition, but there is certainly hesitation and, in some cases, disengagement. We should be careful, however, not to exaggerate that. Big reforms in the NHS have always faced resistance, often at the start. This is not necessarily something new, and on its own it is not necessarily decisive. At the same time, however, it is not irrelevant; if the people expected to use this system do not have confidence in it, its impact will always be limited. Will the Minister say what is the assessment of staff engagement with the FDP and how the Government are ensuring that this is something done with the NHS, rather than done to it? In the end, that will make the real difference. The same issue arises with public trust. People are right to care about their medical data—it is sensitive, personal and deeply private. Once confidence is lost in this area, it is very difficult to rebuild it. There are important safeguards in place: the data remains under NHS control, the access is tightly regulated, and the provider does not own or use the data for its own purposes. The legal framework underpinning those safeguards is strong. Those are not minor points—they really matter. However, we also have to recognise something else. People are not just asking whether the system is safe today, but what it enables tomorrow. Could the data be combined in ways that reveal more than people expect? Could systems evolve in ways not originally intended? Could future Governments choose to use the capability in different ways? Those are not unreasonable questions; they are the natural questions people ask when large new systems are created. Again, I ask the Minister what more will be done to reassure the public about the limits of how NHS data can be used and whether he can set out clearly where parliamentary oversight comes in if the use of data is expanded in the future. Trust is not built by reassurance alone; it is built by clarity and restraint. A significant part of this debate has understandably focused on Palantir, and it is right that it has. Palantir is now a major supplier within the NHS data infrastructure as well as elsewhere across Government, and that raises legitimate questions about not just capability but dependence. For some the concern is political, while for others it is about principle. For many, though, it is something much more practical: what happens if we become too reliant on a single provider for something as critical as health data infrastructure? I think that is a fair question. However, we should also separate those questions from the broader argument about the company’s international work. In a global economy, companies will inevitably work with different Governments, and that alone is not a sufficient reason to exclude them from public contracts in the UK. The question of procurement design, competition and resilience, however, is a different matter.

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24. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst

    NHS Federated Data Platform

    If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will not. I want the Minister to have sufficient time to respond to the multiple contributions there have been today. I ask the Minister the following questions. How are the Government ensuring that the NHS is not locked into a single supplier over the long term? What is the plan for maintaining genuine competition in this space? How easy would it be in practical terms to move to an alternative system if that was ever required? There is then the issue of resilience. Some have argued that the FDP creates a single point of failure, while others have argued that the current fragmented system is itself a weakness and that greater coherence improves security and oversight. Both arguments deserve to be taken seriously. But practical questions remain: how resilient is this system to cyber-attacks or technical failure? What safeguards are in place? What happens if something goes wrong at scale? The last matter I wish to address is that of governance. With the abolition of NHS England, there is now a question about where the responsibilities for the FDP properly sit. That matters because accountability cannot be diffuse. I take this opportunity to ask the Minister: who is responsible for the programme now, where does that accountability lie, and how will Parliament be able to scrutinise its performance going forward? Better use of data has a real role to play in NHS reform, and the FDP may well prove to be part of that answer. Success will depend on more than just delivery; it will depend on confidence within the system: confidence from clinicians that the system helps rather than hinders them, confidence from patients that their data is properly protected and confidence from the public that our decisions are transparent, proportionate and properly accountable. If those conditions are met, this reform can succeed. If they are not, even the best designed system will struggle. We, as His Majesty’s loyal Opposition, will support what improves care and welcome what works, but will continue to ask questions that ensure reform is done properly in a way that sustains public trust. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

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25. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst

    Armed Forces Bill (Sixth sitting)

    It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. Before I start, I should probably put it on record that I am on the RARO—Regular Army Reserve of Officers—list as a former Regular Army officer. I joined my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford on the delegation to Ukraine, which was put together by UK Friends of Ukraine and during which we had some very interesting conversations, as he said, about the ability to mobilise reserve forces at a time of pressing threats. I want to speak very briefly—I am sure other Members will be pleased that my contribution will be brief—on amendments 20 to 24. I will start with amendments 20 and 21, with amendment 21 being consequential on amendment 20. These appear to be sensible technical amendments that would bring the Bill in line with the civilian world. In the light of the facts that the retirement age is likely to be pushed forward as people are living longer, that we need to have a more flexible and resilient reserve force, and that the nature of warfare has changed, with many more technical roles, it seems sensible to increase the age of liability to 67. On amendment 22, my right hon. Friend set out very clearly the growing threats. It is a daily occurrence for us in this place to be talking about the increasing and ongoing threats facing us across the world. In those circumstances, it seems wise to extend the duration of a recall order from 12 months to 18 months. That does not mean it would have to go up to the 18-month point, but it would provide more flex and resilience in the system. Amendment 23, again, reflects the realities of life. Many individuals who have served in uniform go into roles that are vital for our defence, albeit are no longer required still to wear the uniform of His Majesty. In those circumstances, to lose their skillset by automatically requiring them to be recalled from those reserved occupations seems counterproductive to the aims we should be seeking to achieve. Finally, amendment 24 recognises the reality of the situation we live in. We need more flexibility to respond with agility and speed to changing circumstances. Therefore, halving the notice period for recall from 180 days to 90 would seem a sensible and prudent approach. I promised Members that my contribution would be short this time, and I have delivered on that promise.

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26. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Dr Kieran Mullan

    Courts and Tribunals Bill (Fifth sitting)

    It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I want to begin by touching again on the question of necessity. One of the key arguments for clause 3, and one of the reasons why the Opposition think there is a debate to be had, is that we do not feel that the new provisions are entirely necessary to bring down the backlog, and that there might be other means by which we might do so. We have had a debate about what the figures say, and I have laid out why I think they are important. They are important because the Government accept that, quite plainly, they have not yet implemented the reforms that they think are absolutely necessary to bring down the backlog. While the Government and the Opposition recognise that some steps that might help have been taken, such as the lifting of the cap on sitting days, the Minister herself accepts that even that measure will not have had full effect yet. On other measures, such as on prison transport, there has not been any significant reform or undertakings to do things differently. We are at a very early stage of the approach to bringing down the backlogs in the significant way that the Minister and the Opposition would like to achieve. In that scenario, given that so little has been done in comparison with what we would hope to achieve—with or without the Bill—if there were some suggestion that backlogs were falling, that would be incredibly important for the Committee to understand. It would give us the confidence to question whether, at this early stage, there is an alternative approach. If we are managing to bring the backlogs down in some parts of the country, we could base that approach on understanding what is happening in those areas and expanding on it before taking the unprecedented step of restricting jury trial rights. The Minister and I had an exchange about this in an earlier debate. I suggested that there have been positive developments and a reduction of the backlog in some areas. I want to be clear about what I said to the Minister: “What is happening right now with the backlogs is extremely important to this debate. If the backlogs are coming down in some places without these changes being introduced, it is vital to know and understand that.” I echoed those points in other parts of the debate. The Minister responded: “I checked this during the adjournment of the sitting: the CBA’s point relates to new receipts in certain courts, rather than the state of the backlogs, which, as I said, continue to rise. I absolutely welcome the progress in some parts of the country in lowering receipts, which is obviously good news for the courts, but that does not yet reflect any lowering of the backlogs. As we would expect, the investment will take time to kick in.”––[Official Report, Courts and Tribunals Public Bill Committee, 14 April 2026; c. 159.] In response to my question as to whether the backlogs were coming down in some parts of the country, the Minister told the Committee—on the record—that they were not. As Members might imagine, I went away and had a further look at the data to ensure that that was the case. My understanding of the latest available published statistics is that the Minister may have inadvertently misled the Committee in stating that the backlogs were not coming down in certain parts of the country. As of December 2025—the latest period for which we have this data is from quarter 3 to quarter 4—there has been a drop in the backlogs in the south-east, the north-west and Wales. We have seen a drop in the backlogs in the quarter-on-quarter data in three parts of the country, and it is extremely important that the Committee understands that.

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27. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Dr Kieran Mullan

    Courts and Tribunals Bill (Fifth sitting)

    In all the other regions and overall, the backlogs are going up. That is why we have to understand what is happening regionally and why I asked the Minister about that. Throughout this Committee, one of the main arguments from Opposition Members, the Criminal Bar Association and other opponents of the Bill has been that if we are able to replicate what is happening in the best parts of the system, we should be prioritising that. For example, Liverpool Crown court does not have what might be called unacceptable levels of backlog. As Sir Brian and others have pointed out, every Crown court has a backlog in the sense of a trail of cases that are due to be heard. That is a normal and needed part of the process of case management, and no one argues that there is an unsustainable and unacceptable backlog in Liverpool Crown court. If Liverpool and whole regions can get it right, surely we should be prioritising trying to replicate that.

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28. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Dr Kieran Mullan

    Courts and Tribunals Bill (Fifth sitting)

    The hon. Member has articulated extremely well that these things can be done differently and have a different outcome. I heard about case management directly from Liverpool Crown court. It has an aggressive approach to case management: it swept the cases and was clear whether it needed to be hearing a case or whether it could do any work to get a plea. It does a lot of work, and if every court was doing that, it would deliver different outcomes. The Minister might rightly point out that different courts have different circumstances, but surely the goal should be to correct those circumstances so that the positive things enabling some courts to bring the backlogs down can be done everywhere.

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29. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Dr Kieran Mullan

    Courts and Tribunals Bill (Fifth sitting)

    Yes, absolutely. In the NHS, I worked on what we might call change and improvement programmes or quality improvement programmes. We worked hard to replicate the best clinical practice everywhere, but it is simply not possible to directly replicate everything that goes on in every unit, although that is not to say that we cannot do some of what goes on. As the hon. Member for Bolton South and Walkden pointed out, we are not talking about a single court; that is why I was clear about looking at this on a regional basis. I do not think that the data in any of these regions is getting better because of one court that has specific circumstances that cannot be replicated. That is why we have to show a high degree of interest in understanding what can be replicated and in trying those measures. As we heard from the representatives of the criminal Bar and the circuit, we should give them a chance to try some of these things before we do something so unprecedented that will lead to a curtailment of rights. Nobody thinks that the other, positive parts of the Bill, or the measures that do not even require legislation, take away from anything else; they are just exceptionally positive things we could be doing where we do not pay some kind of price. Surely, we should try those before taking the step proposed in the Bill. Whether or not we think this step is reasonable—Labour Members have made it clear that they do—I doubt they think it will not lead to a loss in relation to jury trial rights.

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30. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Dr Kieran Mullan

    Courts and Tribunals Bill (Fifth sitting)

    Yes, and my hon. Friend did an excellent job of pointing out that although that might have been in some non-statutory documents, we do not know, because we do not have the details. We do not know whether that was included in the impact statement or the modelling that the Government have relied so heavily on to make their case. As I have said, it is extremely important that the Minister said, on the record, that there was no lowering of the backlogs in any of the regions. The data I can see suggests that there has been a quarter-on-quarter lowering of the backlog in three regions.

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31. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Dr Kieran Mullan

    Courts and Tribunals Bill (Fifth sitting)

    I accept the first point. If the Minister had said, “Yes, there is a drop in the backlog in those three regions, but we tend to see that because of this,” citing the points the hon. Member made, we would be having a different discussion, but she did not say that; she said there was no drop. On the second point, the hon. Member is also right: if that rate of drop was all we were ever going to get, it would not make a material difference to the backlog. That is why I was very clear that, if we are getting a drop, in a context where everybody agrees we are very early in the process and have done a fraction of the things we could do, it is important for us to look at it. If we were at the end of the process and had done all the things we all agree are positive and should be done, and that was the rate of return we were getting, we would be having a different debate. But we are not at the end of it; we are at the start.

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32. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Dr Kieran Mullan

    Courts and Tribunals Bill (Fifth sitting)

    I draw the Committee’s attention to my remarks at the outset of our proceedings: our judicial system, victims and defendants and how we manage crime in this country are my personal priorities. That is primarily the reason why I sought to be elected to this place, so I will never disagree that justice should get a higher priority than it has historically. I also pointed out that Labour Members more broadly have accepted that justice getting insufficient priority in our political system has gone on for many decades. The hon. Member for Birmingham Erdington is right in pointing out the backlogs that existed prior to the pandemic, and they were actually lower than those we inherited from the previous Government. If we are talking purely about what happened with the backlogs, our record prior to the pandemic was an improvement on that of the previous Labour Government. That does not mean it is okay; that does not mean we say, “We did a great job,” but it is important, in balancing and understanding the debate, to know that. In terms of what we did in relation to the covid pandemic and all the challenges it posed, we had uncapped sitting days and Nightingale courts, and we took steps to try to address the backlog. I served on the Justice Committee, scrutinising what the Government were doing at that time. I was very frustrated, because we would visit Nightingale courts and one of the biggest challenges they faced was the lack of certainty about whether they would be renewed in the future. I questioned Ministers at the time about that. To all of us on the Committee, on a cross-party basis, it was obvious that those courts would need to carry on for longer—why not just get on and agree that and let them run in that sustained way? There were many things we could and should have done better. That is not to say that we did not do anything or that, prior to the pandemic, our record did not compare favourably to that of the previous Labour Government. As I said, in that particular example we introduced the innovation of making the provisional data available earlier. In June, given the challenges with that data being wrong on occasion, a decision was taken to temporarily stop publication, to see if we could close that gap. If that data is significantly different from the revised published data, there is sense in looking again at the methodology and seeing whether the gap between the provisional and final data can be closed. But here we are, almost a year later, and the Government have not chosen to reinstitute the publication of that provisional data. I think everyone on the Committee would benefit from seeing that data, so I would be interested to know whether that is the basis on which the Minister has said the backlogs in some regions are not going down, when in fact, from the evidence and data I have seen, they are. Our amendments are aimed at delivering a fairer system. Amendment 23 also seeks to achieve that outcome, in a more specific but equally valid way. As my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate said, human beings in criminal cases are not neat, so we need a degree of flexibility. There is not flexibility in all parts of the system at the moment, but allowing a judge, on their own, in these types of cases, to allocate, hear the case, determine guilt and issue a sentence is unprecedented in our judicial system—

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33. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Dr Kieran Mullan

    Courts and Tribunals Bill (Fifth sitting)

    Although not intentionally, the hon. Member cut me off before I made the point I was going to make, which is that this is unprecedented in cases of this nature, with sentences of this length.

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34. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Dr Kieran Mullan

    Courts and Tribunals Bill (Fifth sitting)

    I covered that in earlier remarks, when I pointed out that those people are not adults, so it is a different set of circumstances. If the hon. Member is asking me to be ultra-specific—I am happy to be—what is proposed is unprecedented for cases of this nature, with adults, with these sentence lengths. That is, of course, the vast bulk of our justice system. There are lots of things that we do differently for children than we do for adults in the justice system. I am not familiar with arguments suggesting that those distinctions cannot be made, and that something we do with the youth custodial element or judicial process must therefore be perfectly acceptable with the adult estate. We do not do that.

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35. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Dr Kieran Mullan

    Courts and Tribunals Bill (Fifth sitting)

    Again, we talked about this before. There are degrees of fairness. Specifically on whether a defendant will get a judge who is as fair as possible in terms of representation, understanding their background and so on, I think it is less fair than a jury system. But I made it clear that other factors are given greater weight in the youth court. For example, the intimidation that a young defendant might feel in the adult court versus the youth court is given greater weight. I might think overall that the deal, so to speak, for the youth defendant is fair and reasonable, but that does not mean that I cannot say that the absence of a jury might be less fair for a youth defendant in some regards.

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36. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Dr Kieran Mullan

    Courts and Tribunals Bill (Fifth sitting)

    To use the word that the hon. Member used at the start of her intervention, it is a balance. We in the Opposition are clear that the Government have that balance wrong, which is why we oppose the measures. As I said, the Government want to have this both ways: on the one hand, when it suits them, they say that it is a balancing exercise, but on the other hand, when we point out flaws in the balance, they say, “Everything’s fine. You would be just as happy in a trial with or without a jury.” The Government should be consistent. If the Government just said, “This is a balancing exercise. There will be some detriment to people as a result, but we believe that it is right”, and then stuck to that line, at least it would be intellectually coherent. The Minister might think that makes it a debating point, but I think it is pretty important in politics to be intellectually coherent. We take a different view from the Government. The other point that we think is different, too, is that the proposal will not achieve the desired outcome. Even if we agreed, in theory, that the balancing exercise was correct and that the trade-off that the Government seek to achieve were a reasonable one to make against the loss of the rights that we are talking about, we do not think that the Government will get those outcomes. We therefore think that the Government’s argument is fatally flawed in two respects, which is why we continue to oppose the Bill. As I said, fairness is important. We focused on the example where a first-time offender might end up with fewer rights in our judicial system than a repeat offender; in respect of, for example, loss of respect, reputation, employment or income, the person who has more at stake has their rights removed. That is a point made clearly by JUSTICE, which supports our amendment 39. JUSTICE states that the three-year threshold is likely to lead to outcomes that are seen as unfair by those within the system and by the public. Repeat offenders are more likely to qualify for a jury trial, because their previous convictions would push the likely sentence above three years, while first-time offenders committing the same offence may be denied a jury trial. When we put that to Ministers, as I said, they say that it is perfectly fine for those people to have a trial without a jury, and that is fair. Ministers also say, however, that they are keeping jury trials for the most serious cases—but if they are keeping it for the most serious cases, they must at some level accept that it is a superior system in some way. Otherwise, why keep it for the more serious cases, as they define them? The Government cannot hold both positions coherently. Absolutely, as I said, the core issue is fairness. The Government want to have it both ways in this argument, but of course the defendants will not get to have it both ways. The defendants will just have what they are told by the judge, without any ability to exercise their rights in the way that they think is fair or consistent with the broader point. We therefore continue to press our amendment 39 and that is why I ask Labour Members to think carefully; this might not be universal, but how many of them would feel happy if they—with their previous good character, and all the damage that could happen to their reputation and income from a conviction—were not allowed to have the option of a jury trial? I cannot say for sure, but potentially some of them might feel differently then.

    Hansard source
37. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Dr Kieran Mullan

    Courts and Tribunals Bill (Fifth sitting)

    Why does the Minister think it is important that some cases remain with a jury trial? What are the material differences that she sees between a jury trial and a non-jury trial that cause her to seek to allow some to continue with a jury trial?

    Hansard source
38. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Dr Kieran Mullan

    Courts and Tribunals Bill (Fifth sitting)

    Does the Minister accept that there are elements of a jury trial—not necessarily as a whole, but some elements—that are superior to a trial without a jury?

    Hansard source
39. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Dr Kieran Mullan

    Courts and Tribunals Bill (Fifth sitting)

    I have a background in healthcare. The Minister has talked about triage being led by healthcare professionals, but there is another side of healthcare where people can insist on choice. This Government have introduced Martha’s rule, where the family member can not only insist on choice, but override what the treating clinical team think is the right course of treatment. They are given a route to go around them, to call someone, to insist that they are wrong and that they fundamentally disagree with them, and to get somebody else in who will challenge what the consultant in charge of the patient thinks is right. The Minister points to one element of the healthcare system where the state has a greater degree of control, but does she accept that there are other aspects of the healthcare system where we allow people to override what the healthcare team want to do?

    Hansard source
40. 16 Apr 2026·Parliament·Dr Kieran Mullan

    Courts and Tribunals Bill (Fifth sitting)

    Will the Minister give way on that point?

    Hansard source