Jess Brown-Fuller

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Parliament's party history for this member: Liberal Democrat (4 Jul 2024 – present).

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1. 3 Nov 2026·Parliament·Jess Brown-Fuller

   Draft Administrative Court (Recording and Broadcasting) and Court of Appeal (Recording and Broadcasting) (Amendment) Order 2026 Draft Magistrates’ Courts (Recording and Broadcasting) Order 2026

   It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Alec. The Liberal Democrats support these orders. As the Minister outlined, they build on existing broadcasting practices across the judicial system to expand the broadcasting framework for the Court of Appeal and to permit recording and broadcasting in the administrative court, and in the magistrates court for the most high-profile magistrates cases. The UK Supreme Court has been broadcast since 2009, the Court of Appeal since 2013 and Crown court sentencing remarks since 2020, with the first Crown court broadcast in July 2022. Transparency in the criminal justice system is essential for public trust. It is crucial that justice is not just done, but seen to be done. These orders will support open justice and make the administration of justice and the rule of law more accessible. I have just a couple of questions for the Minister. First, following the power outage of the Google cloud network that caused chaos across the court system on 20 October, does the Minister know of any evidence that the broadcasting of proceedings has ever caused delays in our court system? Does she have any concerns that expanding the use of digital technology the system could delay proceedings? Secondly, justice is obviously made more accessible by the provision of court transcripts to victims, which we have discussed many times. Many victims are unable to attend the entirety of hearings or trials, and court proceedings can be very complex and difficult to follow, especially when it comes to sentencing decisions. Although we welcome the progress made in the Sentencing Act 2026 on providing Crown court sentencing remarks free of charge, the Government must go further. I know that the Minister is keen on that, so will she outline what more she hopes to do in respect of court transcripts to ensure that justice is done and seen to be done?<span id="7" class="column-number" data-column-number="7"></span>

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2. 3 Nov 2026·Parliament·Jess Brown-Fuller

   Train Services: Extreme Weather

   It is interesting listening to the hon. Gentleman’s speech and realising the commonalities that we have, even though our constituencies are so far apart, with mine being located on the south coast of England. A lot of my constituents travel outside the city of Chichester for work; similarly, a lot of people living in Bognor Regis and Portsmouth come into Chichester for work. All these people are encouraged to use public transport, but since extreme weather is rapidly becoming just weather, does he agree that it is incredibly frustrating for people who are constantly being told, “We are sorry for the disruptions, but we are experiencing extreme weather”? On 40 days this year temperatures have reached over 30 degrees. Similarly, leaves on the line can stop trains from running; indeed, the other day swans on the line stopped the trains from running on our arterial railway route. We need to get a grip and ensure that trains can run, so that people can continue to work.

   Hansard source
3. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Jess Brown-Fuller

   Council Housing

   The hon. Gentleman is giving an impassioned speech about Poole that is really resonating with me as the MP for Chichester, because I see in my constituency large-scale developments delivering four and five-bedroom luxury houses that are not affordable for most people. Does he agree that middle-income earners are particularly affected? A lot of our frontline service workers cannot afford private rents, but earn too much to be eligible for social housing. That is why we need to see a number of social homes across the whole country that the Government will deliver, so that developers cannot renege on their commitments to deliver the homes that we are asking for.

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4. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Jess Brown-Fuller

   Council Housing

   An issue we have seen in my constituency is developers citing viability assessments to try to renege on the commitments that they originally outlined to deliver social and affordable homes. They would rather pay something called a commuted sum—in effect a fine—that does not actually help to deliver social homes at scale. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Minister should look at the way the commuted sum is assessed so that we do not lose the opportunity for social homes to be delivered?

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5. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Jess Brown-Fuller

   Electronic Monitoring of Offenders

   Over 5,000 offenders went unmonitored in the first half of this year due to serious delays in the tagging system, and in the year to March, an average of 300 people per week were released from prison with no fixed address, making it incredibly difficult to ensure that offenders are tagged and then managed in the community. That adds to the strain on both the Probation Service and the police, who are using scarce resources to manage an increasingly large caseload and keep victims safe. The Government have repeatedly promised that they will not jeopardise public safety, but many victims following the stories over the weekend, especially after Mark Rowley’s comments, will struggle to believe them. Will the Government listen to the calls of the Victims’ Commissioner to tag individuals at the gate and roll that out to every prison by January? We also welcomed the Government’s announcement to introduce restriction zones for offenders, which limits the movement for perpetrators rather than victims, but the effectiveness of those zones will require offenders to be properly monitored and any breaches to be addressed without delay. Is the Minister confident that there are enough resources to operate restriction zones effectively, and when will we see a national roll-out of this important measure?

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6. 26 Oct 2026·Parliament·Jess Brown-Fuller

   Rough Sleeping and Good Growth Funds

   Stonepillow is a local charity tackling homelessness on the streets of Chichester. One of its most vital services is the day hubs, where people can engage if they are at risk of, or are experiencing, homelessness, importantly without any judgment. So much of the Government’s previous funding has been crisis funding, but prevention work, as the Minister knows, is a key part of tackling the root causes and cycles of homelessness. If this programme is designed to be locally led, does the Minister see value in encouraging local leaders to direct some of the funding to outreach services such as the day hubs, which are currently working on an annual cycle and do not have the structure to know that they will survive?

   Hansard source
7. 22 Oct 2026·Parliament·Jess Brown-Fuller

   Black History Month

   The Minister will know that Munya Chawawa’s experience took place in my constituency. Chichester Festival theatre has been supporting the cast after they came forward and explained the racism that they saw. Munya also spoke about a “pipeline of hatred” that people are seeing on their screens and in their algorithms; it is shifting the Overton window and letting people think that things like that are okay when they are absolutely not. Does she agree that we need to call out the far-right rhetoric that is being pushed on to our teenagers’ social media screens, in order to protect people across the country who dedicate their life to creating wonderful art?

   Hansard source
8. 22 Oct 2026·Parliament·Jess Brown-Fuller

   Black History Month

   It is a pleasure to speak in today’s debate on Black History Month and follow some incredible contributions from the Minister, the shadow Minister and the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra). I thank the Government for ensuring that the debate takes place in Government time, as that is a clear indication of just how important the subject is. Britain’s black communities have enriched the social fabric of the United Kingdom, adding vitality to our streets, shops, frontline services and culture throughout <span id="1328" class="column-number" data-column-number="1328"></span>the country. We would be a poorer, less dynamic, less exciting and less colourful country had individuals not boarded ships such as the HMT Empire Windrush and made Britain their home. As the Minister acknowledged, Black History Month has been marked for 39 years and when it was first celebrated, there were just three black MPs. Its purpose is to remember those who came before—as the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston said, we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us—but it also looks to the future to address the systemic issues that our black communities still face. In Chichester and throughout the country, we owe our black communities so much, yet, in truth, society has let them down badly and continues to do so. The lives of far too many people are still blighted by prejudice, discrimination and inequality. I thank the Minister for raising the case that Munya Chawawa has brought into the light this week. He is an actor, comedian and social commentator, and his social commentary about his experience in the past six weeks in Chichester has broken my heart. He spoke out about the experience of the cast of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, who have been with us over the past six weeks doing a really cool production—it is one of the best versions that I have ever had the privilege of watching. It is also Munya’s first time taking to the stage—in a Shakespeare play—and it was incredibly inspiring to have kids from the BRIT School come and watch the performance. Munya has established the Black Boys Theatre Club, and it is his ambition to ensure that black children have access to theatre. I watched with delight all these young children talking about how much they had enjoyed watching Shakespeare in Chichester and how cool their first experience of theatre was in my constituency. Munya spoke about a homophobic attack—it has now been called a hate crime, and an arrest has been made—that caused the show not to go up. When that happened, the rest of the cast spoke about their experiences over the past six weeks of just walking through the city. When they went for a night out in Brighton to get out of Chichester, they experienced racism there. Munya has said that he experienced more racism and xenophobia in six weeks than he had experienced in his entire life. He has been a tireless campaigner against discrimination —he is very good at calling it out and doing so in a comedic way that lots of people identify with; that is why he has such a huge following on social media—and I am really grateful to him for calling it out. I declare an interest, as a trustee of Chichester Festival Theatre. The theatre has been trying to tackle this issue for years and years, and we have been having a conversation about it with the board. When we invite talented actors to Chichester Festival Theatre, we want them to feel like it is their home. We want them to feel welcome and included, so how do we make the environment around the theatre like that for them? I have been somewhat reassured by the outpouring of love both on social media and in my inbox from people saying, “I had no idea. What can we do?” One of the reflections that the cast shared with the theatre was that they were in the city centre when these things happened, but nobody called them out.

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9. 22 Oct 2026·Parliament·Jess Brown-Fuller

   Black History Month

   I appreciate that intervention. It is not the job of those who experience the abuse to be the only ones calling it out. Going forward, we are working as a community to bring voices together so that we can talk about and come up with actions to better support those experiencing abuse. That should not be the job of those experiencing intolerance and abuse day in, day out. We also need to do some work with the police, whom I have spoken to at length over the last couple of weeks. When I say, “This is happening”, they say, “It was not reported”—well, it was not reported because people get really tired of constantly reporting things and not seeing a change. A lot of the cast members did not share their experience with the theatre before the homophobic attack that caused the show not to go up. It was only then, in a safe space, that they were able to say, “Actually, that resonates with me, because I experienced this when I was out in the city centre. I experienced this when we went out to get food.” They had not reported their experiences to the police, and the onus should not always be on them to do so. We need to have a wider conversation about what businesses and individuals can do in the city. In truth, it feels like we are going backwards. Somebody said to me the other day, “It does not feel like the Overton window has shifted; it feels like it has fallen out of its frame.” Much of the abuse comes from individuals who are emboldened by the growth and increasing acceptance of the far right on social media, in the press and across other platforms. Those are spaces, often pushed by prominent politicians, that make individuals, particularly young people, believe that certain language and behaviours are acceptable. Racist abuse and far-right views gain even greater reach when they are associated with political leaders; the algorithm eats those views up and sends them into those spaces. We all have a responsibility to challenge those prejudices and behaviours, especially when we have important political debates about issues such as immigration, in which people too often conflate immigration, race and crime. I for one do not want racism to become normalised once more, or for people to feel that staying silent is easier than standing up for others. We all need to call it out whenever we see it. Moving forward, it is important that we in this place reflect on the scandals of the past that have left dark scars on our society. From Windrush to Grenfell and the crisis in maternity care, those scandals represent individuals and communities who have been let down, where systemic discrimination has played no small part. Those are individuals whose dignity and rights were disregarded because of failings in the state apparatus. I am proud that the Liberal Democrats are committed to fighting for racial equality, and that means unequivocally condemning racism in all its forms and tackling injustice wherever we see it. It is a shame that my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Josh Babarinde) cannot be here today. I see how much abuse he receives online on social media. When he puts up a post about something he is <span id="1330" class="column-number" data-column-number="1330"></span>doing to fight for Eastbourne general hospital, someone will write in the comments section, “Deport.” His response to that is, “There are no direct flights to Eastbourne general hospital, so I can’t do that.” I recognise that the proliferation of abuse that is then liked and shared means that his experience as a black MP is totally different from my experience as a white MP. The abuse he receives is off the scale and totally unacceptable. In the Liberal Democrat election manifesto, we committed to implementing a comprehensive race equality strategy aimed at reducing the disproportionately high maternal mortality rates experienced by black women and eliminating racial disparities in maternal health through a cross-departmental target and strategy. We also want to end the disproportionate use of stop and search and require all police forces throughout the country to adopt ambitious targets for improving the diversity of their workforces. We have also called for the reversal of the voter ID scheme, which disproportionately excludes minorities from democracy, and for all political parties to publish candidate diversity data. We must also tackle discrimination in the use of new technology, beginning with halting the use of facial recognition surveillance, which is much more likely to wrongly identify black people or women. On criminal justice, it is clear that the immense disparity in different ethnicities in our prison population represents a systemic failing across society. As of this year, 12% of the prison population are black, far exceeding the percentage of the general population. That is underpinned by the fact that black defendants receive on average longer custodial sentences than people of other ethnicities for the same crimes. It is clear that much more needs to be done across the system to begin to address those disparities, particularly on diversity and training in the judiciary. The Liberal Democrats tabled amendments to the Courts and Tribunals Bill in that regard. We must implement a new data strategy across the criminal justice system to ensure that capacity meets demand and that we understand the needs of all users, especially victims, vulnerable people and those from ethnic minority backgrounds. Black History Month is a vital opportunity to celebrate the immense contribution that black people make to our lives in Britain. There are those who ask why we need Black History Month; I hear that being said. That is the same argument used by people who say, “Why do we need Pride? Have we not got there?” No, we absolutely have not. What happened in Chichester just this week is a prime example of why it is all the more important to keep highlighting these things year on year. As the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston said, progress is not linear. It is very easy to slip backwards, and we all need to be alive and alert to that. We need to ensure that we represent all the wonderful qualities that we want our country to represent, not those that do not represent what we feel. We must carry on celebrating Black History Month, because we have an immense contribution to celebrate, but it also provides the chance to recognise the scale of the challenge we still face. I am very grateful to the Leader of the House for granting time for this important debate.

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10. 22 Oct 2026·Parliament·Jess Brown-Fuller

    Black History Month

    Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need to stop politicians from profiting by sharing such views? The hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) has declared earnings of over £100,000 from X since being elected to this place, so it pays to say more explicitly appalling things. Does the hon. Member agree with me that we should end that practice entirely?

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