Kieran Mullan MP: speeches

Speeches

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Has there been any change over that period in the use of jury trials? Have you used them more or less? Doug Downey: We have not made changes to the jury trials, but we have made changes to compensation for jurors and how we get responses from jurors electronically versus in paper, and we changed our jury rolls. But in terms of what juries apply to, we have not made changes during that period.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Would it be fair to say that you had an increase in the backlog and then a decrease, without making any changes to the extent of the use of jury trials? Doug Downey: We have not used that as one of the levers. To give a sense of scale, about 96% of our trials are judge-alone, so in terms of making a change, it would be to add more juries, which I would suggest, based on the data and experience we have, would move us in the wrong direction on the backlog.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Okay. This question is more directly about your role. If you were to draw up a list for the Minister of the top five things that you thought would make a big impact on the delays that you are experiencing at HMCTS, what would be the top two, and where would structural reform of the courts, a new court bench, and removal of the right to elect sit on that list? Daniel Flury: The top two things are uncapped sitting days, and long-term certainty over sitting days. That is what we have been provided with in HMCTS. But as I am sure the Committee has heard, on the current projections, even sitting at uncapped levels and having certainty over three years is not enough to reverse the Crown and magistrates’ caseload. We need something else if we are to arrest the growth in caseload.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q What is your comment on the fact that the Government are asking us to support and understand the estimates of Sir Brian Leveson based on his experience, and to accept modelling that is uncertain, but when you and thousands of others sign a letter criticising them, using that same experience to justify your views, we are told, “That’s not credible. Surely, you need to listen to Sir Brian.”

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q The first example you have given is structural and not replicable across the whole country, but the other points you have made are all things we could support and implement more widely than just Liverpool. Clement Goldstone: There needs to be a cultural change.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Sure, but do you think that people might be concerned that you cannot say that no one had any pressure applied to them? Sarah Sackman: What I know is that as a Minister, I seek, along with other Ministers, to set the culture of my Department. We keep the channels of communication open with all the stakeholders that you have heard from today, including many who are robustly not just opposing but campaigning against this. I was counting, and I think I must have engaged with the Bar at least 10 times since I became a Minister. I expect my officials to follow that lead, and that is the steer that they get from me: that we want to engage and have those conversations. In advance of the particular engagement I am talking about, I held and led a number of stakeholder engagement sessions where I explained the rationale for the measures and what we were doing for victims. A number of those groups’ signatures ended up on that letter, so I did not persuade them, but the engagement was there—and it was open, convivial and constructive.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Given your experience of seeing how proceedings flow in the courtroom on a day-to-day basis, I want to talk to you about modelling and the estimates of how much time will be saved. In relation to the proposed new Crown Court bench division, Sir Brian Leveson’s report says: “Modelling assumes cases sent to the CCBD are 20% quicker to try than Crown Court cases with a jury and that the same proportion of cases ultimately plead guilty. However this… 20% assumption is highly uncertain”. Do you agree that the central assumption is highly uncertain? What are your views about how will this operate in practice? Claire Davies: We agree it is uncertain. When you go into a court trial process involving a jury, the types of cases that will go before these courts are generally the three to four or maybe five-day trials. When you look at those, the jury involvement is such that the only time that you would really save, so far as we can see, is in the swearing in of a jury, which takes 15 to 20 minutes, and maybe a factual summing up from the judge, which tends not to be very long in these cases. We therefore see the saving as minimal, because to maintain open justice, the evidence must be heard in court. That is very important for the public to understand what happens in our courtrooms. Sir Brian Leveson suggested this morning that judges would be more interventionist, saving more time and getting to the point. While one can see on the one hand that that is an attractive argument, it simply cannot happen because the defendant and the witnesses are there and the public needs to know what the evidence is. It is all very well saying that a judge can read the papers effectively, and that they do not need to elaborate on it in court and can get to the issues, but that would defeat the very important principle of open justice, so we do not agree that the time savings will be as significant for those reasons.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Do you also agree that people who have the interests of victims at the heart of their thinking and positions on this can reasonably oppose your proposals, and that that does not in any way reflect a lack of concern for victims or the experiences they are going through? Sarah Sackman: Of course I do. I have always said—and the Deputy Prime Minister has made the same point—that in reforming and rebuilding this system, we have sought to put victims at the heart of what we are doing. You will know that we are doing a lot on the victims code, through investment in victim services and how the reforms reflect that centring of the victims. Of course, victims are not a monolith. I met and spoke to Charlotte Nichols, who opposes aspects of these reforms and has her own experience as a victim. There is no universal victims’ voice, but there are very powerful victims’ voices we have heard today saying that we must improve and work together to get a better system to deal with those shameful delays.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Okay, thank you for confirming what you did personally. But obviously other people would have been meeting these groups, so can you clearly answer this question: did anybody from the Ministry of Justice do or say anything that these groups might have reasonably said was putting pressure on them not to sign the letter? Sarah Sackman: Look, I genuinely cannot state every conversation that was had, because I do not know. What I can say is that a number of the groups who led the letter, Rights of Women—I hope it will not mind me saying—being one of them, attended a meeting with myself and Minister Jones. We had a good, full and frank conversation, and that letter then went to publication. You can see what the arguments are, and you have deployed them in your arguments, as well you might—if I were in your shoes, I would do the same.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Thank you.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you. Are there particular parts of the process that you have observed and want to raise? Police officers often attend court and are often witnesses. In your experience, what are the processes that fall down? What makes you sit there shaking your head and wishing it had not happened? What prevents you from getting a conviction secured or a court hearing brought forward? Chief Constable Hatchett: Obviously, there are the adjournments and the upset to victims and witnesses, including police witnesses. I just want to make the point that for the whole time the adjournments are taking place—you are sometimes looking to 2030—the risk in the community is being managed by policing. Whether the person has a tag or is on court bail, with or without conditions, they are being managed in the community by policing.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Thank you.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q As you picked two things that have been agreed, what things that have not been agreed would be on your list of further things that would help? Daniel Flury: On the principal sources of delay, you have mentioned the police and the effectiveness of trials, and we see lots of ineffective trials because of an absence of an advocate—an advocate is engaged in a case elsewhere. The situation with the Prison Escort and Custody Services—the delivery vans—is well known, and well documented in the Leveson report. Finding a way to improve that is pretty near the top of the list.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q The other thing that Sir Brian says—this is in relation to the Crown court bench division, but it is replicated across all his major recommendations—is: “Should the MoJ consider pursuing this course of action, it may wish to consider undertaking further detailed analysis in order to understand the potential time-saving fully.” Besides the stakeholder engagement exercise, are you aware of any of the “further detailed analysis” that Sir Brian said was necessary before coming to any conclusions about the time savings of the policies? Samantha Hillas: No.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q To pick up on what you said—“do away with”—I think you will agree that we are talking about not the removal of jury trials, but a significant and historically unprecedented reduction in their use. Tim Crosland: What I said was do away with jury equity. Jury equity—the principle that a jury can acquit a defendant irrespective of the directions of the judge—only applies to cases where people are unlikely to receive a sentence of more than three years. It applies to cases of conscience where people have acted in the public interest, at least in their own self-understanding, and that is what they want to present to the jury. Those people are very unlikely to get long sentences of beyond three years imprisonment. In reality, this measure will do away with the principle of jury equity altogether.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thanks very much for coming. I want to start with some questions for Fiona and Emma. Am I right in thinking that you were both signatories to the letter from what we might call the violence against women and girls grouping to the Deputy Prime Minister, which said that we should not move forward with these proposals? Is that correct? Emma Torr: Correct.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Do you think that the Institute for Government’s classification of some of those assumptions as highly uncertain would be a fair classification? Daniel Flury: I would not like to comment on that. The analysis is primarily undertaken by the Ministry of Justice; I am here representing the courts service and the operational side.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I do not know whether you heard the evidence this morning in which the Victims’ Commissioner characterised that letter as predominantly being on behalf of women and girls who end up as defendants. When I read a specific part of the letter that said, “Well, actually, it’s also about victims,” the Victims’ Commissioner said that I was unfairly representing the letter. I wanted to give you both an opportunity to talk about whether, when you put your name to that letter, you included women and girls as victims as part of your considerations. Fiona Rutherford: I certainly did. I cannot speak on behalf of the other organisations, but certainly from my behalf, that is exactly my understanding. Emma Torr: I would agree with that.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Very good. I want to pick up on your experience in Liverpool. I am sure you are familiar with this, and it has been discussed in Parliament, but the Liverpool Crown court does not have a backlog—it sees cases within the time limits. Based on your experience there, how were you able to achieve that, what else might the wider system learn from it, and what things can we not learn as they are not replicable? Clement Goldstone: First, every Crown court has a backlog—they need one to function. Why was Liverpool a success? It was a success, first of all, because it is an excellent single court centre; secondly, because it has a very positive interactive relationship between the bench and the Bar and the Bar and the bench; and thirdly, because the staff are always willing to go the extra mile, which is probably because of the way they interact with the judiciary. The fourth reason, which I know is something inherited by my successor, is that, as recorder, I believed that if you want to bring out the best in people you give them responsibility. Everybody wants to be part of a success story, as Liverpool in that way was. What has happened over the last seven years since I retired is that the same standards have been maintained—albeit, it must be said, in much more difficult and trying circumstances than when I was in the position.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Great. Thank you very much; I appreciate that.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q But how are you currently rating them? Thank you for telling me what the risks are, but do you think you have a low risk of failure to deliver, or a high risk? Daniel Flury: It is a medium risk.

• 23 Mar 2026 · Court and Tribunal Transcripts · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) for opening the debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee. He is proving himself to be a consistent and doughty champion of victims and the issues that they raise with him. I also acknowledge the long-standing campaigning of the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) in this area. I welcome today’s opportunity to discuss this issue as part of our wider debate about transparency in the justice system. Sadly, I think that I can predict to some extent what the Minister will say: the phrase “14 years” will make an appearance; there will be lots of rhetoric about how terrible the previous Government were; and there will be a complete absence of any idea of how the current Government would have managed differently the challenges that the previous Government faced. I can also be pretty confident about what the Minister will not say. There will be no real engagement with what the challenges of covid presented to our justice system, even though they truly were unprecedented. However, that is the standard that Ministers and Labour have set, not just for justice, but across the Government on issues such as inflation and energy bills. There is no acceptance of the challenges that the previous Government faced and no exceptions made for things outside their control. It therefore should not be any surprise when the present Government are held to exactly the same standard. In reality, this issue is a good example of what more fair-minded commentators accept as a multi-decade failure to give the justice system and those involved in it the priority and resources they deserve. I am sure that if the Minister and I were to design the justice system from scratch together, we would agree that free access to transcripts was important and, indeed, should just be the default. However, we are where we are. Sadly, I am realistic about what success we will achieve on the issue of transcripts today, even when a petition has been signed by an impressive 200,000 people. After all, this is the Government who tried to delete the Courtsdesk archive, which has been one of the biggest steps forward for transparency in our justice system in recent years. I raised that issue in the main Chamber because I was deeply concerned about the decision to delete a unique archive of corrected and correlated court listings. In the absence of retrospective access to court transcripts, the work of journalists is absolutely vital, and Courtsdesk had become a valuable tool for journalists, campaigners and others seeking to identify patterns in offending and to expose failings in our justice system. Rather than seeking to preserve that transparency while dealing constructively with any data protection concerns, the Government moved towards deleting the archive altogether. Of course, the Government’s defence of that decision did not hold up to scrutiny. When the Minister for Courts and Legal Services came to the House and said that there were serious data protection concerns with Courtsdesk, she did not tell us that the Government’s internal processes had found the incident she cited to be low-risk, not even warranting referral to the Information Commissioner’s Office. At a time when confidence in the justice system depends on greater openness, the Minister for Courts and Legal Services was going to deliver the exact opposite, and that is part of the context for today’s debate. It relates to the broader question of whether the Government are approaching transparency in the justice system with sufficient urgency and seriousness. The petition speaks to the basic principle that access to justice should not depend on the ability to pay, and open justice is not an optional extra to be considered only once the administrative convenience of the system has been satisfied. The petitioners are right to identify transcript fees as a paywall. For too many people, they are exactly that: a barrier to understanding what happened in court; a barrier to considering making an appeal; a barrier to holding the system to account; and, in some cases, a barrier to justice itself. That matters not just for journalists and campaigners, but for victims, bereaved families and ordinary members of the public who are trying to make sense of a justice system that is supposed to work for them. There is clearly public demand for greater transparency in the system, which was why the previous Conservative Government started moving in that direction, including through the pilot of making sentencing remarks available free of charge to victims of rape and other sexual offences. That was a start, although I now think that we should have moved faster and further while we were in government. I find it hard to think of any other walk of life in which we would expect a member of the public who is part of such an important process—it is important for them, for their friends and family, and for the wider justice system—to be asked to remember key things that may or may not have been said in court, and to be asked to be in court every single day if they want to understand the full process, although that might not necessarily be appropriate. What disappoints me in particular is the Government’s resistance not just to making full transcripts available, but on the much narrower and more readily resolvable issue of making transcripts of sentencing remarks available. The Government have refused to accept our proposal—it has been voted on in the Lords—to have such transcripts produced within 14 days and free of charge. They will accept doing that only from spring of next year and not necessarily within 14 days. As we have heard, given the unduly lenient sentence scheme, people need those transcripts quickly if they are to be able to make good use of them. It is particularly clear that there is public interest in sentencing remarks. I look forward to the Labour Members who spoke today backing amendments that the Conservatives, with cross-party support, are attempting to pass so that transcripts of sentencing remarks are made available. As the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller), pointed out, similar amendments have been proposed to allow victims to have even more made available to them, including the route to verdict and bail decisions. Those amendments have cross-party support, so I hope that Labour Members and others will support them when the House considers them this week. My right hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay) showed his ministerial experience through the well-articulated questions that he put to the Minister. I will add my own questions to his. It is all well and good for the Minister to talk in warm words about access to sentencing remarks and court transcripts, but do we have an actual date for when the Government will deliver that? What cases will it apply to at first, and what barriers are preventing us from implementing this much more quickly than the Government have committed to? I pay tribute to everyone who signed the petition, particularly those campaigners such as Fiona Goddard, who my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley mentioned and focused on grooming gangs. That has been a key driver of the demands for greater transparency in our justice system. The Government resisted an inquiry on that matter in a similar vein to how they are resisting transparency in our justice system. I look forward to the Minister giving us concrete answers about how we will make progress, rather than just warm words.

• 17 Mar 2026 · Rural Roads · Hansard source

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  I cannot possibly do justice to the frustration of my residents about their local roads in one minute, but I will try my best. They contact me all the time to say how appalled they are at the quality of their local roads. The Labour Government fail to understand the challenges in rural communities, making the situation all the worse with their funding decisions since they came into office. First, since my constituency has a lot of older people, the Government’s cutting off of our plans to reform social care spending have left us with huge financial burdens. Secondly, they cut the amount of money that was due to be given to East Sussex county council to pay for road improvements. Thirdly, to make it all the worse, they changed the funding formula to make it much harder for rural counties such as East Sussex and so many of the rural constituencies represented by Members in this Chamber to make ends meet and repair their roads. Will the Government finally start listening to rural MPs, councillors and councils, and sort these issues out once and for all?

• 17 Mar 2026 · Rural Roads · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way on that point?

• 17 Mar 2026 · Rural Roads · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?