Kieran Mullan MP: speeches

Speeches

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I am the shadow Minister. Beginning with Mayor Burnham, what are the key differences between the Bill that you presented to Parliament and this Bill as currently drafted? Andy Burnham: It substantially meets the provisions of the 2017 Bill. It is 80% to 90% there. Previous to its introduction to Parliament, Mayor Rotherham and I worked closely with the Government and got it to a point where we felt it was worthy of the name “Hillsborough law”—although there were still further issues to be picked up by amendments, which the Government agreed to as part of the negotiation process. One of those issues was the extent to which the duty of candour applies. I can tell the Committee more about my experience in convening inquiries at a Greater Manchester level, which may be relevant to the discussions. I also wish to see the parity of legal funding for bereaved families stated more clearly as a principle in this Bill, with a firm guarantee of what that means for families rather than a fairly loose entitlement as it is at the moment. We can go into the details, should you wish, but the Bill is substantially there. With legislation of this kind, it does not help anybody if loopholes, grey areas or high hurdles are created in terms of the tests for duties to apply. It is going to be helpful for everybody if the Committee and Parliament can make it absolutely plain what this Bill is intended to cover and what it is not. That will empower the public, which is, at the end of the day, what this Bill is about. There is still some work to do in certain areas to remove some of those loopholes and grey areas. I think that I speak for Steve as well in saying that we have been advised throughout by the lawyers of the Hillsborough Law Now campaign. We strongly support the evidence that they have put to you as a Committee today.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Judge. Judge Durran: It is either that or “Chief”, and I think perhaps “Judge” sounds more formal.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you, Ms Butts, for coming to give evidence. I am Kieran, the shadow Justice Minister. I do not know whether you heard any of the earlier evidence, but one of our discussions was around the time it can take, through the public inquiry process, for people to get answers to their questions about what has happened to their loved ones or to themselves. An example that was brought to our attention was how the independent panel, which obviously took place long after the event, was not a public inquiry process, but was able to secure answers for families. I have a sense that the role of the IPA might be a way of addressing the gap between the need to have a public inquiry—with or without a duty of candour—and the need to get people answers more quickly. In your role as the independent public advocate, do you feel that you should have more powers, for example to compel the publication of records and information that might help families to get answers in a shorter timescale, as was suggested today? Cindy Butts: At the moment, I have gateway powers. Basically, that means that I only have access to information that families themselves should have access to. Although I have been in post for only two months, that provision has not quite yet been tested as to whether I need additional powers. But I absolutely recognise and appreciate the concerns of families in particular that where truth is withheld—in the case of Hillsborough, that was for many decades—that prevents them from accessing the truth. It has not been tested yet, and there might be a case for additional powers to allow me to have access to that information.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Mr Guest, can you see any prosecutorial disadvantages to the new offences compared with the existing law? Tom Guest: No. In general, we were supportive of this project from the outset—not because we were having difficulties with the common law offence, but because it sets it out much more clearly to have it contained in an Act. It clears up certain areas such as, “Who is a public official?” and, “How should a jury assess seriousness?” We have not identified disadvantages with the misconduct provisions.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I ask the same question, but on reasonable excuse versus public interest. Professor Lewis: That is less clear. The one thing I could say quite confidently is that there is a significantly lower burden of proof on the defendant. The defendant just has to introduce some evidence to raise the possibility of a reasonable excuse, and the burden will then be on the prosecution to disprove the reasonable excuse beyond reasonable doubt—so to the criminal standard. That difference in relation to the burden of proof is favourable to the defence. On whether there is a material difference in relation to a public interest defence versus a reasonable excuse defence, I think reasonable excuse would probably encompass things that would fall within a public interest defence and might be broader, but without anything on the face of the Bill constraining what a reasonable excuse is, it is difficult to say. I suppose, eventually, there will be case law that will deal with the question of what does and does not constitute a reasonable excuse in these circumstances.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q But potentially? Professor Lewis: If someone were in public office, which I think is not necessarily the case based on the clauses before us, it is possible that the seriously improper act offence could be considered. I think that is as far as I can possibly help. Tom Guest: Turning to the duty of candour extension, which directly addresses this, I think our straight answer is that “direct contractual relationship” is in the Bill for a reason; of course we would look at the evidence and the precise contract, but it does appear limited to that. I agree with what Professor Lewis said: when you come to the misconduct in public office offences, schedule 4 is intended to reflect existing public offices, but every attention should be paid to it to decide whether it has become any wider or more narrow, and whether there is good reason for that. We are not expressing a view but, if we are going to replicate the existing common law, we need to make sure that schedule 4 does so effectively.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q But are you aware of examples that have gone above those limits? Tom Guest: I am not aware of them. There is always a question of overlap. If you have another offence, such as an offence of rape, then we would be charging rape, and we have the maximum sentence of life there.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q The common law offence is unlimited in its penalties, essentially. Do you, as prosecutors, sometimes advocate for sentences above what will be the statutory limit to the sentences for the new offences? Tom Guest: The statutory limits introduced by the Bill seem to fit the culpability in the two offences. The breach of duty offence is clearly far more serious because it engages a duty to prevent death or serious injury. We see the statutory penalty as high and suitable, so far as it is for the CPS to say that. Similarly, the seriously improper acts offence perhaps does not have the same level of culpability but it still has a significant penalty. It is within the remit of the unduly lenient sentence scheme, so we have not identified any concerns about the proposed penalties.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I am Kieran, the shadow Justice Minister. I want to give my sincere condolences to all of you and all of the families for what you have been through. I want to commend your persistence, courage and bravery in carrying on and campaigning over such an extended period, as you have all done. It really is remarkable, and we are all very grateful. I will not ask many questions, as there are MPs on the panel who have worked with you and know you very well, and I am sure that they will be keen to ask questions. I will just ask whether any of you want to talk about how things might have been different, and how the experience might have been different for you, had you known what had happened from the start and had truth from the outset. Charlotte Hennessy: My experience is very different from Margaret’s, Sue’s and Steve’s, because I was so young. I did not know the magnitude of what had happened until the Hillsborough independent panel released its report. That was the only opportunity I had to access evidence statements and be able to piece a timeline together of what actually happened to my dad. That was when I really realised the magnitude of what had happened. I want to acknowledge the Hillsborough family members who are not here today—if it were not for them, and for the survivors who stood by their truth even when they were shut down by those who were supposed to protect them, and if they had not fought the fight, children like me would never have known the truth of what happened. For me, it only got worse from there. It was like Hillsborough had just happened at that time, because that was when I realised that my dad’s original cause of death was completely untrue—even down to his pathology report being untrue. It was not how my dad died. I will not speak about the details here, but I will send them privately to the Committee. It has had a profound impact. Had all that information been available, I do not think I would have had to spend my whole teenage and adult life fighting for the truth of what happened to my dad. It now impacts my own children, like Margaret said earlier. My husband is here in the room today. We have had to educate our children on the seriousness of those lies, on the impact of the cover-up, and on the fact that their granddad would have been buried in a lie if it were not for those good people.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Part of the Bill is about creating parity of esteem in legal advice and support, and one of the biggest reasons for that is that it costs money. Have any of you experienced financial loss as a result of everything you have had to do? Margaret Aspinall: Yes. The family has had great financial loss. As I said earlier, I had four other young children. The youngest was only six—the same age as Charlotte—at the time, the next was seven, one was nine, and then a son who was fifteen going on sixteen. They had an absolutely terrible time. I had to change their schools because of things young children were saying. Innocent children were saying terrible things about how their brother died and how it was caused. Obviously, it was what they were listening to, so I had to change their schools. It was a very difficult thing. My husband was at the game as well, and he has never been to a game since. He just cannot face going to another football match. My children went through a terrible time, like Charlotte did. At the same time, I realised something when Sue and I were working in the Hillsborough office a few years ago. A phone call came through, and Sue said to me, “Margaret, there’s somebody on the phone for you.” I picked the phone up, and it was my granddaughter, who was 10 at the time; she said, “I would like an appointment to see my nan, please.” I thought, “I’m doing to my grandchildren exactly what I’ve done to my own children.” I was working so hard, and not just myself, but others—though I can only speak for myself—to get to the truth of Hillsborough. The lies and the cover-up, as Charlotte said, were an absolute disgrace. When it came to the funding, we had to pay for every court case we went to. I am even talking about even judicial reviews, scrutiny, inquests, all different things. We paid every step of the way, and they had lawyers paid for by the state—from our taxpayers’ money—while we had to go cap in hand, trying to fight for the truth that was there all along, and for justice. What families went through—I cannot forgive that. My children grew up with Hillsborough and my grandchildren are growing up with Hillsborough now, 36 years on. They are still not seeing their nan because I am busy doing other things to try to get a Hillsborough law, alongside others—good people, unsung heroes, who are supporting this campaign. They have done so much to change a system that must be changed—not for us, because it is too late for us—but for the good of this nation. The law has got to be changed, in all its entirety. Steve Kelly: On the point of finances, when Hillsborough happened, obviously your finances just did not come into it. I will speak personally—I was a taxi driver at the time, and taxi drivers never earn good money, do they? You are always struggling, but you get by. I remember that I had to go to Sheffield to find my brother, I came home, and the last burden that I wanted to give to my mother and my sister Joan was issues of finance. When the disaster was coming to the fore and all the information was coming out, we were obviously making plans to bury our brother. There was only one thing you could do at that time: you would go and borrow the money. I went to the bank and borrowed the money. I never, ever went to my mam and told her how much it was. Again, she had just lost her son, and she did not know how. You just bore those problems and lived through them for years, on the financial side alone, with paying loans back and so on. That is why we want this law in—we beg you to bring this law in—because the trauma alone of losing someone, and then the trauma again of all these years fighting back, is so difficult to bear. The financial burden was not even a second thought—I appreciate the question, but it was nothing to do with us really. We got through it. People should not have to get through things. People should be helped and supported. This law, hopefully, will do that.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q It is obviously difficult to talk about hypotheticals, but I think it is potentially helpful, because we are talking about legal terms that not even members of the Committee will necessarily be familiar with. Taking first subjective versus objective awareness, in what sort of scenarios might that create a difference in how the Bill operates? Professor Lewis: What it does is expand the scope of the offence. In circumstances where the defendant was not aware—did not realise—that a reasonable person would regard the act as seriously improper in relation to the seriously improper acts offence, or was not aware of the duty in the context of the breach of duty offence, under our recommendations, the defendant would not be liable. Under the provisions in the Bill, however, if the jury were of the view that the defendant ought to have realised the relevant fact, that would suffice. It is an expansion of liability.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I will pick up on the earlier questions on contractors and subcontractors. If I put in everybody’s mind the Post Office Horizon scandal, where you had contractors and potentially subcontractors, do you think that there would be any obstacles to prosecuting a scenario similar to the Post Office Horizon scandal because of contractor and subcontractor limits? Professor Lewis: All I can say in relation to the misconduct in public office offences, the ones that the Law Commission recommended, is that we recommended the Government consider the inclusion of contractors. They have not been included separately in schedule 4 but, as Mr Guest said, I do not think I am in a position to comment on whether in particular cases, particular offences may have been committed, because one would need to see the evidence and one would need to be a prosecutor in order to take a view on that.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q We have time for you to expand slightly on what you want to see change in those three elements. Pete Weatherby: On command responsibility, the Bill, and the original Bill, created both individual and corporate duties, and quite rightly so. The problem with the corporate duties is that the offences require a very high threshold. They require either intent or subjective recklessness, which means that the person has to foresee the risk but nevertheless decide to take it. It is not impossible, but it is extraordinarily difficult, to apply that to an inanimate object like a corporate body. In the original Bill, we imposed some corporate duties but put the responsibility for enforcing them on the heads of the public body involved; this has not quite been followed through in this Bill. We would like to see a simple amendment to clauses 5 and 11, as we set out in the briefing, to put that legal responsibility on the chief officer or the chief executive of the public body. Without that, a lot of the duties in the Bill are reduced to something that looks good but is rather ineffective. We have said all the way through that our watchwords are “practical” and “effective”. If law is not practical and effective, don’t bother. That is the first thing. On the intelligence services, some of the many campaigns behind a Hillsborough law include the Manchester Arena families. There was a major failure of the intelligence services and the way they dealt with the aftermath of the bombing. This is all in the public domain: they had intelligence that related to the bomber and the bomber’s activities, and they did not act on it. The chair of the public inquiry, having heard closed evidence, came to the conclusion that they should have acted on it. Although he could not say whether it would have made a difference, it might have made a difference. Obviously, that is very important. The problem beyond that was that MI5 then put an incorrect narrative—a false narrative—to the inquiry itself. The judge, the chair of the inquiry, found that the corporate case that it had put was incorrect. There are other examples. Obviously, we have very limited time. I know you are going to hear from Daniel De Simone, the BBC reporter, this afternoon. His case is another one where the security services have fallen short in terms of candour. These are not the only examples. We are very keen to apply the duty of candour and all of the duties here as much as possible to the security services. The objections to that are that it might interfere with national security. I represented seven of the Manchester Arena families, and I can say very clearly that there is no intention to interfere with national security whatsoever—quite the opposite. The Bill drafted by us, and this Bill, does not affect national security, positively or negatively. It just does not affect it. What it does affect is that when the intelligence services have to report to an inquiry or the Intelligence and Security Committee or whatever, they have to tell the truth, whether in open or closed session. That is the key element of it. We think that has been missed. The Government invited me to have a meeting with the intelligence services last night, and I did. I know that this Committee has been briefed as well. I think it was quite clear that the intelligence services have missed that point. We have put forward a very simple amendment that we think takes complete account of those concerns about national security. We ask you to look at that and to adopt that amendment.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Hello; I am the shadow Justice Minister. Professor Lewis, are there any significant differences, or even minor differences, between the work that the Law Commission did and its recommendations, and the Bill as drafted? Professor Lewis: Yes, there are some differences, but the Bill substantially implements the Law Commission’s recommendations on misconduct in public office. All of the core structural reforms have been adopted, in clauses 12 and 13. There are a few material differences in detail; I will perhaps run through them as a list, without expanding on them, and then if there are any you wish to pick up, you can. There are some objective fault elements in both offences where the commission had recommended subjective awareness: in the seriously improper acts offence, the commission recommended that the defendant had to realise that a reasonable person would regard the act as seriously improper, whereas the Bill requires that the defendant knows or ought to know that. There is a similar shift in the breach of duty offence. There is some divergence in relation to the defence to what we recommended as the corruption offence—the seriously improper acts offence. We recommended a public interest defence; the Bill has a reasonable excuse defence. We recommended that the persuasive or legal burden be on the defendant, whereas in the Bill it is only an evidential burden to raise the defence that is on the defendant. There is an extra seriousness threshold in the breach of duty offence, which we explicitly rejected; we did not think it was needed. That is the requirement that “the act…falls far below what could reasonably be expected”. It is a sort of gross negligence threshold. I think the other points are fairly minor. One is about the repeal of section 26 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, and the other is some differences in relation to what counts as holding public office. Having said that, our recommendations on that were that the Government consider certain kinds of public office for inclusion in the list, and the Government have considered all of those kinds of public office. We had anticipated that further work would be needed to refine the list, and that work has been done.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I am the shadow Justice Minister. Thank you for the written briefings, particularly the one done with INQUEST and Justice North, which is very detailed. As has been alluded to, we cannot go through it all, but could you pick out perhaps the two or three points where it is most important to make further amendments, based on what you just said? Pete Weatherby: Primarily, our concerns are around command responsibility and the extent to which the Bill covers, or does not cover, the intelligence services, and we have concerns about the clause 11 offence going too far in its requirements.

• 25 Nov 2025 · Access to GPs · Hansard source

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  There are a number of exciting opportunities for extended GP premises in my constituency—in places like Martins Oak in Battle, Little Common and Old Town, and Oldwood in Robertsbridge. One major challenge is the rates that the NHS district valuer is willing to offer for construction sites; they have just not kept up with the inflation we have seen across all sectors of construction. I did have a meeting with the Minister for Care and it was helpful to start those discussions, but we have not made the progress that we need to. Can we have a further meeting, and will the Secretary of State outline what he will do to ensure that district valuers are offering rates that can allow construction to go ahead?

• 20 Nov 2025 · Migration: Settlement Pathway · Hansard source

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  I am not sure it helps the Home Secretary’s cause for me to say that I have a great deal of respect for her and that I thought her interventions this week were very important, particularly those pointed towards members of her party on the left who will make the cause they choose to champion more difficult if the system as a whole is not brought under control. The people who support asylum and refugee processes and want them to be there in future need the system to be brought under control. My sincere question relates to what I would describe as tinkering around the edges of the human rights laws. The Home Secretary must know that whatever she does to clarify the fringes of the rulings the ECHR has made over the years, they have created a case law that forces our judges to rule in favour of spurious claims. She cannot change that; those rulings are those rulings. Unless we are willing at the very least to have a derogation from some elements of the Court’s decisions, how does she think we can override those well-established rulings which give enormous amounts of rights to people when they are making their asylum claims?

• 19 Nov 2025 · Property (Digital Assets etc) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I rise simply to put on the record my thanks, particularly to the Bill Committee and to the Law Commission for its diligence. Yet again we see the great benefit that our state machinery and apparatus as whole derive from having the Law Commission. I have nothing further to add.

• 19 Nov 2025 · Property (Digital Assets etc) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I am pleased to speak again on behalf of the Opposition as we carry forward the constructive debate that we had on Second Reading. Let me restate from the outset our support for the Bill, which represents a careful, modest step in the right direction, and preserves the inherent flexibility of the common law while giving just enough statutory certainty to ensure that businesses, innovators and courts know the ground beneath their feet. That balance is vital. If we over-prescribed in statute, we would risk freezing progress. If we left matters entirely to the interpretation of the courts, we would risk fragmentation and delay. The Bill avoids both extremes. Importantly, this legislation was not born overnight. It is the product of the rigorous work of the Law Commission—work commissioned by the last Conservative Government, who recognised early the need for clarity in this space if the UK was to stay competitive internationally. The commission’s conclusion was clear: certain digital assets simply do not fit neatly into the centuries-old categories of things in possession or things in action. Without intervention, the risk grew that uncertainty would hold back investment, undermine commercial transactions and frustrate innovators and consumers. The Bill answers that challenge in the right way. It does not attempt to define every kind of digital asset that might emerge. Nobody in this Chamber—or indeed beyond it—can predict the full scope of the technologies that will shape our financial and commercial future in the coming decades. Instead, the Bill does something both restrained and profound: it confirms that digital things are not excluded from attracting property rights merely because they fall outside the old categories. Beyond that, it gives our common law the space it needs to continue doing what it has done for centuries: develop sensibly, case by case, guided by principle rather than by prescription. That is not to say that the state has been inactive in related causes. Since 2023, cryptoasset promotion has been subject to the Financial Conduct Authority rules, the money laundering regulations have been amended for the new cryptocurrency class, and the Government have consulted on bring crypto-trading platforms and custody services within the broader perimeter of financial regulation. The Bank of England and the FCA are exploring robust frameworks for stablecoins and custody. However, none of this works unless the foundational question, “What is the legal status of these assets?”, is clearly answered. That is exactly what the Bill provides. Let me end by reiterating what I said on Second Reading: the UK must remain at the forefront of global legal innovation. When technological change accelerates, the temptation can be either to rush into rigid regulation or to do nothing at all. The Bill avoids both pitfalls. It is proportionate, it is principled, and it is rooted in the understanding—championed strongly by the previous Conservative Government—that legal certainty is a foundation for growth, investment and innovation in this area. For all those reasons, the Opposition will continue to support the Bill, and we look forward to working constructively to ensure that it delivers the clarity that our courts, consumers and businesses need.

• 17 Nov 2025 · Parkinson’s Disease · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I will keep my remarks brief because the debate is so well attended. It is a real privilege to speak in this debate on behalf of so many people in my constituency who have campaigned tirelessly to improve care and support for those living with Parkinson’s. Parkinson’s UK tells me that in Bexhill and Battle, around 377 people live with Parkinson’s. I pay special tribute to my constituents Linda, Helen and Vivienne, who join us in the Public Gallery today. They are part of a fantastic local Parkinson’s group, which campaigns with energy, determination and an unwavering commitment to the community, and their advocacy has brought the realities of living with Parkinson’s to the forefront, highlighting not just the challenges but practical solutions. Their work has also been key in raising awareness locally around the Parky charter petition. I am immensely proud that Bexhill and Battle recorded 576 signatures, the highest number anywhere in the UK. That is a testament to the strength of feeling in our area and the dedication of campaigners who ensured every voice was heard. The charter aims to highlight delays in diagnosis, fragmented care, failed benefits assessments and underinvestment in research as key areas where we need to do better. Delays in diagnosis can have irreversible consequences. Around 21,000 people in the UK currently live with Parkinson’s undiagnosed. Access to a full multidisciplinary team is another central pillar of good care, yet only 44% of people have access to an occupational therapist; 62% to a physiotherapist; and 40% to a speech and language therapist. Research is needed to create a brighter future for Parkinson’s sufferers. Currently, there is no cure and treatment options are limited. With someone diagnosed every 20 minutes in the UK and 25 million people affected globally, the need for new therapies is urgent. Closer to home, we have seen some encouraging steps in local Parkinson’s services. Our local trust has signed up to Parkinson’s Connect, allowing direct referral at the point of diagnosis. The trust now supports around 800 patients and the specialist team has grown from one to four staff members over the past two years. Home visits and outreach clinics are planned, which could make a meaningful difference once fully operational, but progress remains uneven.

• 17 Nov 2025 · Social Media Posts: Penalties for Offences · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I thank the Petitions Committee for enabling this debate, and the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) for opening it. I am also grateful to the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe), who launched and promoted the petition. Like others, I thought it was the first time I had come across a petition from a Member, and it turns out that it is. The number of signatures that the hon. Member managed to secure shows that this issue is of great interest to our constituents, and it is right that we, as elected representatives in Parliament, debate these matters. I want to begin by talking about something that was not given sufficient focus in the debate: priorities and choices. Police officers cannot and have never been able to investigate and solve all crimes, all the time. They will never be able to do that, so choices and priorities have always been at the heart of policing since it was introduced in this country. The Opposition would rather that our police officers prioritise catching burglars, car thieves, shoplifters and violent offenders, and it seems clear to me that the public agree. It also seems clear that this is an issue on which the police, the CPS and the courts do not get it right all the time. As always, we cannot be led entirely by the worst examples, but they inevitably raise public concern. I will not focus overly on individual cases, many of which have been well publicised and often, thankfully, not taken forward in the end, but that begs the question: what would have happened to less high-profile individuals, or in cases that were less well publicised? The outcome may have been different, so this issue clearly needs our attention. That is not to say that there should never be any restriction on what people can put online. We need to find a balance akin to the one that we manage, as a whole—although certainly not perfectly—to keep more consistently in what we might call the real world. The criminalisation of hate speech and incitement is not new; what has changed is the scale and immediacy of communication in the digital age. Social media allows anyone with a mobile phone to reach potentially millions of people within seconds, and their words are essentially permanent and traceable. It exposes individuals to a constant stream of content, often stripped of context, and sometimes designed to provoke. Social media also strips away the manner in which something is said and the demeanour of the person—details that are often key to the prosecution of these sorts of cases in the real world. We have a responsibility to ensure that the law keeps pace with technology but remains fair, proportionate and grounded in common sense. Those who use social media to clearly and obviously promote hatred, threaten individuals or genuinely incite violence must not be able to act with impunity. But we must also ensure that sentencing reflects the seriousness of each case, that it distinguishes between genuine threats and offensive opinion, and that it maintains public confidence in both justice and freedom of expression. The judiciary has discretion to consider the context, harm and intent behind each offence, and proportionality is key. Sentences must be transparent, consistent and seen by the public to be fair. We know that the vast majority of people in this country value free speech deeply, but they also expect accountability for those who cross the line into criminality. The balance is delicate and must be protected. Social media has created new forms of harm, but also new forms of expression, and the justice system must navigate these novel complexities carefully. However, when the response appears to some to exceed what is necessary to deter or rehabilitate, it is right that Parliament examines whether the framework that guides decisions remains appropriate. There have been increasing anecdotal reports of the police arriving in disproportionate numbers to arrest children, parents and older people who may have said “the wrong thing”—as they might describe it—online. One example, widely reported in the press, was the arrest of Graham Linehan by five armed police officers at Heathrow in September. His alleged offence was a series of social media posts in which it seemed apparent to most dispassionate observers that he joked about punching transgender women in the genitals if they refuse to leave female-only spaces. That is a good example of the sort of joke that would not be welcome, and that many people would think was displeasing or inappropriate, but it should have been carefully considered before it was put forward as a possible crime. It was hardly worthy of the time of five armed police officers. Such use of police time and resources was completely disproportionate when officers’ efforts could be focused on dealing with the crimes that our constituents care more about—such as knife crime, shoplifting and burglary—that regularly go unsolved and do not have the same level of attention in all circumstances. I welcome the fact that in response—and in clear support of the fact that there is an issue—the Metropolitan police announced that they will no longer investigate non-crime hate incidents. I direct those who think there is no issue to the decision by an independent police force to make a major change in how it polices these sorts of things and to “focus on matters that meet the threshold for criminal investigations”. We need to see that approach applied across the whole country. The Conservatives put that idea to a vote in the Crime and Policing Bill Committee earlier this year, but sadly the Government voted it down. The National Police Chiefs’ Council, supported by the College of Policing, has reviewed the use and effectiveness of non-crime hate incidents. Subsequently, in September, the NPCC and the college wrote to the Policing Minister urging her to immediately scrap non-crime hate incidents in their current form, but the Government have not acted. They have ignored the authors of the review that they commissioned, and kicked the issue into the long grass. Will the Minister work with the Home Office to implement the recommendations of the NPCC and the College of Policing? More broadly, the Government are not being transparent about this issue. They do not collect data on non-crime hate incidents and they do not publish data on the number of arrests made for online malicious communications offences. Accurate quantitative data on arrests and prosecutions for offences on social media are therefore hard to come by. Does the Minister agree that the Government should do more to assuage concerns by collecting and publishing data that might help to illuminate the issue? We do have some data. In April, The Times published an article using data collated from freedom of information requests, setting out the number of arrests made in recent years under section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988 and section 127 of the Communications Act 2003. The newspaper reported that police officers are making more than 12,000 arrests a year under the legislation, equating to more than 30 a day. I remind hon. Members about the issue of priorities: police officers are going out and making 12,000 arrests a year for these sorts of offences. The paper also claims that the number of arrests in 2023 represented an almost 58% increase from before the pandemic, and that forces recorded 7,734 arrests in 2019.

• 17 Nov 2025 · Social Media Posts: Penalties for Offences · Hansard source

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  I genuinely welcome that intervention. Throughout the debates on the Sentencing Bill, Labour MPs again and again made interventions that demonstrate that they fundamentally do not understand the Bill. I can take the hon. Lady through it step by step.

• 17 Nov 2025 · Social Media Posts: Penalties for Offences · Hansard source

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  Does the Minister accept that our proposals, which were not just to abolish the Sentencing Council but to create a number of bodies that advise the Department, are essentially exactly the same proposal that existed before the Sentencing Council was introduced by the Labour Government. Did he think there was constitutional vandalism prior to Labour’s reforms?

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  I am happy to take an intervention.

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  It may come from a man, but it is just an explanation. The early release schemes that we used, and that the Minister was previously using, excluded all sexual offences. We excluded sexual offences, and the early release schemes that continued excluded sexual offences. The Sentencing Bill makes no exclusion for sexual offences—none. We would not let out rapists earlier, and the Labour Government initially would not let out rapists, but they are now going to do so. We would not let out people who raped children, and initially the Labour Government would not let out people who raped children, but they are now passing a Bill that will let out people who raped children. Some people say that the scheme addresses a short-term crisis, but, again, there are existing schemes that could be used for short-term prison capacity issues, such as the ones that I have talked about, which exclude sexual offences. We agree that those should be excluded. Instead of carrying on using those schemes, this Government are legislating to let rapists, child rapists and paedophiles out of prison earlier on a permanent basis. Ninety per cent of people who go to prison for child grooming will be serving a third of their sentence. If that is something that the hon. Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington) thinks is defendable, I encourage her to go away and read the detail. As I said, the Sentencing Bill will let out thousands of violent and sexual offenders, even if Government Members pretend that that is not what is going to happen. I would also point out that some Labour MPs understand that and would not vote for it. They understand what their Government are persuading them to vote for. They really should not vote for it. I hope the Minister will commit to looking again at the sentencing framework to ensure it better reflects the concerns that colleagues have laid out today. Otherwise, this will be a missed opportunity. We are clear that we can restore democratic accountability to sentencing only through the abolition of the Sentencing Council and the restoration of its activities to the Lord Chancellor’s office. That is the sort of wholesale reform that is needed. We introduced an amendment to the Sentencing Bill to enable that, but Labour voted it down, proposing instead a halfway house that will not achieve anything like the radical change we need. The right choices are there and a better way forward is available. It is true that this is a new area for our law and for society; perhaps we were always going to take time to get this right. I welcome the campaigners and individuals affected driving politicians of all parties to do so. We have had some clear proposals for reform, which are a start, but in the meantime it will sadly take more cases, more public concern and more demands for change for the Government to get this right.