Speeches by Fox.

“Does the shadow Minister agree that the overall thrust of these clauses is to discourage saving and enterprise, and to hit the people who do the right thing, all to fund more welfare spending? That is not a recipe for growth, is it?”

“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way a second time. Is he seriously saying that increasing the rate of tax on dividends will result in more investment in this country?”

“My hon. Friend makes a valuable point, which anticipates my next point. Teachers in my constituency have written to me saying that they will be pushed into the higher rate tax bracket by 2030, paying 40% on any extra work that they do—marking exams during the summer, for example—and that doing such work is not worth it…”

“A Budget is the most important set of choices that a Government can make, and introducing clause 10 is a choice by this Government. I oppose clause 10 because it extends the freeze on the personal income tax allowance and the basic rate limit for a further three years, from 2028 to 2031. That means that rates will have…”

“rose—”

“I do not agree that the Government should curtail our rights to trial by jury. Trial by jury is an ancient right in England and the very essence of our criminal justice system. Combined with the Government proposals for digital ID, it reveals a very authoritarian attitude. It marks a significant shift in the balance of…”

“In my experience, staff absence is normally the result of poor management. I suspect that the Ministry of Justice is managing its staff significantly worse than the rest of the civil service if staff sickness is 30% above the public sector average, which is not great to begin with. With approximately 16,400 staff in th…”

“Mr Miller, you are here on behalf of the Law Society and Ms Brimelow is here on behalf of the Bar Council. Effectively, they are the trade unions of the legal profession. I do not blame you for advocating for a lot more money to be spent on legal services—that is your job—but I do not detect any appetite on behalf of t…”

“If you could try to answer the question, that would be appreciated.”

“The question was: do you have any recommendations for improving access to justice that do not involve large amounts of taxpayers’ money?”

“Do you have a figure for me, or not?”

“Yes.”

“I assume we are talking of tens of millions of pounds.”

“I am assuming it is the budget cost to the Ministry of Justice. We do not have a figure.”

“Mr Miller, can I take you back to the cost of the updated means test? You said that the Ministry of Justice did some work and came up with a scheme in 2022. If that had been introduced, do you have any idea what the cost would have been to the taxpayer?”

“That is fair enough.”

“Good afternoon. I am Ashley Fox, Member of Parliament for Bridgwater. I am a former solicitor and my interests are as on the register.”

“You say that it is an operational decision for the police, but in the case of Kebatu I understand that your Department did not even tell the police for seven days that he was on the run. I put it to you, Minister, that actually it is just too embarrassing for your Department, because so many prisoners are released by m…”

“When Kebatu was released in error, the Ministry of Justice published his photograph, his name and his offence, which was just as well, because it was actually a member of the public who located him and phoned the police. Why do not you do that for all releases in error?”

“You said last month that you had introduced the strongest release checks that have ever been in place for prisoners, which included mandatory checklists and the physical presence of a governor for certain releases. Why have there been subsequent mistaken releases since then? Where does responsibility for those mistaken…”