Speeches by Brown-Fuller.

“I beg to move amendment 22, in clause 6, page 17, line 11, at end insert— “(9) After section 15 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, insert— ‘15A Entitlement to Crown Court funding levels in certain proceedings in the Magistrates’ Court (1) This section applies to criminal proceedings in a…”

“Clause 6 expands the Secretary of State’s regulation-making power to change the general limit on the custodial sentence that a magistrates court may impose. It replaces the current list of possible maximum terms—six or 12 months—with a new list of six, 12, 18 or 24 months. That will allow the Secretary of State, by reg…”

“Because of that cocktail of measures—extending sentencing powers in the magistrates, not addressing the disparity in legal aid between the two courts and restricting the right to appeal—clause 6 should not stand part of the Bill, and I will be voting against it.”

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“The point that the shadow Minister is making is that the clause is a substantial expansion of what we understand the legislation to be doing in terms of a judge-only trial. Somebody could be charged with 10 offences. One of those could be related to a lengthy fraud case, but the rest of the offences would mean that the…”

“The latest open caseload volume roughly equates to around three months of disposals, based on latest disposal levels and not factoring in any receipts during that period. Since the end of 2021, single justice procedures have tended to make up about 50% of the open magistrates court caseload. Single justice procedure di…”

“I know the Government have been embarking on a big recruitment drive, but they also have a retention issue at the other end. They are bringing in magistrates at one end but losing them at the other. Removing the power of defendants to elect, plus the change in sentencing powers, will increase the workload of the magist…”

“The hon. Member is making a really interesting point about what we perceive to be lengthy or complex, as the hon. Member for Bolton South and Walkden tried to do with her amendment. Amendment 29 seeks to define a lengthy trial as one going beyond the five-month point, but Geoffrey Rivlin KC collected data over six year…”

“Has the Ministry of Justice done any modelling on the benefits of introducing Maxwell hours for all lengthy fraud cases? Doing so would benefit jurors, as they would only be committed to sitting from 8 am until midday and could go on to fulfil their caring responsibilities and such. The same goes for judges when dealin…”

“The same could be said for the Crown court. We would not charge someone and want to see them in a Crown court the next day. There is a separate conversation to be had about what the figure should be, with increasing cases. In 2021, the MOJ’s assessment in its spending review was that it would like the backlog to go fro…”

“We in the Liberal Democrats, including my friend the learned Lord Marks in the other place, were concerned about the provisions in clause 12 that would give the Government power to limit cost reimbursement. We have argued that there is a risk that organisations will be put off presenting cases if they cannot recover th…”

“I begin by thanking Members from across both Chambers for their work in getting this legislation to where it is today. I especially thank the Government for their engagement with me and my colleagues in the Lords, in particular the Minister, who I have met multiple times to discuss various issues in the Bill. A key cor…”

“I am pleased to hear that the Minister will be attending because I know that the organisers were keen to engage with her so that they can continue to see progress. I turn now to Lords amendments 5B, 5C, 5D, 5E, 5F, 6B and 6C, all of which impact the unduly lenient scheme. Again, I thank Baroness Brinton in the other pl…”

“The hon. and learned Gentleman is making an important point about the disparity in the guidance. If there is someone at the top of an NHS trust who is passionate about maternity care, that is more likely to trickle down, but that is not the same in every trust, and therefore we can end up with a postcode lottery. In Ch…”

“The hon. Lady is making an excellent point about the complexity of cases changing throughout. A legal professional recently shared with me the story of what was an assault case, but the victim passed away during the trial, so they are now dealing with hearing evidence of potential brain trauma injury. Does the hon. Lad…”

“We heard oral evidence from Doug Downey, who talked about the Canadian system. He also talked about how the right to elect is a protected characteristic of their justice system. The difference is that they have the right to elect a judge-alone trial. Did the Minister explore the option of maintaining the right to elect…”

“Although I have proposed the removal of clause 3 in its entirety—we will come to the arguments for that later in proceedings—I will speak to amendment 12, tabled in my name, which seeks to remove subsections (2) to (4) of the clause. Those subsections provide that cases can be assigned to be heard by a judge alone, eve…”

“I will speak to amendment 18, tabled in my name, which seeks to ensure that a defendant has the right to appeal against a judge’s decision to allocate a case for trial by judge alone, whether because of the likely sentence length or because the case is assessed to be complex or lengthy. I will also be supporting amendm…”

“I accept that it might be a mischaracterisation to describe it as rough justice, but does the Minister agree that in this case it will be summary justice, which by its very definition is rougher around the edges, because it is summary?”

“I appreciate the opportunity to come back on that. That poses another question: if judge-only trials are going to take the exact same amount of time, how will this speed up the court backlog?”