Speeches by Turner.

“Richard Foord will move the motion. I will then call the Minster to respond. I remind Members that they may make a speech only with the prior permission of the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for a 30-minute deba…”

“Order. I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called in the debate.”

“I was about to say that my hon. Friend is a good man—he used to be my boss in the shadow Transport team, Mr Speaker, and he always tries to help me. I do not want to get into the stuff about Mandelson, as my hon. Friend hopes I will. But while I am speaking about the appointment of Mandelson, I will say this: I think t…”

“It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis). He and I rarely agree politically, but we do work together constructively in our constituencies for the betterment of the region. I start by way of an apology, because last week —I think this was mentioned by the Leader of the Opp…”

“I completely agree with my right hon. Friend. I think I said on Twitter that he rarely gets things wrong—I was accused of being wrong for agreeing with what he said. In the time I have known him, my right hon. Friend has rarely, in my opinion, got it wrong. I think he is absolutely spot on. I am confident and convinced…”

“I am grateful to the hon. Lady, who is spot on. She leads me to the point raised by the Leader of the Opposition. I made a statement on social media that this motion is a stunt. A stunt is defined as an action designed to capture attention, but it is worse than that, actually. If I was to be cynical, I think the proble…”

“Anybody who knows the Prime Minister will know full well that he would never, ever deliberately mislead this House, but the reality is this: ex post facto vetting is utterly pointless when the appointment is political. The trouble that we all face is that trust in the Prime Minister and in politics is diminishing as th…”

“Whistleblowers have raised serious concerns with me about the governance of academy trusts in my constituency. I have raised this matter privately with the Secretary of State, but I wonder whether she might arrange for a Minister to meet those whistleblowers so that they can have those concerns taken seriously, as I am…”

“It was telling when Jo Hamilton OBE wrote to the Justice Secretary—I think it was yesterday—to respectfully remind him that, as a victim of the Post Office Horizon scandal, under the legislation proposed, not one of the 900 sub-postmasters who were convicted would have been entitled to a trial before their peers. What …”

“I have just looked at the recent stats. In 2025 there were 67 ethnic minority circuit judges and 42 judges of unknown ethnicity, while there were 637 white judges, the vast majority of whom were men. What does my hon. Friend say about that?”

“When the Justice Secretary talks about juries, is it not right to point out that 0.4% of cases from the magistrates courts are appealed against, and that of that 0.4%, which is about 5,000, 41% are successful on appeal? What does he say about that?”

“Madam Deputy Speaker, you and I have been friends for some time. I think you were elected in 2015. Soon after that, your talents were recognised and you were quickly given a ministerial brief. You know my politics, as we have crossed swords many a time, so you know it pains me to congratulate the hon. Member for West S…”

“What does my hon. and learned Friend say about the fact that judges will have to give detailed reasons for their judgments and for why they have decided on a case in a particular way? I declare an interest: my wife is a judge and it takes her days, and often more than a week, to come up with the reasons for the decisio…”

“We used to be friends, David!”

“As the Deputy Prime Minister speaks, there is no sitting in 56 of the 516 Crown courtrooms. That is because he and his Department cap the number of sitting days in those courts. It is, in my view, a dereliction of duty to plan to do away with some jury trials when courts are not sitting. The Institute for Government sa…”

“rose—”

“It pains me to say that I agree with the vast majority of what the right hon. Gentleman is saying at the Dispatch Box. He referred to Sir Brian Leveson. Of course, none of us would suggest that Sir Brian does not know what he is doing—he is very eminent and skilful, and has taken a great deal of time to come up with hi…”

“The Minister talks about Sir Brian’s presumption—which is what it is—that there will be a 20% reduction in time with a single judge, as opposed to a jury. I think that presumption is probably right, and I think he is probably right to say that it is conservative, but what about the writing up? When does the judge write…”

“Will the Minister give way?”

“It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, and I congratulate the Opposition on using one of their Opposition day debates for this very important subject. There is no doubt but that this Government inherited a terrible crisis in the criminal justice system, with the backlog of criminal cases in both the Crown court and …”