Speeches by Mullan.

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones) for securing this debate on domestic abuse and safeguarding within the family justice system. Members in the Chamber will not be alone in having regularly encountered this issue in constituency ca…”

“It is all very well to send people on training. As a doctor, I have sat in on training sessions. People can be in a training seminar together, and some will pay attention and some will not. Some will take it seriously, and some will not. If there is not a system of accountability at the other end, training can become a…”

“I have asked the Minister about this before, and she did not answer. Maybe I will get an answer this time. One thing she might set those additional support services to do is let people know when perpetrators will get out of prison earlier because of the Government’s decisions. Can she at least commit to writing to vict…”

“Further to that point of order, while I do not have the same experience as my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis), the Minister has said that the documents are ready to publish and that the only issue is securing Government time to do that on 1 June, the first day back after recess. Wha…”

“One thing this sorry episode has achieved is to make the Minister an absolute expert on warm words and platitudes. I want to go back to the issue of disappearing messages, which was raised earlier. Obviously, those messages are not retrievable, but the very minimum we should get is a detailed breakdown of all those who…”

“I ask the Minister to think about a situation in which a victim of rape comes to her constituency surgery whose rapist is currently in prison but will now get out of prison earlier. I wonder what that victim would think about the answer the Minister has just given to a serious question about a serious issue. If she ref…”

“I welcome the new Minister to her post. For all the policies she might be glad to inherit, she is also inheriting a plan later this year to let out potentially thousands of the worst offenders against women and girls, including rapists and those responsible for sexual assault. The Government are refusing to be transpar…”

“It is all very well for the Minister to make that statement. Why does she think that?”

“I intervened when the Minister said she thought that extending sitting hours would make things worse. When I asked her to explain that, she then said that she thought the benefit would be minimal. That is a different point. Given that we have said there should be an extensive consultation to figure out all those things…”

““(1) The Lord Chancellor must lay before Parliament a report containing a review of the impact of the provisions of section 3 during each relevant period.”

“(a) before the end of 12 months, and”

“As I have alluded to several times, the Conservative party is considering more broadly how we tackle judicial accountability in all its different elements. It would be premature for us to settle on this new clause if, as the hon. Member for Chichester pointed out, it had to be necessarily narrow to fit in the Bill. On …”

“(2) For the purposes of subsection (1), the relevant periods are—”

“(b) no sooner than 35 months but no later than 36 months”

““overriding presumption should be jury trial, with very, very limited exceptions.””

“”

“The need for a sunset clause is further emphasised by the significant concerns raised regarding the quality of justice that will be delivered under the new arrangements. Many representative bodies and campaign groups, including the Bar Council and JUSTICE, have warned that moving serious cases to what they describe as …”

“The public did not vote for a permanent reduction in their historic right to be judged by their peers; indeed, the Government’s manifesto made no mention of these changes. By subjecting these provisions to a sunset clause, we can meet what the Government see as the immediate operational needs for tackling the issue but…”

“Review of impact of provisions of section 3”

“In summary, a sunset clause is about proportionality and constitutional responsibility. Radical structural changes born of administrative pressure should not become permanent features of our democracy by default. We must remember that the Deputy Prime Minister himself has previously described juries as a “success story…”