Speeches by Mullan.

“To ensure that the bench trial is a tool of justice rather than of administrative convenience, we must mandate immediacy. We should not trade a system that works for one that merely looks faster, as I said earlier. Let the judge speak when the evidence is fresh and the parties are present. A verdict without immediate r…”

“Schedule 1 agreed to.”

“Question put, That the schedule be the First schedule to the Bill.”

“”

“Question put, That the amendment be made.”

“Will the hon. Member give way?”

“This amendment prevents the Lord Chancellor adding further offences to the list in Schedule 1 by regulations.”

“Amendment proposed: 51, in schedule 1, page 38, line 3, leave out paragraph 20.—(Dr Mullan.)”

“The hon. Member for Gloucester pointed to what the Bar Council said, but let us be fair and talk about what it said in its completeness. It may well have said that the people currently practising dropped out, but the Minister quite directly asked how it was going to train these people up and get back to that point, and…”

“I am sure we will get to hear from the hon. Member for Birmingham Erdington shortly. The proposal in clause 3 is being framed as a mere administrative adjustment—a common-sense fix for a system under strain. The Government’s plan to introduce a Crown court bench division, where a judge sits alone without magistrates to…”

“New Schedule 3ZA to the Criminal Justice Act 2003”

“Schedule 1”

“To reiterate, as in clause 3, we risk creating an unfair dual standard for defendants. The Government accept that such defendants should have rights to a jury trial, but they will potentially be denied one unnecessarily because of the circumstances changing throughout their trial, rather than at the outset. Can we crea…”

“Clause 4 ordered to stand part of the Bill.”

“The test for complexity is too subjective. The procedural safeguards are non-existent. The evidence for efficiency is weak, and the power to expand these measures through secondary legislation is constitutional overreach. If the Government are truly concerned about the backlog, let them invest in the mechanics of the c…”

“Trial on indictment without a jury: complex or lengthy cases”

“We are leaning heavily on the points made by the Criminal Bar Association. The Government seem quite rightly to be extremely concerned about the training of future barristers, but the Criminal Bar Association has made the point that that training often takes place in what the Government are describing as less serious c…”

“The only point I would add is that, as the Minister has accepted, this is a relatively small number of cases, so the test of what is justifiable is actually disproportionately weighted against the Minister in these cases, in comparison with the earlier cases on clause 3. People’s rights and expectations remain the same…”

“The Minister asked us to reflect on the fact that the Auld review also recommended similar measures around complex and lengthy cases, as the Leveson review has, but I remind the Committee that the Minister is in a pick-and-choose mode when it comes to listening to Leveson and Lord Justice Auld, because both recommended…”

“The tell, so to speak, that the Minister recognises that this is not quite as simple as she makes out is that she was unwilling to make any attempt to give some examples and define it more clearly. I think she knows that if she did so, she would probably become unstuck. The Minister also accepted that there will be a w…”