Speeches by Mullan.

“Sorry—I am not clear that there will not be real-world consequences in the kind of ways that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East will understand. The Minister nodded her head when I suggested that fewer people will get a Crown court trial as a result of clause 2. The Minister indicated from a sedentary position…”

“I rise to speak in support of amendment 39 tabled in my name. As I touched on earlier this morning, along with amendments 23 and 24—which are driving at the same point, but in slightly different ways—we are revisiting the discussion that we in the Opposition framed as a broad categorisation of principles of natural jus…”

“I thank the Minister for picking me up on that; I meant that they are determining the guilt of individuals who can then face up to three years in prison. It undermines the veracity and importance of Sir Brian’s recommendations that the Government do not have the support of his report on this, the profoundest and most u…”

“The Minister put that question very succinctly, in exactly the same way, to members of the criminal Bar, who know much more about this than me; they were very clear that they did not accept her point. She is contrasting a magistrate or a police officer, who must be trained from scratch, to barristers, who practise in a…”

“The point I am making is that we actually do not know that, because we do not know how many people used to practise who could now practise again. I absolutely agree with the Minister that there might need to be a further wave of people that will potentially exhaust the people who could be succinctly brought back into p…”

“I am afraid that we are again at violent agreement and disagreement at the same time. The principle that hon. Member is talking about is absolutely fair. There will be a period of time in which we have to retrain people; but as I said, the Committee has had barristers before it who were very clear that they thought the…”

“Yes, and I have made that point in other debates on this issue: we cannot say that with absolute certainly. The Deputy Prime Minister is clear—I think his phrase was that we have to explain why these things exist. The point is that we certainly cannot rule out that explanation, and it is certainly not an unreasonable c…”

“Yes, I accept that, to a degree, the Government have attempted to put in place safeguards. The question is: what weight can be given to those safeguards? We had a discussion earlier today about judicial accountability and whether we think the decisions made are good decisions. Family courts are a helpful comparator bec…”

“I will just finish my point. If we were confident that this would deliver the outcome that the Government claim it will, then things would be different, but we question whether it will achieve the result they want, whether the safeguards are in place and whether the alternative options have been sufficiently secured. W…”

“We have talked about the issue of safeguards against prejudice, and it is not a view just shared by people such as the Secretary of State for Justice. The CBA commissioned an independent survey of criminal barristers. Of the 2,029 respondents, 94% raised concerns about the lack of diversity in the proposed criminal cou…”

“That potential benefit has to be weighed against what we discussed earlier. For a very good reason, our system explicitly prevents the jury’s inner working from being subject to scrutiny. The system was deliberately designed in that way, and we will be taking that away in some cases. Of course, at a cursory glance, we …”

“As I said, it is about weighing the benefits that the Minister has rightly articulated against the loss of the benefit of safeguarding individual people who are perhaps erring from a strict interpretation of the law. Again, this is not happenstance. The idea that a jury might do that has been tested repeatedly in appea…”

“I have explained why I have concerns about whether the judiciary is sufficiently accountable for the decisions and positions that it takes under the current system. I am not shying away from that. The reality is that I do not think it is sufficiently accountable. I think judges sometimes make poor decisions; we have to…”

“We have to run with the idea that some judges might have some prejudices. We do not know for sure that they do, but there is certainly every reason to believe that might be an issue, particularly when we look at the disparity in their backgrounds and so on. The Minister is asking us to consider that when a judge has a …”

“They are working very hard, as the Minister says, but the work is not complete. We have not done what the Under-Secretary of State for Justice said we should, which is do the stretching and have it all dealt with before we consider curtailing jury rights. We are proceeding when that has not happened, and the Deputy Pri…”

“indicated assent.”

“It is a pleasure to have secured this Adjournment debate on the dualling of the A21 in my constituency. I thank the House authorities for giving me this opportunity, because the condition of the A21—the key strategic route serving the constituency of Bexhill and Battle—is incredibly important. The A21 is not a just loc…”

“First, will the Minister advise me on what to do if something is not even in the long pipeline? What does an MP have to do to get it put into the long pipeline? Secondly, if the Minister is not considering dualling, perhaps the next best thing in some of the villages that are particularly hard hit would be bypasses, so…”

“Even if the Government cannot commit to the funding, developing a business case and options in an updated form would not commit anybody to doing it or to saying that there will be funding, but it would be a starting point. On that point, can the Minister be a bit more helpful by saying that he thinks that National High…”

“Labour is causing chaos in local government in East Sussex. After firing the starting gun on tearing up our local government boundaries—something that no resident in East Sussex wanted and that was not in its manifesto—the Government now will not let us out the blocks. My residents are absolutely clear that they do not…”