Speeches by Mullan.

“As the Minister points out, this clause interacts with the issue of transparency in the justice system. I recognise that the Minister thinks it attempts to strike a balance by clarifying the categories of people who may not be excluded, such as representatives of news organisations, witness supporters and approved rese…”

“I mentioned this point in my speech, but I will repeat that these clauses interact with the other elements of the Bill that will remove juries. Under the older jury trial system, the judge decides on things that the jury will never hear, so if something is made inadmissible, there is no question at all of it colouring …”

“In the family courts, and indeed in society at large, it should not be controversial to say, “Where a child has two parents, I think the involvement of both those parents in that child’s life would normally further the welfare of that child, unless shown to be to the contrary.” My point is that the presumption in itsel…”

“On amendment 37, I have talked about the high rate of error and injustice that is being corrected by the current appeal mechanism, and I have talked about the unrepresented defendants who will have to navigate a more complex and subjective system, such as by reviewing transcripts. On the whole, we do not think that we …”

“In summary, clause 7 represents a substantial recasting of appellate rights that prioritises administrative throughput over the correction of error. We should not trade away, without any evidence of abuse and with little evidence of meaningful efficiency savings, a safeguard that is successfully correcting mistakes in …”

“I accept the Minister’s point that to insist on that being the remedy is not necessarily what the defendant would want. We absolutely want to support defendants who have been through the process of a trial and a successful appeal. Where they could have had a Crown court trial with a jury, prior to the Government’s refo…”

“The justice system depends on the belief that mistakes can and will be fixed. By restricting access to appeals and forcing successful cases back into the summary system, we risk creating a parallel system that simply displaces the backlog, while degrading the quality of justice. We must maintain the automatic right to …”

““power is also never concentrated in the hands of one individual.””

“By formalising the role, the Bill acknowledges that the legal system is not just an arena for competing arguments but a human endeavour with all those involved having real psychological needs. While the Opposition support the principle under discussion, the task of the Committee is to ensure that the court retains prop…”

“I understand the Minister’s criticism that the defendant making the appeal may be perfectly content to have their case reheard in the magistrates, and insisting that an appeal be reheard in a jury trial gives no flexibility in that direction—that is a fair point. In response, we will not press amendments 55 to 57 to a …”

“An issue that has received insufficient attention in this debate—it was covered by the hon. Member for Chichester—is parental alienation. I will speak to it as sensitively as I possibly can, recognising that parental alienation is real and damaging, but also that there are unsubstantiated accusations of parental aliena…”

“We have heard about the need for judges to receive better training, but I observe that the CAFCASS officers and social workers who advise the courts are already trained. They are the professionals on whose expert reports judges rely. In every one of the cases we have talked about, those trained professionals were invol…”

“If the answer to those failures is training and systemic reform—and I believe that absolutely has a role—that reform should be directed at the failing institutions. We do not necessarily need a statutory provision that cannot, as we have heard from the Government’s own admission, be consistently shown to be the cause o…”

“If the defendant is successful at appeal, we might say that they are doubly aggrieved: they have gone through the process and it has not worked for them. Surely we should want to do everything we can to support that group of people, so that they have a route to the mode of trial that they think is fairest, considering …”

“We must give great weight to the evidence we have heard, but the Government’s own position is that it is unlikely to materially change outcomes; they are repealing a provision that their own assessment concedes will not make a material difference to what happens.”

“The harm caused to children by alienating behaviour is well documented. Children who are denied a relationship with a loving parent for reasons that have nothing to do with that parent’s conduct and everything to do with a conflict between two adults suffer real and lasting psychological harm. The Family Services Found…”

““increasing uncertainty, delay, inconsistency and conflict”.”

“We must recognise that we have an adversarial justice system, which includes potentially robust cross-examination; nothing in this provision should stop that. However, the clause moves the practice of witness accompaniment from a patchwork of different local approaches and practices to a clear statutory basis. The clau…”

“As we have discussed in debates on previous amendments, the grounds of an appeal may very well relate to an allocation decision. Someone could successfully appeal on the basis that their trial should never have been heard by a magistrate and that they should have had a jury instead. Providing the option for a jury retr…”

“I rise to speak in support of clause 20, which is a technical and geographic provision necessitated by the significant infrastructure developments currently under way in the City of London. As new law courts are developed, specifically at the Salisbury Square site—we mentioned the specialist fraud court earlier in the …”